ISIL is Winning by Bruce Hoffman, Politico
At the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it seemed like we had terrorism on the run; Osama bin Laden was dead, the Taliban was defeated and officials like CIA director Leon Panetta had proclaimed al Qaeda all but finished. But as we mark on Friday the 14th anniversary of the devastating attacks on the United States, it’s time to admit that the terrorists—at least one specific branch of terrorists—are now winning. And it’s time to admit that our response to the so-called Islamic State has been an abject failure.
Last year, fighters belonging to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a group once part of the same organization responsible for the 9/11 attacks stormed into Iraq, conquered half that country, declared itself both a state and a Caliphate and set about to slaughter and enslave thousands of Christians, Shi’a, and members of Islamic minority sects. Fifteen months later, ISIL’s influence has spread far beyond the Levant and Mesopotamia. A thousand foreign recruits converge monthly on its operational cynosure. Hailing from some fifty countries they exceed by a factor of ten the average monthly flow of foreign fighters to Iraq at even the height of the war there a decade ago…
Comments
ISIL has taken what at one juncture seemed to be a simple conflict and protracted it into a long-term war. This is to be expected from terrorist and insurgent conflicts in the modern battlefield. Radically altering strategies this far into the game plays into the hand of a group like ISIL. Attrition will erode them away.
More worrying is the use of such insurgent groups by Russia and Iran as a component to a larger military strategy, evolving the doctrine of proxy conflicts into one that has been designed from the ground up to defeat American and NATO military forces. Without a strong military counter and a hard-line political stance against such actions, they pose a risk that ISIL cannot compete with.
QUOTE
Results of one year's worth of US/Allied bombing----
ISIL has been able to thrive in areas with a majority Arab Sunni population but has failed to take hold in areas where Sunni Arabs are the minority or where effective rival ground forces could oppose them. … Taken in this light, ISIL appears to have essentially traded holdings in Kurdistan and near Baghdad that were hard for it to maintain for holdings in central Syria that will be much easier for it to maintain.
This month, Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the fight against ISIS “tactically stalemated” with no “dramatic gains on either side,” predicting it would take “a decade or more to resolve” the problems that led to ISIS’s rise. This is the difference a year made.
UNQUOTE
I would argue that we the US have made serious mistakes in fully understanding who we can and cannot work with in the ME and that mistake is the direct result of 9/11 and our urge for revenge.
We have failed to fully "see and understand" the drive of the various civil societies in the ME and around the globe and until we finally get that right balance we are drifting and are incapable of even addressing the existential threats staring the US literally in our face.
Excellent comment MF.
Succinct description of many diverse strategic threats and IMHO how logic indicates the nature of the conflagration our enemies are hell-bent on bringing down on us and/or our allies.
The only aspect I would add is our retaliation will kill tens, if not hundreds of millions of innocent people.
RC
<blockquote>Thus, re: "retrenchment," ISIS -- which exists on the "periphery" -- to be seen as the primary problem of others? (For example: those in the region?)</blockquote>
Your comments and this article could easily substitute the word “isolationism” for “retrenchment.”
<blockquote>President Obama, for his part, is focusing more on -- not the periphery -- but, rather, on the "core?"</blockquote>
His “core” appears to be a domestic agenda that has increased our debt dramatically during his time in office.
<blockquote>When Bush’s term started Jan. 20, 2001, the gross federal debt was $5.73 trillion. At the end of his term, Jan. 20, 2009, the gross federal debt was $10.63 trillion. This means that the debt just about doubled under Bush.
The gross federal debt under Obama -- as of April 7, 2015 -- is $18.15 trillion. So, the debt is a little more than triple what the debt was when Bush took office in 2001, $5.63 trillion.</blockquote>
The above quote is from this link:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/apr/09/rand-pau…
The linked article points out that the 2008 recession caused much of the debt at the very end of the Bush administration. That was caused by a normal economic cycle to include normal “retrenchment” in the stock market. The slow recovery was more a function of President Obama’s policies and those of his initial Democratic Congress. There is plenty of blame to go around regarding failure to raise taxes on the wealthiest to finance the war and increase tax coffers. After all, President Obama reminded us that the wealthiest saw increases of 275% in their wealth since 1979 while the middle class income increased far more slowly without mentioning that middle class median income actually has declined in the last few years under his watch. The following quote comes from this 2012 link checking on his statement about the 275% rise:
http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2012/jun/28/barack-obama/bara…
<blockquote>Let’s start with the first half of the statement. Data released last October by the independent Congressional Budget Office shows that, on average, those Americans among the richest 1 percent saw their after-tax household income rise 275 percent between 1979 and 2007.
Those not quite as prosperous but nonetheless among the top 20 percent saw income grow by 65 percent over that period. Middle-class incomes grew roughly 40 percent. And among the bottom 20 percent, income was about 18 percent higher in 2007 than in 1979. </blockquote>
So if any “retrenchment” is essential, it exists in the after tax incomes of the wealthiest 1%. Let’s not forget that when President Reagan took office the top marginal tax rate on the wealthiest was 70% but by 1987 it had declined to 28% and only more recently increased to 39.6% which affects less than 1% of our wealthiest. So the increase in our debt and income disparity began in 1979 and increased under Presidents Bush (elder) and Clinton.
Issues like Obamacare threaten 1/6th of our economy and all of our medical insurance payments while helping only 10% of Americans. Yet we already spend 1.4 times more per capita on health care than the second highest spending nation and 1.7 times the average spending of the second through ninth highest spenders. So how will Obamacare help us when a rogue nuclear weapon goes off in one of our major cities or in an EMP pulse above the eastern seaboard? If we increasingly allow illegal immigration, how will that affect benefits paid to the poorest vs. simply going to the ER.
Climate change gives us a vision of a slow, manageable future population migration to more temperate climates and more inland away from shores. In contrast, ISIL and other chaos is accelerating this process via the current Muslim refugee crisis. If our efforts to deter Muslim genocide in the Balkans during the 90’s did nothing to deter 9/11, how will disgruntled Syrians and others react to the death of 250,000 of their countrymen, millions of refugees, and poor treatment by Europeans and the U.S. as they seek to flee that conflict? How will our efforts to end climate change by attacking coal power plants in the U.S. increase the electric bills of our poorest while China, the largest polluter, continues to increase their CO2 levels?
<blockquote>Is our new top military leaders, in placing ISIS LAST on their list of threats, agreeing with this assessment and this strategy?
“Gen. Paul Selva on Tuesday ranked the Islamic State the least-threatening group to the U.S, saying that the terrorists do not pose a threat to the homeland."</blockquote>
Recall that General Selva made that comment months ago during his nomination hearing as the former head of the U.S. Transportation Command. One would suspect intelligence briefings for that command are less rigorous than ones he currently receives, and of course we see the I.G. investigating ISIL reports as being potentially altered by superiors to be more optimistic. We also see increases in refugees and a deteriorating Syria that mean more radicals may reach the west where radicalization of other Muslims is likely. That would threaten not only our homeland but that of our European and Asian allies.
<blockquote>“I would put the threats to this nation in the following order: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and all of the organizations that have grown around ideology that was articulated by al Qaeda,” he said, mirroring the list gave by Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford last week in his nomination to be chairman of the joint chiefs of staff."</blockquote>
Looking at the increasing influence and military support of nations at the top of the list in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and other GCC countries, then wouldn’t we admit that our failure to act more aggressively increases their relative threat? Iran with a defense budget of just $14-17.7 billion will likely see great increases given the release of $100+ billion in sanctions relief. Since more of Iran’s budget goes to IRGC activities, we can expect to see more attacks being sponsored abroad such as the explosively-formed penetrator attacks that killed so many of our Soldiers/Marines, and past attacks on U.S. troops in Beirut and Saudi Khobar Towers barracks.
We also should anticipate that some of that money will be spent increasing secret nuclear activities. At some point when Iran gets nukes, the GCC will reciprocate which will increase likelihood of rogue activity smuggling a device into the U.S and Europe. The resultant loss of lives if occurring in the dead of winter on the east coast would give new meaning to your view of acceptable "cost." In such a hypothetical-but-coming attack it would mean millions of lost lives and trillions of “retrenched” dollars.
A strategy of "retrenchment" is expected to have "costs."
The continuing rise of ISIS to simply be understood as being one of these "costs?"
President Obama believing -- as do others -- that we have, on both our domestic and our international fronts, bigger fish to fry? In this regard, consider:
"First, the Obama Doctrine is doing exactly what it was supposed to do: end America’s commitments to Iraq and, eventually, Afghanistan. This will eventually pave the way for the U.S. to focus a greater percentage of military and strategic attention upon East Asia (meaning China). Obama’s steadfast opposition to the second Iraq War was his strongest bona fide for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2007.
Second, the Cheneys’ argument is reminiscent of the “turbulent frontier” thesis (or myth of Thermopylae): if Obama had only left “…behind some residual American forces” (implying their cheapness), everything would be fine in Iraq. However, everything was not fine with Iraq when the Bush administration left office in 2009. Furthermore, the Cheneys fail to appreciate the greatest threat to the U.S. is not Al Qaeda or Iran or Putin’s Russia, but relative decline; retrenchment is the best way to reverse it.
Withdrawing from the periphery carries costs. Because of their weak position in the international system and the mismanagement of the occupation, Iraq is suffering as a result of our withdrawal. When the British were at the point of bankruptcy after the Second World War, they were compelled to exit India and several of their possessions in the Middle East, leaving chaos and conflict in their wake.
When states make the appropriate tradeoff between overextension and relative decline, they are often able to bounce back and reclaim their place on the international ladder. The more entrenched the rate of relative economic and military decline, great powers are more strongly compelled to forego opportunities to use force, increase burden-sharing with other states that share their interests, and pull back from commitments that do not pose a challenge to their existence. Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan are two of the best ways we can preserve the unipolar moment."
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/210253-the-oba…
Thus, re: "retrenchment," ISIS -- which exists on the "periphery" -- to be seen as the primary problem of others? (For example: those in the region?)
President Obama, for his part, focusing more on -- not the periphery -- but, rather, on the "core?"
Our new top military leaders, in placing ISIS LAST on their list of threats, agreeing with this assessment and this strategy?
"Gen. Paul Selva on Tuesday ranked the Islamic State the least-threatening group to the U.S, saying that the terrorists do not pose a threat to the homeland." ...
“I would put the threats to this nation in the following order: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and all of the organizations that have grown around ideology that was articulated by al Qaeda,” he said, mirroring the list gave by Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford last week in his nomination to be chairman of the joint chiefs of staff."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/14/isis-no-threat-us-homel…