Obama’s Fatal Fatalism in the Middle East

Bill...you do realize that the Obama WH and CENTCOM are actively supporting known US named terrorist organizations ie Iraq Hezbollah (KH) with CAS as they attack Fallujah where the Shia militia KH has declared that all Sunni civilians currently in Fallujah are terrorists......

Many have been warning of an ethnic cleansing bloodbath of the thousands of Sunni civilians being caught in the IS Iraqi crossfire.....and the PERCEPTION that the US supports this bloodbath.......

Footage
17 Iraqi Sunni Civilians from near Fallujah
Brutally beheaded by Shia Militias

Will not post the video as it is really to graphic....this alone is a clear and present signal of the total Obama WH FP failures in the entire ME..

BUT WAIT...there is no Obama ME FP other than spin......

Outlaw:

Let's look at it this way. Then tell me what you think:

Minus an adamant/overwhelming desire for market-democracy by the native populations of an outlying state and its societies. And minus a verifiable ability of these natives to achieve same mostly on their own. Then we should expect the U.S./the West WILL NOT intervene significantly -- this on R2P/humanitarian grounds?

This, given that such an intervention, undertaken as per the adverse circumstances outlined above (no overwhelming desire for market-democracy by the populations concerned; no verifiable ability of the population to achieve same mostly on their own); these such conditions -- re: intervention by the U.S./the West -- are considered to be as likely -- or indeed more likely -- to result in the subject state and its societies, due to regime collapse/regime failure/regime capitulation/regime weakening (ex: Libya?) being turned over to our enemies (example: the highly inspired, and apparently highly capable, radical Islamists).

It is based on such negative understanding/circumstances as these (inadequate desire for market-democracy by the populations of the Greater Middle East and elsewhere; inadequate ability of these populations to achieve same mostly on their own; the enemy having no such inspiration and/or ability/capability problems) that we find an understanding of "Obama's Fatal Fatalism in the Middle East."

Bottom Line Question:

If intervention is more likely to result in "strategic failure" (a state and its societies are transformed along OTHER THAN modern western political, economic and social lines), this, rather than such an intervention resulting in "strategic success" (another market-democracy is added to the world's list of same), then does it make "strategic sense" for the U.S./the West to intervene, for example, based on R2P/humanitarian concerns/grounds?

Bill......is this what you mean by market democracy......??? BTW notice the published date......

https://mises.org/library/meaning-market-democracy

The Meaning of Market Democracy

The Free Market

12/01/2003•William H. Peterson

The Free Market 24, no. 12 ( 2004)

The democracy of the market is not the democracy that Plato spoke of in his Republic (c. 370 BC) as "a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a kind of equality to equals and unequals alike," nor that Aristotle in his Rhetoric (c. 322 BC) chided as "when put to the strain, grows weak, and is supplanted by oligarchy." It is not that which George Bernard Shaw taxed in his Maxims for Revolutionists (1903) as substituting "election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few," nor that Hans-Hermann Hoppe exposes in his Democracy—The God That Failed (Transaction, 2001, p. 96) that "majorities of ‘have-nots’ will relentlessly try to enrich themselves at the expense of the ‘haves’."

For see how Ludwig Mises lit up a near-unknown yet highly effective daily democracy—the marketplace—in his Socialism (Liberty Classics, 1981, p. 11), giving this democracy a critically needed political dimension today. As Mises wrote: "When we call a capitalist society a consumers’ democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers’ ballot, held daily in the marketplace."

Mises was on solid ground. For what is political democracy? See its Greek derivation: rule or "kratia" by the people, the "demos." But who rules whom? Why do state hegemony and interventionism reign today as givens, why does the free individual fade across the West, why does political majoritarianism divide society?

So I say capitalism, so harassed today, should be especially thought through and guarded in the heat of current debate. Note its basis in private property, equal rights, a limited state (so unlimited today). Note it stars entrepreneurs with their private tools of production of goods and services. Note how its fallible CEOs (Enron, Tyco, etc.) get quickly whipped by the stock market, far faster than by the courts or the Securities and Exchange Commission. For firms are democratically led and, if need be, punished, by their customers—i.e., said Mises, by sovereign consumers everywhere with their make-or-break "orders" (what a word!) and their key market price signals.

Whither then our berated, underrated, far over regulated and much misread capitalism? Yet isn’t it still, per our Founders (though the word capitalism had yet to be coined), a royal road to social cooperation, a vital private network of governments of the people, by the people, for the people, all with individual assent—highly-used withdrawable assent?

Withdrawable? Consider in a free society, countless hierarchies of governance of power, such as the New York Times, Harvard, New York Stock Exchange, Microsoft, the Southern Baptists, the Salvation Army, Wal-Mart and some 25 million other firms, farms and organizations; yet all are totally dependent on that withdrawable individual assent. So you’re free to switch from GM to Ford, from Yale to MIT, from Burger King to McDonald’s. And vice versa. Talk about democracy!

Democracy? But isn’t this our political shield for a Pax Americana to police a sinful, quite undemocratic globe, with the focus now on the turbulent undemocratic Middle East? But doesn’t this serve up de Jouvenel’s classic conundrum (74 AD): Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes (But who is to guard the guards themselves?) Thomas Paine saw this snag in 1776 in Common Sense as "a necessary evil."

Bismarck likened the legislative process to the unsightly conversion of pigs into sausages. Churchill said democracy is the least awful way to effect a peaceful change of political power. Or as Swiss thinker Felix Somary held in his Democracy at Bay (Knopf, 1952, p. 6): Political democracy blends two "fictions," one the idea that "an entire people can assume sovereignty," the other the idea of "the innate goodness of man."

So I juxtapose below America’s Political Democracy with the Misesian point of our Consumer Democracy to clarify which is which—and ask you, with both needful of repairs, which needs the most by far?

In one democracy you vote but every other year for candidates (who may not win) to "represent" you and many others indirectly on myriad issues. In the other, you vote daily, often, directly, for specific vendors, goods, or services, in an endless plebiscite going on every minute of every day, with dollars as ballots. To be sure, some get more ballots than others. Yet Mises saw this outcome as transient, as consumers themselves vote "poor people rich and rich people poor" (Human Action, Yale University Press, 1949, p. 270).

So one democracy is public, the other private. One funds failing programs and schools, the other lets failing firms and private schools fail. One is coercive and centralized, the other voluntary and decentralized. One runs, inadvertently, a growth-impeding win-lose zero-sum game, the other, also inadvertently, a pro-growth win-win positive-sum game. This difference, alone, sets America’s future.

One democracy runs by politics and monopoly, unmindful of Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience of 1849 when he saw "little virtue in the action of masses of men" and voting as "a sort of gaming;" the other runs a market society by economics and competition. One forgets the individual, per William Graham Sumner’s famed "The Forgotten Man" lecture in 1883, the other remembers him/her (imperfectly per that spam on your PC monitor).

One democracy plays incumbency ruses: compromises with principle, gerrymandering, log-rolling, warmongering, free-lunch guises such as big federal "grants" (bribes?) to states and localities ($313 billion, annualized, 1st qtr., 2003), the other is cleansed by competition, cost-cutting, demonstrated market deeds for consumers free to choose.

One democracy veers to the Machiavellian amoral short run in aim, the other to moral contracts and the longer run. One, with coercive power, yields to Acton’s law that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Yet the other, if gloriously voluntaristic, can and does slip into some corporate behavior—money-grasping or getting into bed with political power to win subsidies, import quotas, and other mischief via special interests—despite President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell message against a "military-industrial complex."

One democracy can glorify war, including class warfare, the other glorifies peaceful trade in a virtual global concordance on private property rights (if widely derided as "globalization")—per IBM’s old motto of "World Peace Through World Trade."

One entered World War I, naïvely, as "The War to End War" and "Make the World Safe for Democracy"—only to reap Lenin and Stalin in Russia, Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Tojo in Japan, Tito in Yugoslavia, Mao in China, Peron in Argentina, Castro in Cuba, Allende in Chile, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and lesser imitators throughout Asia, Africa, Central Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. President Bush II seeks to "democratize" an entire region while citing Germany and Japan as post-World War II successes, but he remains silent on our failures like North Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti (this gamely tagged as "Operation Democracy").

One democracy rues income disparity and, like Robin Hood, "transfers" wealth, the other lifts all boats. One denies itself crucial feedback information—or what Mises called "economic calculation," predicting in 1920 the ultimate collapse of socialism à la the USSR—the other uses that calculation to help allocate limited resources to their perceived optimum market uses. One wastes capital and talent (human capital), the other saves and invests it, self-interestedly, yes—yet, when under a moral code and the rule of law—spontaneously, harmoniously, constructively.

Market democracy explains the success of the West via Adam Smith’s "invisible hand" idea of self-interest in a system of "natural liberty," of self-help by helping others, or per his famed line in Wealth of Nations (1776, Modern Library ed., p. 14): "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, or the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard of their own interest."

No question then that capitalism or a market society is America’s greatest democracy. The question is: Can we tame political democracy à la our Founding Fathers in 1776 or will we allow it to devour us per Ancient Greece?

BLUF...not so sure this is what the Syrian civil society was thinking when they went into the streets to peacefully demonstrate for "freedom" and then got hit by a massive genocidal wave by a dictator....

Outlaw, below, suggests that we should help the people of Syria -- not because of their adamant desire for our way of life and our way of governance (to wit: the way of life and way of governance associated with market-democracy).

(Outlaw below suggests that the Syrian people did not "take to the streets" to achieve the way of life and way of governance associated with market-democracy; only to achieve "freedom" and "good governance" of some unknown and/or unstated kind.)

Rather, Outlaw suggests that we should intervene in Syria more on "responsibility-to-protect"/ humanitarian grounds.

The problem with this line-of-thinking is that if the Syrian people, with our help, overthrow, otherwise separate themselves from or simply successfully coerce their current ruthless ruler and they, and/or their ruler, DO NOT, thereafter, organize, order and orient their lives more along the political, economic and social lines associated with market-democracy, then this will be seen by the U.S./the West as a strategic failure -- and one which will, potentially, place the U.S./the West in even graver danger, re: Syria and the Greater Middle East, than it is in today.

This such understanding (that via our intervention, and the populations non-desire for our specific way of life/our specific way of governance, we place ourselves in even graver danger than today); this being yet another basis for "Obama's Fatal Fatalism in the Middle East?"

What about that fighting ability of the heavily US supported Kurdish proxy YPG/SDF along with 250 US SOF, Javelin Teams and the USAF......designed to fight IS.......

So much for that vaulted US SOF SDF attack designed to destroy IS......went absolutely nowhere...after much heralded MSM support.

Instead of coming to the assistance of FSA which is under heavy IS attacks SDF pulls back...the US population has been told that the US proxy was built to destroy IS but in reality it seems like US SOF and SDF are in fact assisting IS........

SDF/#YPG withdraws forces from #Raqqa battlefield towards
#Manbij after #IslamicState advance to #Afrîn & #Azaz in N- #Aleppo prov.

Syria #US airstrikes on Kafr Kalbin at south of #Azaz in northern #Aleppo
Seems #IslamicState finished #Turkey backed rebel pocket

Something that is extremely critical but never talked about even here at SWJ is the ongoing seriously fought social media info war against both Assad and Putin with little to no assistance from the US in any form.

The interesting question that should be openly discussed by SWJ is just how much of the so called US owned social media companies ie FB, Twitter, YouTube is actually full under the influence of Russian oligarch black money via investments into those companies.

FB, YT and Twitter have begun aggressively in the last year to block accounts after massive complaints by proAssad and proRssuain trolls who point to so called Service Agreement violations.

WHAT is interesting is that the trolls use a very effective bot network to push these complaints and Twitter or FB Support does not take the time to even review th complaints....they simply automatically block the account.

In some aspects these bot networks parallel criminally used Russian bot networks that many US IT departments have problems with.

Today Twitter has effectively blocked a large number of accounts that both analyze and report on Syrian events AS WELL as eastern Ukraine events and often critique Russian actions.

THIS even includes well known Us journalists who have written extensively on say Syria and who are considered to be ME SMEs.

Is it time for the Us government to seriously look at the use of US social media companies as part and parcel of the ongoing and intensive Russian info war being carried out against the US.

IMHO...it is time to have the SEC check the Russian inv estments into these Us companies via the Panama Papers and I think they will find a number of sanctioned Russian oligarchs have invested into US social media companies via off shore accounts.

BUT here is the flip side of this comment.

A large number of the accounts are from US journalists to pointed out yesterday the wearing by US SOF personnel of the Kurdish YPG emblem on their combat uniforms and rightly pointed out the in fact the YPG up to 2014/2015 was being carried by the DoS NCTC as being a US named terrorist organization effectively tied into the PKK which is conducting an open guerrilla war against Turkey going on now for over 30 odd years.

SO hwere they effectively blocked by proAssad and or proRussian trolls.....

OR the US government for their critique of US SOF for wearing a "terrorist emblem" on their uniforms.....???

A very valid point????

Taken from today's Syria 2016 thread....

CrowBat......I understand perfectly and everything about 'training them, eating with them, sleeping with them, fighting with them'. Went through the same, after all.

But heaven... applying their 'national' insignia - which is neither 'national', nor even something like 'official' - that's against all rules of any decent military service (and especially one that's as proud of itself as the US services are).

...not to talk about applying insignia of what is de-facto a terrorist organization, and then declared as such not only by the USA, but the entire NATO and the EU.

The troops in question are now actually at war with Turkey, just for example (not to talk with all of Syria etc.).

This is such a mindless action, it cannot even be described as 'damaging' for the US prestige in the Middle East (and well beyond). This is 'coup de grace'

They did not just say this...
Kurdish Democratic Union: we will free Raqaa and it will join the federal system...

PYD representative in #KRG Gharib Haso says #Raqqa will become part of federal #Rojava after liberation from #IS

CrowBat.....this is a perfect example of just how little the Obama WH and yes even US SOF fully understands the history of PKK....I have never forgotten their terror campaign here in Germany.........especially this founding flag of the PKK from ..1978......many in the US do not fully understand the Communist background of the PKK...probably also not many that were here in Europe in the 70/80s remember it as well......

Michael Weiss ‏@michaeldweiss
Best part about US Special Forces wearing YPG patches? The patch derives from this original PKK flag.

US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) labelled the #YPG the #Syria wing of the *designated* #PKK in 2014:

Defected #US-Delta Forces with patches of communist #YPG militia
But now #Chuck_Norris arrived in #Syria

US special forces in #YPG uniforms were pictured close to the Tishrin dam in #Syria's #Aleppo province.

When you think, you've seen it all ...
@USArmy soldiers with #YPG insignia north of #Raqqa in #Syria.

US Special Forces in north of #Raqqa near #Fatissa village #Syria

U.S. troops in northern #Syria are wearing Kurdish YPG patches. What you just heard was Erdogan's head exploding.

Syria 5000 Sunni arabs among #SDF but 30.000 kurdish #YPG-fighters
Without Arab tribes in #Raqqa the offensive on "#IS-capital" will fail

BUT WAIT......YPG/SDF and US SOF still have not been able to move much at all against IS.....

Have there been any other cases of US troops re-badging themselves as communist militia?

This is the direct result of a total lack of any national level strategic strategy by this Obama WH for Syria, IS and the ME in general other than a full scale tilt towards Iran and Russia as the regional hegemons invalidating 70 odd years of US ME FP....

YET this is the daily Syrian ground reality and not a single word is said by either Kerry and or the Obama WH......or anything from his personal "spin doctor Rhodes"...not sure just what he would "spin anyway".....

Two kids pulled alive from rubble, one still clutching her doll, after an Russian/Assad airstrike on rebel-held area in Syria.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vDahN6tv1dA&feature=youtu.be …

BTW.....reference the Syrian CD unit working in this video...their leader was to receive a major humanitarian award for their efforts for working to save ALL Syrians and yet the Obama Homeland Security detained and sent him back AFTER the US DoS issued a valid entry visa to him...explain that one to anyone in the ME...that is just how bad the failures of the Obama WH have become....

BTW....the Syrian CD White Hats have been repeatedly and deliberately hit with Russian and Assad "double tap" air strikes......on first responders...AND not much was said by the Obama WH unless it made the US MSM.....and they were forced to say something.

Bill...the following is basically the clearest sign of the failure of the Obama WH to clearly, concisely and coherently define a national level strategic strategy on just about anything other than using simply "spun words".....

If AQ and IS can have an open publicly carried debate on which strategy will or will not work and both AQ and IS drive on defined campaign plans....HOW is it that the Obama WH has tap danced around the lack of any strategy for nearly eight years now??

BTW...seriously reflect on what is being said as to how they define a "tactical or strategic defeat".......sobering.....

Looking at this month's two key statements issued by Al Qaeda and ISIS two weeks apart

http://timep.org/commentary/threats-...ir-strategies/

Threats from Two Fronts: Al-Qaeda and IS Define Their Strategies

By: Hassan Hassan

05-25-2016

Quote:

In the space of two weeks, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State released separate audio statements that merit comparison. Both statements center on Syria as the emerging nucleus of global jihad, each marking a new way its respective organization operates or sees its long-term future. Each message includes an explicit attack on the other group, a sign that differences between the two are deepening, contrary to speculation that the twin giants of global jihadism might begin to cooperate as they face common enemies in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere.

On May 8, al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, mocked the Islamic State as a false caliphate—“the caliphate of Ibrahim al-Badri,” using the real name of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This marked the first time Zawahiri has spoken so aggressively against the group in public; he previously rejected the Islamic State as illegitimate but refrained from outright ridicule. Last August, Zawahiri urged fellow jihadists of all inclinations to refrain from attacking each other in public or making statements that deepen division. “We once conquered the world with our media,” he said in August. “Today, their media has divided us.”

In a statement on Saturday, Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani returned the favor by calling Zawahiri “the fool of the Muslim community,” rather than “the sage of the Muslim community,” his epithet among al-Qaeda supporters. Adnani, whose real name is Taha Subhi Fallaha, dedicated much of the recording to attacking al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra, its franchise in Syria, accusing them of working with apostates and compromising sharia principles.

A key theme in the two recordings is that each group claims its approach is more effective than the other’s. Al-Qaeda’s leader sounded more assured than in previous statements about how his organization has avoided the fate of the Islamic State by working closely with other groups and making it hard for Western powers to justify an all-out war against it. Zawahiri seemed less defensive about the fact that his group did not announce an Islamic state, in contrast to previous messages (especially in the wake of the Islamic State’s military and administrative successes in 2014 and 2015).

Adnani indicated that his group would not alter its approach despite territorial losses. “We will not beg people to accept the religion of God or to govern according to his sharia,” he said. “To those who accept it, this is God’s sharia. To those who hate it, complain about it, or reject it, we will force it down their throats, and this is God’s religion. We will excommunicate apostates and distance ourselves from them. We will show enmity and hatred to the infidels and polytheists… even if crops are wiped out, homes are demolished, honors are violated, souls are annihilated, or blood is shed.”

With Jabhat al-Nusra as his focus, Zawahiri’s remarks indicated that al-Qaeda is settled on its current strategy of acting as a wasati (middle-way) jihadi movement. Although he did not use the term in this recording, the middle-way theme has factored prominently in the discourse of al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups, especially since the eruption of the Arab uprisings in 2011. Al-Qaeda seeks to synchronize the work of its franchises ideologically and strategically while working closely with local forces. In other words, it wants its local representatives to act more assertively as al-Qaeda but with closer cooperation with grassroots players.

Adnani, on the other hand, emphasized that territorial losses in Syria and Iraq should not be mistaken for a strategic defeat. He claimed that between 2004 and 2005, his group had just dozens of members, “fluctuating above and below one hundred,” and still survived against the American troops stationed in Iraq at the time. He said the group was driven out of all the Iraqi towns in which it once operated and withdrew to the desert by members of the Awakening, the U.S.-backed popular insurgency against the group that began in 2005. From the desert, Adnani claimed, the group waged a war of attrition against the Awakening militias. A seven-year insurgency then culminated in the Islamic State taking over a third of Iraq and establishing itself as the only major Sunni militia in Iraq.

“Do you think, America, that defeat is by the loss of towns or territory?” he said. “Were we defeated when we lost the cities in Iraq and retreated to the desert without a city or a land? Will we be defeated and you win if you’ve taken Mosul, Sirte, Raqqa, or all of the cities and we returned as we were the first time around? No, defeat is when we lose the will and desire to fight…. We are now many, many times stronger than we were at the beginning of your war against us. We march forward with steady steps while you stumble with a failed strategy.”

There is a dangerous tendency in media to portray the Islamic State’s losses as the beginning of the end for the group. The U.S.-led campaign has reduced the organization’s strength from its high point in 2014-15, but the group will continue to be a major actor in Syria and Iraq for the foreseeable future, especially given the deteriorating situations in the two countries politically, economically, socially, and in numerous other respects. The future of the Islamic State depends on how effectively the two countries deal with the issues that fostered the Islamic State’s growth in the first place. As one American official put it recently, the campaign against IS may have been “disastrously successful” in that military gains against the group are ahead of the political, economic, and social changes which are essential to root out the organization.

A noticeable surge in the group’s suicide operations—steadily increasing from 54 in November 2015 to 112 in March—also lends credence to Adnani’s statement. The number went down to 83 in April, almost half of them in Anbar, before a multi-front offensive over two weeks throughout May to mark the killing of al-Baghdadi’s deputy, Abu Ali al-Anbari, by a U.S. airstrike in Deir Ezzor in March. Additionally, the Islamic State’s reach inside its enemies’ strongholds does not seem to have diminished. The group has recently carried out suicide operations inside areas it previously could not infiltrate, such as in Baghdad, Sadr City, Damascus, Kurdish-controlled Tal Abyad in northern Syria, and most recently in the Alawite strongholds of Tartus and Jableh in western Syria. The attacks in all of those areas follow improved security indicators as a result of the U.S. and Russian interventions. The attacks in western Syria, in particular, are ominous: The Islamic State’s territory is nowhere near those areas, which renders control of territory less critical for its ability to strike in a devastating manner.

The events of the past two weeks should serve as a wake-up call to regional and world powers about the collective danger of two competing models. Both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are doubling down on their own methods of terrorism and insurgency, as they illustrated in their statements and the Islamic State’s coordinated attacks in Latakia and Tartus. The two groups are unlikely to cooperate against their opponents, but they can still inflict lasting damage to regional order and international peace.

Appears all that new Obama WH "echo chamber hype" about the impending capture of Raqqa the IS defacto capital with the excellent trained and US SOF lead Kurdish YPG seems to have forgotten that IS still has a say in the fighting.....

That happens when the "echo chamber" sits in DC.....

IS killed dozens of YPG forces in northern Raqqa with vehicle bombs
& US conducted 50 airstrikes on this area

BUT WAIT...not a single US CAS flown for the FSA who is also fighting IS on multiple fronts not just in Raqqa.....and has been far longer than YPG has existed.....

Bill...something for thoughtful thinkers.....

7 Ukr troops dead in 24hrs. But hey, Cold War’s over, Obama says when in VN!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MJvC_b8yIw …

Over 35 UAF soldiers killed alone in the month of May and it is still not over....highest single day loss since Sept 2015.

Russia with her military and mercenaries are in complete and total violation of Minsk 2 and has not implemented a single point of the 11 points in Minsk 2 in two years......

BUT WAIT the Obama WH "echo chamber" says there is no military solution THEN why is Russia constantly attacking with her own troops and her mercenaries .....appears at least Putin seriously thinks there can be a "military solution"......

OR at least he believes that with strong military pressure one can achieve a "political victory".....and he is thoroughly correct in that assumption.

Charles Lister
‏@Charles_Lister
Charles Lister Retweeted الرقة تذبح بصمت

Famed anti-#ISIS activists say opposition to #YPG/#SDF offensive towards #Raqqa has pushed civilians to join #ISIS:

Field response from someone who is a well known SME on the Syrian issue.....

"Jesus wept".

THAT Bill is the Obama WH FP hard at work....pushing Syrians who do not support IS to support IS in order to resist being taken captive by a Kurdish YPG which is in fact part and parcel of the US declared terror organization PKK.

BTW Bill the YPG was being carried by the US DoS Terror Center in 2014 as a "terrorist organization" until quietly removed this year from the list......

Bill...you did notice that outside of a few DoS press conference comments on this and a useless UNSC Resolution on the topic NOT much has been said by the Obama WH.....

Why do Assad and Putin bomb hospitals? Because, a surgeon from Aleppo told me: "Kill a doctor and you kill thousands."

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3...-of-resistance

In Syria, Rebuilding Bombed Hospitals Is an Act of Resistance

Saturday, 14 May 2016 00:00

By Charles Davis

Quote:

The horror of the conflict in Syria, which began in March 2011, can be measured with statistics: over 400,000 people dead; half the population displaced; the life expectancy of a newborn child dropping from 76 years in 2011 to under 56 years in 2016. But the grotesque absurdity of this revolution turned civil war is perhaps best captured by the fact that today Syrians are forced to crowdsource money online to rebuild and fortify bombed hospitals.

"In our worst dreams -- in our worst nightmares -- we never thought we would have to fortify hospitals."

"Now, thanks to this war, we are 10,000 years back and we dig hospitals in the mountains and in the ground," Zaidoun al-Zoabi, head of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations (UOSSM), told me. "In our worst dreams -- in our worst nightmares -- we never thought we would have to fortify hospitals," he said. "It's not humane. It's impossible to comprehend."

Zoabi, a 42-year-old father of three daughters, spoke to me from Berlin, where he fled two years ago. Originally from Daraa, where the initially peaceful uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad began, he fled when he "couldn't stand anymore the brutality of the regime. Two times in jail was enough for me." Now, like 4.8 million other Syrians, he witnesses the brutality from abroad.

Today, Syria lacks many things, including the democracy Zoabi and thousands of others were arrested and tortured for demanding, but there is no shortage of atrocities.

On April 27, airstrikes on the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo struck Al Quds hospital for at least the third time, killing at least 55 people, including one of the last qualified pediatricians in a city of 300,000 people. Before the strike, two barrel bombs were dropped outside, according to Pablo Marco, Middle East operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, which supported the facility. The third strike came after the victims of those bombs were brought in for treatment, Marco told PBS, suggesting the attack was "staged to provoke the maximum number of citizens killed."

Two days later, airstrikes hit Al-Marjah Primary Healthcare Center, which provided pediatric and gynecological care for residents of eastern Aleppo, Syria's largest city and, before the war, its economic hub. It was the fifth UOSSM-run health care center to be destroyed by the Syrian regime and its allies.

"It was leveled to the ground," Zoabi told me. "We lost two doctors that day. Two doctors means 4 percent of the doctors in eastern Aleppo. We only have 50 doctors inside Aleppo -- and not all at the same time."

I asked if he thought the destruction was on purpose or merely the product of an indiscriminate war where everyone and everything in territory controlled by the other side is fair game.

"There is nothing more systematic in Syria than bombing hospitals, at all, to cut the story short," he said. "When you have two hospitals being targeted [in] Aleppo in the span of one week, this cannot be collateral damage, especially when the bombing is so precise and destructive."

Rebuilding Is a Political Act

But Syrians have no choice: As the world watches from the sidelines -- or, increasingly, from the sky above, with an expanding number of major powers bombing the country as part of an indefinite war on non-state terror -- they must rebuild. But theirs is not the apolitical humanitarianism of an international nongovernmental organization: Building hospitals that are likely to be bombed again is as much an act of resistance as it is a humanitarian necessity, and an extension of the nonviolent activism with which the Syrian revolution began and which continues to exist despite a suffocating media obsession with the self-promoting butchers of ISIS (also known as Daesh).

That the money for such a project is being raised online is a commentary on the failures of our age and international system. It is striking that medical care for those suffering through the most devastating war of the 21st century is being funded by $5 donations from people on Twitter with far more empathy than politicians in Washington, Moscow or Brussels. Because of the time and red tape involved in applying for institutional sources of funding, Zoabi told me his organization had no choice but to turn to the internet. Waiting months for a grant would mean "many people will die."

The inspiring thing is people are not their governments: Seeing a tragedy, they are inspired to act. In under a week UOSSM raised more than $95,000 to rebuild both Al Quds hospital and Al-Marjah Primary Healthcare Center. Zoabi said it would have cost about $65,000 to rebuild both, but that's not an option anymore: If they are to be rebuilt, they must be fortified underground for the sake of those who will be working and treated there, raising the total cost to $100,000.

Abdulaziz Adel, a 50-year-old man from Aleppo, is one of the last surgeons who still works in the opposition-controlled part of the city. He told me the hospital where he spends most of his time has been attacked three times.

"When you have two hospitals being targeted [in] Aleppo in the span of one week, this cannot be collateral damage."

"The hospitals are hit more than military targets," he said, speaking from an airport in Turkey, where a child cried in the background. Ambulances are hit too. Indeed, whether it's a vehicle or a building, anything that's identifiable as providing medical care is ripe for an airstrike, so that staff have now taken to covering up any distinguishing characteristics. Even so, local residents are "always begging us to go away, take your hospital away from us or otherwise we'll be a target."

Adel thinks he knows why people like him are marked for death.

"Kill a doctor and you kill thousands," he said. "We have in Aleppo two or three pediatricians. Imagine that you kill one of them, in a city of more than 300,000. How many babies or children are in the city? One doctor will now have to care for all [of] them. This is a really difficult job, so of course mistakes will be made and patients will lose their lives. It's the same for all other specialties."

Doctors are the target, but the goal is to kill those they treat while making life unlivable for those who are left, or at least that's how the targeted see it.

"It's very simple and easy," Adel told me. "The Syrian people are paying the price of their freedom. This is a personal opinion, of course. Me, myself, I'm talking my own opinion. I'm not neutral anymore. I can't be neutral anymore. I'm sorry."

Like many medical professionals in opposition-controlled Aleppo, Adel goes to Turkey for a week or two each month for respite from the 15-hour workdays in a war zone, but Syria will always be his home.

"I'm very strange," he said when I asked why he keeps going back. "I would like to live and die in my country because it is my country. I hope I will die in my country. It is my duty as a doctor," he told me. "We hope that peace will come, but we will keep struggling until the last moment in time."

No One Is Innocent

No party to Syria's conflict has its hands clean when it comes to killing innocents, be it the Assad government, its Russian allies or the US-led coalition that has been bombing the country since September 2014. On May 3, for instance, three people at a maternity hospital in government-controlled western Aleppo were killed, according to the Guardian, when rebel mortars struck a military vehicle outside the hospital.

All hands are stained with blood, then -- but some are drenched in it. Non-state armed groups have attacked a total of 22 medical facilities in Syria, killing at least 25 medical personnel, according to Physicians for Human Rights. But non-state actors cannot hope to compete with the ghastly firepower of a state backed by a member of the UN Security Council. The Syrian government and its Russian partners have attacked no less than 326 medical facilities during the course of the war, killing 668 medical personnel and counting.

"All too often, attacks on health facilities and medical workers are not just isolated or incidental battlefield fallout," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said earlier this month, "but rather the intended objective of the combatants. This is shameful and inexcusable."

His remarks came after the UN Security Council passed a resolution reiterating that what four out of five of its permanent members and their allies have done -- bomb hospitals, from Afghanistan to Syria to Yemen -- is a war crime, though the council took care not to suggest any of those crimes be punished by any of the relevant international bodies.

"Well, that's an achievement," Zoabi told me. "Listen, next time you kill a child, I will really, really shout at you. Shame on the world. That we see such bloodshed, such an ongoing massacre, is a shame on the world."

"It has to stop," he added. "For God's sake it has to stop or we will collapse."

Outlaw:

For your consideration:

We have entertained the idea that the problem -- re: our inability to achieve our grand political objective of transforming outlying states and societies more along modern western political, economic and social lines -- that this is caused by a lack of strategy.

But should we be looking, instead, more toward a lack of appropriately configured soft and hard power assets as the real culprits here? These (appropriately configured soft and hard power assets) being needed to make the development of viable strategy -- for the achievement of one's grand political objective -- possible?

Herein to suggest that:

a. Neither the U.S./the West's "soft power" assets (the attractiveness of our way of life, our way of governance, our values, attitudes and beliefs)

b. Nor the U.S./the West's "hard power" assets (designed and employed to "take up the slack" when one's "soft power" assets fail to be sufficient)

c. Have been adequately redesigned and reconfigured (specifically, from the "defense/containment of communism" job, to the "offense/advancement of market-democracy" job); this,

d. So as to make the development of a viable strategy possible (one designed to advance the cause of market-democracy and overcome those state [ex: Russia] and non-state actor [ex: the Islamists] opponents that would stand in our way).

Bottom Line Questions:

Do we have the tools needed to develop a viable strategy, to wit: the soft and hard power assets -- adequately re-organized, re-ordered and re-oriented to address and accommodate the U.S./the West's 180 strategic turn post-the Old Cold War (from containment of communism then, to the advancement of market-democracy today)?

Your thoughts.

Not so sure just how the Obama WH echo chamber spin artist Rhodes would spin this....

US-designated FTO 'Kataib Hezbollah' and US air force now fighting hand in hand ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GZCuHzX3yU …

So this is what Kerry if up to when he goes to the ISSG Syrian meetings and this is the great example of the Obama WH FP hard at work??????

French source on the text of the last ISSG meet. “The best in a long while, because it didn’t include a retreat from previous positions.”

A French source tells al-Hayat that the fact the ISSG meet in Vienna didn’t reach any tangible results is *positive*

Why? Bc “it didn’t result in new US concessions to Russia.” Adding, Paris’ goal in these meets is to “limit the damage of US concessions”

In other words, US allies go to these meetings routinely expecting the Obama admin to strengthen the other side; not its allies.

Link to the al-Hayat piece...sorry in Arabic:
http://goo.gl/lXV6Vg

Not so sure the Obama WH and Kerry realize the depth of the killing of Sunni civilians caught in Fallujah will be BUT anyway they are actively supporting an US declared Iranian supported Shia militia terrorist group which they leader stated yesterday..."there are no good Sunni's in Fallujah...kill them all"....to his officers....

BTW it appears also that Obama has an awfully short memory on the number of US personnel killed and wounded by KH.

Terrorist group Kataib Hezbollah fires IRAMs at Fallujah
Chance to hit ISIS minimal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijDN7Ms5oiU …

US air strikes have been largely in support of this KH attack on Fallujah....even though the media reports in support of Iraqi forces.

Sure, the civilians of Fallujah are looking forward to their "liberation" ...by another group of "terrorists" this time supported by the US.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdqORTuPAok …

This simple statistic tells the story of that highly touted Obama WH Syria/IS defeating strategy.......

International coalition conducted 115 airstrikes against ISIS. 82 in Iraq 33 in Syria

BUT WAIT I thought the bulk of IS is sitting inside Syria????

AND WAIT...Iraq has an AF, a massively large ISF/SF and thousands of Iranian supported Shia militias and IRGC....YET they are fighting more in Syria than in Iraq.....

Why is that??

AND the Obama WH explanation for this is what again??

While this article is so correct one has to really start asking...is the actual "echo chamber" really to be found in the Obama WH...when a central decision making process is isolated among themselves this is in the end what we get...absolutely nothing as all the Obama WH and the 700 person NSC hear are themselves reverberating off the walls....when ground reality is totally ignore for the benefit of "legacy" the US FP if there was ever one under this WH simply does not exist.....

EVERYONE needs to seriously read this US Embassy Statement from the Obama Special Envoy to Syria....and then ask yourself ...WOULD you if you had been fighting for five long years for rule of law, good governance and transparency with a genocidal dictator "trust" the US??????

Paraphrasing the statement.....resist Assad and Putin you will get killed, do not resist and you will still get killed BUT you must listen to us and surrender..."so we can have peace in our lifetime"...AND all we will do for you is "talk to Russia".......

https://twitter.com/USEmbassySyria/s...44611277950976

US. Embassy Syria Verified account 
‏@USEmbassySyria
Statement by US Special Envoy for #Syria Michael Ratney to Armed Syrian Opposition Factions:

The United States of America to Syria'n armed opposition: "Yeah,you're being slaughtered but PLEASE don't defend. We will talk to Russia."

Assad has Russia and Iran.
Syrian opposition has this: from the US...do not defend and be killed otherwise accept defeat by Putin and Assad......BUT we are still talking to Russia.....

Empty words & NOTHING since 6 years.
"Peaceful political transition" until you are all killed by Assad & his allies!

If I was a Syrian rebel,I wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry now.
But I would know that I can NOT rely on @POTUS!

Actually if you take the US reactions to the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine and what Kerry, Nuland and the Obama WH is saying to Ukraine...hold unilateral appeasement talks with Russia and demand nothing in return BUT hold those "elections" in eastern Ukraine currently occupied by a Russian army of 9,000 and a mercenary army of 30,000.....

Both are the same.

It is a shame the Obama WH does not read the articles from this particular author....there are more ideas presented here than what the entire Obama WH and 700 person NSC have come up with in over six long years.....

Simple comment...what we are seeing out of this Obama WH, CENTCOM and Kerry when it concerns Syria/IS is simply put a complete farce....and hot air ie "talk"......

Obama is simply covering his tracks with spin and smoke and mirrors due to his full tilt to Iran as the new regional hegemon that he hopes the US public does not pick up on until he is long gone.....

Charles Lister ‏@Charles_Lister
My latest on 1) today’s attacks in Tartus & Jableh & 2) Gen. Votel’s visit to Syria:

http://www.mei.edu/content/article/m...ra-shiite-feud …

Quote:

The death earlier today of over 120 people in regime-controlled Tartus and Jableh is a deeply worrying sign of things to come. Today’s attacks employed multiple car bombs and suicide bombers and were the first such attacks to penetrate the city of Tartus, which amongst other things now hosts an expanding Russian naval base.

While the veracity of a purported ISIS claim of responsibility cannot be substantiated, the perpetrators had one clear objective: to stoke a self-sustaining cycle of sectarian ###-for-tat violence that incapacitates moderates and empowers extremists. This is a strategy that ISIS’ predecessors have previously used with cold-blooded success in Iraq. That regime loyalists subsequently raided an IDP camp shortly after today’s attacks and killed at least seven Sunni civilians underlines the explosive potential that today’s events could have.

Meanwhile, CENTCOM commander General Votel’s visit to northeastern Syria has exacerbated another source of division: between the mainstream anti-Assad opposition and the Kurdish-dominated U.S.-backed anti-ISIS forces. Overwhelming U.S. support to the Kurdish Y.P.G. since September 2014 may have secured valuable short-term victories against ISIS, but it has also created a dangerous long-term power imbalance in northern Syria. Continued hostility in this respect may well outlast the conflict between the Assad regime and the opposition.

As much as CENTCOM continues to aggrandize the role of several former opposition groups, and a number of small tribal and minority militias, Washington’s anti-ISIS force remains at least 75 percent YPG. By continuing along this path, territory will be won back from ISIS, but in such a way as to create the conditions for its eventual return.

This marks ISIS' first activity on Syria's coast in 26 months (since March 2014), when FSA, Ahrar al-Sham et al. forced them out.

This is a big deal:
ISIS officially claims Tartus & Jableh attacks & establishes Wilayat al-Sahel ("the Coast"):

"Arab fighters are just camouflage... SDF is the #YPG"

Gen. Idris speaking to @jamiewrit

http://www.voanews.com/content/us-ge...y/3341868.html …

Jamie Dettmer

May 23, 2016 7:26 AM

GAZIANTEP, TURKEY—
A visit by a top U.S. military commander to northeast Syria to confer with Kurdish commanders and plot the next stage in the battle against the Islamic State group has provoked the anger of Syrian rebel commanders, who accuse the Obama administration of giving up on the Syrian revolution.

In interviews with VOA Monday, the Syrian rebels warned that the U.S.-led international coalition’s strategy is creating the circumstances for future sectarian violence between Arabs and Kurds by turning to the Syrian Democratic Force (SDF), dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, to liberate Arab majority towns from Islamic State.

The warning came in the wake of an unannounced 11-hour trip to Kurdish-controlled northern Syria Saturday by General Joseph Votel, the commander of U.S. Central Command. Votel told Pentagon correspondents who accompanied him that the U.S. had to work with the allies it has on the ground against IS and that the defeat of the jihadist group remains for Washington the clear military priority — not the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.

The SDF's Arab militias, several of whom have checkered histories, at best represent about 20 percent of the total SDF force, which can field about 30,000 fighters. Free Syrian Army (FSA) commanders, however, insist the number of Arab fighters in the SDF is much lower than the claimed 5,000 to 10,000.

US support of SDF incites anger

The U.S. attention being given to the SDF is infuriating FSA factions. Rebel commanders also bristle at what they say is the Western media’s uncritical reporting of the YPG, much of it focused on the Kurdish group’s embrace of secularism and the presence of young women fighters in its ranks.

“We are getting insufficient supplies form the West both in terms of quantities as well as the type of weapons we need,” says Zakaria Malahefji of the 3,000-strong Fastaqim Kama Umirt, a brigade aligned to the rebel alliance Jaish al-Mujahideen (Army of Holy Warriors).

He complained that the FSA is “just being kept on life support” while it is fighting, unlike the SDF. The course of the civil war would have been different if the West had supplied Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles and offered the kind of close air support the YPG has been getting, Malahefji argues.

US coalition causing sectarian divide

General Salim Idris, the former FSA chief of staff, told VOA he welcomed any defeats inflicted on IS, but said the U.S.-led coalition risks building up deeper sectarian problems in Syria because of its support for the YPG, the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, which wants autonomy for the Kurds in northern Syria.

As the SDF moves against villages and towns that are traditionally Arab, the seeds for conflict are being sown, he warned. He says the Arab element being crafted onto the SDF is seen as being just cosmetic by most Sunni Arabs. “The Arab fighters are just camouflage,” Idris said. “The SDF is the YPG, which collaborates with anyone — Assad, the Russians, the Americans — when it suits its purposes,” he added.

FSA rebel commanders accuse the YPG of coordinating with Assad government forces elsewhere in Syria, including in the northern Aleppo countryside, where in February Kurdish fighters overran Arab villages during a Russian-backed regime offensive. YPG officials say the land-grab was to prevent territory from falling into the hands of government forces.

The U.S. embrace of the YPG started with American airstrikes to help Kurdish defenders see off a months-long siege by IS of the border town of Kobani in 2015.

U.S. support of the YPG increased subsequently as Washington sought to shape a proxy ground force to battle IS, initially setting up a “train-and-equip” program for moderate Syrian rebels. The program failed with rebel commanders declining to join because of Washington’s insistence that the ‘train-and-equip force’ could only be used against IS, and not against President Assad.

The Votel visit is likely to rankle the Turkish government, which earlier this year reacted with fury to a 2-day visit to Kobani by U.S. diplomat Brett McGurk.

During his visit to northern Syria, Votel said his trip had hardened his belief the U.S. has adopted the right approach to developing local forces to fight the jihadist group. "I left with increased confidence in their capabilities and our ability to support them. I think that model is working and working well,” he said.

But Gen. Idris questioned what the U.S. had in mind for the administration of territory seized by the YPG from IS. “Who will control the towns and villages?” he asked. “I raised this question with U.S. officials in the past when they talked about using the YPG but never got a reply. If it is the Kurds, then there will be trouble. I really don’t think the Obama administration has thought this through. Will the Kurds give up Arab towns they capture?” he said.

This Obama WH has never even tried a single concrete strategy and if they claimed they have a strategy then they have not even attempted to carry it out...the Obama "tilt" towards Iran and the "new regional hegemon to secure the ME" has caused undo pain for the Syria civil society and produced nothing but chaos as a US FP in the ME.......

https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/...keep-isis-out/

Leaving Afghanistan to Iran Won’t Bring Stability—nor Keep ISIS Out

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 26, 2015

Quote:

The admission by the Taliban on July 30 that its leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had died was widely seen as good news for the Islamic State (ISIS) against its jihadist competitors. But while ISIS’s growing power in Afghanistan over the last year has garnered significant attention, the rise of Iran’s influence in the country has been less noted. Worse, in the light of the nuclear agreement with the U.S., Iran’s expanded influence is held by some observers to be a stability-promoting development. This is a dangerous fantasy that has already been falsified in the Fertile Crescent, where the synergetic growth of Iran and ISIS promotes chaos and radicalism—to the advantage of both and the disadvantage of the forces of moderation and order.

Several leaders of the Pakistani Taliban and the al-Qaeda–linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have defected to ISIS in the Afghanistan–Pakistan theater, but ISIS’s presence in the area remains small. This has not prevented an outrageous attempt by Tehran to sell its recent increase in support to the Taliban as an anti-ISIS measure. Tehran’s argument does not fit the timeline—which shows consistent Iranian support for anti-Western Sunni jihadist forces in Afghanistan from the beginning of the Western intervention in 2001.

While most people recognize the fallaciousness of the argument that Shiite Iran and the Sunni Taliban could not work together, there are still those who point to Iran’s nearly invading Afghanistan in 1998 after the Taliban murdered nine Iranian diplomats during a spree of anti-Shiite massacres. Moreover, it is often suggested that Iran did not mind the Taliban’s fall. Ryan Crocker—who was the senior State Department official charged with conducting secret meetings with Tehran during the invasion of Afghanistan—has even said that Iran provided intelligence to the U.S. to help overthrow the Taliban. But that is belied by what Iran has been actually doing.

Iranian financial support to the Taliban has been constant since 2001, and Iran’s military support began before the invasion, continued during the invasion, when Iran offered anti-aircraft weapons to the Taliban to “use against the United States and Coalition forces,” and has been increasing since at least early 2007. A congressional report from October 2014 noted that Iran’s “lethal assistance, including light weapons,” to the Taliban was ongoing.

Iran “formalized its alliance with the Taliban by allowing the group to open an office in Mashhad” at the beginning of 2014, the Wall Street Journal recently reported. Iran has been “training Taliban fighters within its borders” at four terrorism camps.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is the leader of Hizb-i-Islami, one of the three main jihadist groups in Afghanistan (the others being the Taliban and the network led by Sirajuddin Haqqani). Hekmatyar has been an ally of Iran since at least the mid-1990s; he even moved to Iran after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 1996. Hekmatyar was “expelled” from Iran in early 2002, but he has since received consistent support from Tehran. Documents released by WikiLeaks from 2005–06 show that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps kept Hekmatyar afloat and provided direct assistance to him for “carrying out terrorist attacks against the [Afghan] governmental authorities and [Coalition Forces],” including supplying Hizb-i-Islami with hundreds of cars to use for car-bombings.

The 2005–06 documents reveal that Iran offered bounties for the murder of NATO soldiers and members of the elected Afghan government. Later reports indicated that this policy continued into 2009, when Iran was working in tandem with al-Qaeda to spread the Taliban’s reach in southern Afghanistan. This should hardly come as a surprise: The 9/11 Commission reported that Iran began training al-Qaeda jihadists through Hezbollah in 1992 and collaborated with al-Qaeda on the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996. To this day Iran maintains an al-Qaeda network on its territory, which supplies weapons, money, and fighters to Jabhat an-Nusra in Syria.

Iran has spent considerable resources in the north and west of Afghanistan, among the Hazara Shiites and the significant Shia minority of Tajiks—populations that are mostly loyal to the Western-backed Afghan government—to try to win converts to their Khomeinist version of Shiism. Iran has also recruited Hazaras for its Shia jihad in defense of Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

But Afghanistan is an overwhelmingly Sunni country, so Iran’s “soft power” offensive cannot be strictly sectarian. Iran provided funds to former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who was quite brazen about the arrangement. Mohammed Fahim—a powerful Tajik warlord and, until his death in March 2014, Karzai’s vice president—was also on Iran’s payroll. Another well-known case is that of Mohammad Omar Daudzai, Karzai’s chief of staff, who came back from Iran literally with “a large bag of cash.”

While acknowledging much of this Iranian meddling, the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Michael Kugelman exemplified an increasingly influential school of thought when he argued last year that “the role Iran plays in Afghanistan is relatively constructive,” and that Iran and the U.S. have a common interest in stability.

This line of thought evidently has sway at the top of the U.S. government.

In September 2014, the U.S. secured an Afghan unity government by the direct intervention of John Kerry after Ashraf Ghani (now the president) triumphed over Abdullah Abdullah (now in effect the prime minister). Ghani is a technocratic and relatively uncorrupt figure with some reformist credentials. Abdullah is more Islamist-inclined and is backed by Iran. So, rather than securing an American victory over Iran, Kerry accommodated Iran. This has become a defining theme of the Obama administration’s Greater Middle East policy.

The administration is currently trying to sell its nuclear agreement with Iran in the “narrowest possible terms, as a limited transaction in which Tehran gives up the bomb in return for sanction relief,” but this is a political strategy, the New York Times reports, aimed at concealing from our allies—and from the American people themselves—the administration’s “grander ambitions,” in which the deal could “open up relations with Tehran and be part of a transformation in the Middle East.” This transformation can already be seen in practice in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; basically, it means America is underwriting an Iranian Empire. The effects so far do not inspire confidence that extending this policy to Afghanistan will produce a positive outcome.

The theory is, as Obama wrote in a secret letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, that the U.S. can partner with Iran to stabilize the region, specifically by fighting the Islamic State. This would allow the U.S. to pull back—maybe to “pivot” to Asia. Unfortunately, Iran’s and ISIS’s interests—heightened sectarian polarization, instability, and the removal of Western influence in the region—largely overlap, and they conflict with Western interests. Increasing Iran’s influence in Afghanistan produces a symbiotic increase in ISIS’s influence. In Iraq, the Obama administration’s withdrawing our personnel and allowing Iran to fill the void initiated a series of events that drew the West back in militarily, on less advantageous terms than if we had stayed and tried to contain both the Sunni jihadists and Iran. The same will happen in Afghanistan if Iran is trusted to stabilize the country after the West leaves.