foxdemon wrote:Here’s an article from August that presents a good case that a ISIS is a lot stronger than we thought.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... y-in-syria
The article is interesting, but it doesn't address a number of things that I think makes the thesis come up short. Dump the mainstream psycho-babble and consider Trump's negotiator psychology. If ISIS is strong and Trump is pulling out, that would be tantamount to retreat. That strikes me as antithetical to Trump's psychology--except for when he files bankruptcy in business, in which he fucks someone else over, not himself. Many of my remarks in this thread re-iterate what I've been saying the last few years--namely, that the establishment has lost credibility. They say we've destroyed ISIS. "Okay, so we can bring troops home and secure our own borders now." "Not so fast Mr. President...", and the bullshit starts flowing. Trump calls them on it.
The New Yorker wrote:ISIS may already have numbers sufficient to rebuild. Two stunning reports this month—by the United Nations and Trump’s own Defense Department—both contradict earlier U.S. claims that most isis fighters had been eliminated. The Sunni jihadi movement still has between twenty thousand and thirty thousand members on the loose in Iraq and Syria, including “thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters,” the U.N. said, despite the fall of its nominal capital, Raqqa, last October. The Pentagon report is more alarming: isis has fourteen thousand fighters—not just members—in Syria, with up to seventeen thousand in Iraq.
Earlier US claims? From where? Basically, the same CIA/DOD folks that are now claiming otherwise. See, when the permanent bureaucracy decides it wants to oust the US president, after awhile the president stops trusting the permanent bureaucracy. Either they were lying to him if they claimed they had defeated ISIS, or they are lying to him now. Which is it?
The New Yorker wrote:So the Trump Administration has reversed course; it is now keeping U.S. troops in Syria indefinitely. “We’re remaining in Syria,” Brett McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter isis, told reporters on August 17th. “The focus is the enduring defeat of isis. We still have not launched the final phase to defeat the physical caliphate. That is actually being prepared now, and that will come at a time of our choosing, but it is coming.”
See? There is plenty of bullshit coming from the establishment itself, and Trump appears to be calling them on it. Was this article intended to sell Trump on his administration reversing course? Did the establishment think they had reversed Trump's position?
The New Yorker wrote:The U.S. intelligence community is deeply divided, however, over the scope of the isis threat—and even the numbers put out in the Pentagon report.
Perhaps, but there is another issue: ISIS arose, because Obama had the temerity to try to use Al Qaeda affiliates to funnel untraceable weapons to the Free Syrian Army in his own flavor of "regime change" in Syria after his "regime change" in Libya. Obviously, this decision was one of his administration's cocaine-induced manias where it was an epicly stupid idea, but the euphoric effects of the drug convinced them all that it was a genius plan. It not only led to ambassador Stevens getting killed in Libya, but it created the largest humanitarian crisis since WWII emanating from Syria. Once, Trump ended these bizarre lines of aid and attacked ISIS directly, they either retreated or crumbled--and so did Obama's far weirder "regime change" rationale than even George Bush's strained rationales for pre-emptive war.
The New Yorker wrote:“The Iraqi military and the P.M.F. are the daytime armies,” Michael Knights, an expert on extremism who spent six years in Iraq and is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. “They can’t go out at night and do ambushes. They don’t have the overhead surveillance. They can’t do what we do.” As a result, isis has free rein in areas north of Baghdad, including the rural outskirts of Kirkuk, Diyala Province, and in western Anbar Province.
That sounds like the area. A friend from Afghanistan I haven't spoke to in ages--I assume he works for the government now--used to say, "the government comes by day; the Taliban comes by night." Making sure that ISIS doesn't control oil resources is strategic. The rest of it seems like we can play more of a waiting game. However, the Iraqi army has to fight. They have the same problem I do with America now. What exactly are they fighting for? Gay marriage? The rights of illegal aliens to break the law? Gynecology coverage for men? What exactly is Iraq? What does it stand for? The Iraqi army provides a paycheck and steady meals. Would you want to die for the abstraction that is Iraq though?
The New Yorker wrote:The Iraqi government and General Mattis can tell you Iraq is liberated, but if isis can walk into your village and kill the most important person, have you really liberated it?” Knights added that “the qualitative attack is a more important indicator of isis’s strength than numbers of fighters. You can kill one man with one bullet, but you’ve intimidated two thousand. That’s how isis did it last time. In 2014, the Iraqi Security Forces failed to protect villages. So people were forced to either join isis or get out of their way.”
To my way of thinking, this isn't really that complicated a problem. The West simply has to give up on the vanity of the Geneva conventions and declare ISIS members outlaws such that any person can kill a member of ISIS for any reason or no reason at all and not suffer any recourse from the law. Hell, you would have hunters from all over the world pouring in just like ISIS fighters from all over the world just so they could mount some ISIS fighter's head over their fireplace, point to it, look at their friends and say, "What a trophy!" Hell, if they just coordinated ISIS killing tours, they could turn the war into a profitable business. They just haven't gotten to the point of wanting to meet savagery with savagery.
The New Yorker wrote:The Trump Administration also does not want to withdraw U.S. troops, Mattis said, until a peace process is under way to end the war in Syria and map the country’s political future.
I'm guessing that's been a deal breaker too. They are still pushing the Clinton-Bush doctrine of "regime change." By what right do we have authority to change the government of Syria? We don't have a UN resolution for that. This is what the establishment wanted, not Trump. They hoped he would acquiesce, and he hasn't.
foxdemon wrote:As @blackjack21 points out, Pompeo and Bolton haven’t started any wars yet. For these guys, that is unusual. So what are they up to?
Here’s my guess: by pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan, the way is open for an ISIS and Taliban come back. This will be a big problem for Russia, Iran and China.
That's an excellent question. A more trenchant question is "What is Trump up to?"
When Iraq handed oil concession to China and anyone but the United States, it became clear to me that the Iraq War would not be profitable. Obama does get the blame for not negotiating a SOFA agreement and pulling out troops and not maintaining daily contact with al-Maliki's government. However, Iraq basically slit its own throat in the process, too. So we cannot lay all of the blame on Obama alone. Providing stability in the region--other than keeping oil resources out of ISIS hands--isn't really in the US's strategic best interest in my opinion unless the US is paid to do it. Obviously, private oil companies would disagree with me.
foxdemon wrote:ISIS in Syria and Iraq cuts Iran off from Hezbolla, and thus protects Israel. It also gets Russia bogged down. And it gives Saudi Arabia more influence. Abandoning the Kurds to their fate means the US can patch up relations with Turkey.
That's true too. It also means something else. Check out this cat's theory:
The Hi-Tech Traditionalist: Is America’s Military Loyal To Its Commander In Chief?In America, the drive for constitutional restoration began with the Tea Party movement and culminated with the unlikely election of President Trump a decade or so later. Things move a bit faster in our hyper-connected age. Trump, a pragmatist used to cutting deals with both types of mafia: the one with .gov email addresses and the one with baseball bats in the trunk, was an unlikely revolutionary. His first instinct was to cut a deal with the establishment.
This guy is speaking my language. Remember early on when I said Trump should have fired any political appointee that was a holdover from Obama? Flynn is getting hung by Sally Yates and Bob Mueller as a result of playing it nice. Hillary Clinton is dead to rights, but they won't touch her. It's clear that there is more going on behind the scenes, but the establishment fails to understand that it has lost credibility at home and abroad. They seem truly deluded, still convinced of their own superiority, and still dumbfounded that they were beaten by a guy with no prior experience holding political office.
On the transformative issue of immigration, however, the deal fell apart. The establishment, all three parts of it, Democrats, Republicans, and the Civil Service was simply unwilling to give an inch; their commitment to open border migration, something entirely different from legally controlled immigration, [b]proved to be absolute.
Indeed, and it is not something the American people want. So the government (establishment) is hostile to the will of the people. This is also a problem in Europe. While Trump dethroned the establishment candidates in the US, the establishment is still hanging on for dear life in the UK, France and Germany. Even Spain's VOX party is growing like wildfire.
Trump acquiesced to losing the House with nary a fight, he played nice with the ridiculous Mueller “investigation”, hoping that the Democrats, having taken over the House, having restored some of the “face” they had lost in 2016, having regained a seat at the table, would move an inch, a millimeter, towards the expressed wishes of sixty-two million American voters. It didn’t happen. We may never know if Trump had ever thought that this policy of his had a chance, but he sure as heck gave it a try. It failed. So now it is time for Plan B: a war of annihilation. Trump’s only remaining choice is to annihilate the American Establishment
Trump has to gear up for re-election now. He succeeded mightily in regulatory reform, tax reform (which has cost him some support from the upper middle class), and in judicial appointments. Indeed, his presidency has been a lodestone for preserving conservatism. However, other than a repeal of the ObamaCare mandate, he failed to deliver on a full repeal of ObamaCare because of establishment Republicans. He is now exposing them on securing the border, too--and he should. Trump cannot be about what's good for the Republican party now. He has to be about what is good for Trump in 2020.
Trump’s only remaining choice is to annihilate the American Establishment and in order to do so he needs what all warlords do: an army. But does he have one? That is the big unanswered question of the day. I believe there can be little doubt that the firing of John Kelly and James Mattis, both Marine Corps generals, was done after they gave a negative answer to a simple question Trump had asked them: “are you willing to execute my order to deploy the full might of the American military, using all necessary means, to secure the Mexican border against all intruders?” Kelly’s and Mattis’s refusal to carry out this order on the grounds of its purported illegality, left them no choice but to resign and left Trump with no choice but to fire them. Trump’s recall of the American military from the Middle East is the action of a Commander In Chief who believes his country to be under attack on the homeland itself and thus in no position to project its military might abroad in support of foreign policy or humanitarian objectives.
The establishment's values are not the values of the American people. That is becoming clearer and clearer. It's also the same phenomenon in the UK, France and Germany as they continue to thwart the will of their populations. Meanwhile, populism is running rampant in Europe.
Trump will test to the fullest the unlimited powers given him by the Constitution to command the American military forces as their Commander In Chief. To do so, he will dismiss from service any officer, any cabinet member, any staffer who opposes his order to secure the Mexican border. Will he find any who are willing to carry out his orders, even in defiance of both Congress and the Judiciary, the two branches of government that for many decades had been unconstitutionally usurping the powers of the Executive?
This is a great question. At any rate, he is scuttling the plans of the establishment in the Middle East and has now seen the light that there is no negotiating with these people. They have read his book. They are calling him out, and he's doing the same.
One things is clear, however: if a properly elected Commander In Chief cannot order his military to secure the country’s borders against invasion, America as an independent political entity in which the people are sovereign via a system of carefully crafted checks and balances in a constitutionally established federal structure of governance is finished.
Right. And if that is the case, nobody owes it allegiance anymore.
What do you think? Is Trump going to call the bluff of Congress and the courts and use his plenary and exclusive Article II powers to secure the border?
Does the establishment think that inverting the yield curve will throw the economy into recession and get voters to reject Trump? Are they risking greater political instability in Europe with Merkel, May and Macron assuming political walking-dead zombie status? We haven't seen so many establishment figures on the ropes all at once in awhile. Like maybe 1963 when Adenaur and Macmillan went down, and Kennedy got shot in the head; Qassem's regime in Iraq collapsed.
foxdemon wrote:A Taliban/ISIS comeback in Afghanistan creates more problems for Iran and Russia. It will lead to a deterioration of security in Central Asia, right along China’s overland trade routes.
That's what killed the route begun by the likes of Marco Polo and forced trade to sea--leading eventually to the discovery of America.
foxdemon wrote:Does anyone think I am right in my guess of what the neocons are up to?
I think it is quite possible. I argued back in the early 2000s that if an anti-American alliance arose that we could not promote peace and stability. We would have to let factions go back to war again. At any rate, it's nice to have a conversation that isn't just gutter sniping at Trump.
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:And even more important for Americans perhaps, what are the vital US interests that necessitate the intervention? The main problem to my mind is that whatever is put forward is usually vague and nebulous as well as denying or skirting some truths that might be unpalatable.
I think that is where they find themselves. They cannot tell the truth at the very time when nobody trusts them to do anything but lie.
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:The right is seeing the start of a resurgence of non-interventionism, and those who think this is a bad idea need to put together an argument that doesn't predominantly rely on platitudes.
I think they are also seeing that integrating with the third world is not in the first world's best interest. It would be better to have a French Revolution of sorts and deal harshly with the establishment.
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:Germans are not allowed to do much either. German troops are by and large competent, but their RoE are so restrictive they can become useless fast, and that was often the case even in a much less hostile theater like Bosnia.
Right, and it makes the alliance look quite ridiculous at times.
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