From the Article:
But ISIL has at best some 30,000 fighters mostly equipped with small arms including rifles and a few artillery pieces, although it has been able to add to this arsenal thanks to the vehicles and armaments seized from fleeing U.S. equipped Iraqi forces. They are opposed by a U.S.-equipped and trained Iraqi active frontline military estimated at 271,500 and equipped with main battle tanks, heavy artillery, and armored personnel carriers. Moreover, U.S., Russian, and Iranian fighter aircraft conducting supportive strikes are supporting these Iraqi forces.
If ever there was a proper time to ask WTF, this is it. What else can we do other than send our ground forces to shore up the Iraqi gov't and start this thing all over again? With all Obama's dithering and admission that "we have no strategy", I think that is the question that he is asking out loud.
In no way, am I supporting Obama's decisions or giving him a free pass. He is paid to deal with these issues as he is paid to deal with Ebola or congressional Republicans. However, I understand his frustration, which manifested itself in Biden's explosion of derision for our "allies" in the region.
I think his decision not to arm the "moderate" Syrian opposition was informed by that frustration born of the experience of the past 30+ years. We armed the Afghan Mujaheddin via the Pakistani ISI 35 years ago and what are we left with? Bin Laden practically hosted by the Paks and a trained, Islamic lumpenproletariat making war from Turkey to Xinjiang. Everywhere one turns, "allies" are compromising with, paying off or outright supporting them. When it's go time, our allies scatter like quail, unless the fire is about to burn them. Even then they often run or make a deal. The Turks buy oil from ISIS, pay ransoms and close off their territory to refueling jets striking ISIS. The closest thing we have to a real ally in the region is the Kurds, with whom we cannot deal without checking first with the Turks and our friends in Baghdad.
Look at our own experiences in Iraq. Remember Fallujah? I won't recount all the history. After our tragic losses, we supported and armed the Sunni awakening to fight the foreign jihadists. That is, we paid off the tribal elders in Anbar province to fight AQ in Iraq instead of us. The hardest of the hard core remnants of AQ in Iraq created ISIS, who are now allied with those same Sunni tribes and sitting at the gates of Baghdad. The list goes on and on. Remember Ahmed Chalabi? Remember his source, "Curveball"? He literally walked into Baghdad with our troops in 2003 with the blessings of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, only to later pass US codes to the Iranians.
The common thread is that none of these "allies" wants us there other than for specific purposes which suit their own commercial, sectarian or political goals, or more important, undermine their enemies. They have zero buy in to modernity.
The constant refrain is that we left a vacuum in Iraq, we are about to leave one in Afghanistan and we need to prevent one in Syria. Filling a vacuum is not a strategy. The fact is these are tempests in the larger sucking vortex that extends from Peshawar to the Mediterranean. Maybe, as the article unwittingly suggests, the strategy is endless war and hope for the best. There is no one cheering louder for our "leadership" in that war than the Chinese, Russians and the Iranians. No one knows better than they the perils of empires overextending themselves.
Also from the article:
Finally, despite Obama’s sincere desire to divest the country from expensive and “dumb” wars in the Middle East, his decision to launch another preventive war in this region already racked by civil war and rife with sectarian tensions virtually ensures a continuation of America’s forever war. To paraphrase Gen. David Petraeus, can anyone tell us how this ends?