IS crisis in Iraq and Syria

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

So what is there to be done, Stas? We know the situation is fuckered right up, what do you think should/can be done to fix it? Or is it doom and jihadists all the way down at this point?

You probably could do something, but I think you guys are going to bankrupt yourselves while you are at it, which means nothing would be done anyway.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Well if you want a second source of terrorusts, sure, go right ahead. :D

ZOMG, EVUL BROWN TERR'ISTS!!11 Whatever are we going to do??? There are soccer moms having fits of hysteria right now over the thought of EVIL MOOSLEMS contaminating American children with UNCHRISTIAN VALUES! We can't have that now, can we?

Fuck that noise. Islamic terrorists killed far fewer Americans in 9/11 than Americans kill Americans in gun violence, and certainly far fewer Americans than are killed by the flu. We're not going to get rid of terrorists by using millions of dollars in smart ordinance to blow up the occasional Toyota Hilux with Islamic State livery. We've spent the last few years helping Islamists systematically destroy the governments of people who want nothing to do with religious extremism (i.e. the military strongmen ejected in the "Arab Spring.") We're not going to fix that with a chicken-shit bombing campaign whose sole benefactors are war profiteers. We're certainly not going to fix it with a generation of war and military occupation (that's what you're going to need to do to completely destroy the Islamic State) whose sole benefactors will be war profiteers in the military-industrial complex.

As far as I'm concerned, the Islamic State is entitled to its little Sunni caliphate amongst the wreckage of Iraq and Syria. If the people under them want out, they can rebel, and their neighbors can spend their own godsdamned treasure containing, and otherwise dealing, with them. The West has proven so completely inept at intervening in that part of the world that the only credible thing we can do is step back, let them sort it all out themselves, and accept that the bed that we've made for ourselves by cocking about in that part of the world will have a very slightly elevated chance of violent death by jihadist going forward.

[Channel72]

All this anti-inverventionist rhetoric is ignoring the glaring fact that actual U.N.-recognized governments, like the Shi'a government in Iraq, and the quasi-autonomous government of Kurdistan, were practically begging the US to come in and help out with air strikes. Obama did better than that... he got most of Europe and half the GCC involved. This is not like 2003 where nobody wanted American "help" - Maliki and Barzani have been sounding the alarm and begging Obama for help against ISIS since like 2011. The US is responding to a "distress call" so to speak - not intervening where we're not wanted. That's not to say the US is only intervening because we were asked - obviously the US wants to protect it's investment in the Iraqi oil infrastructure - and if you ask me, the response came way too late (Obama had to wait for ISIL to get really fucking gory before he felt the political waters were amenable to more military action in Iraq). But the point is, the Dawa government in Iraq is notionally our ally - they're not NATO like Turkey, but given that they're our ally and we've already invested trillions, why shouldn't we respond with military force if they request it? Why shouldn't we come to their aid, especially when ISIL's success is partially our fault? Would anyone be complaining if the US came to the aid of, say, the UK or France? But since it's the Mideast it's their problem, right?

[mr friendly guy]

Didn't groups like AQ in Iraq and ISIL come about because of the weakening of governments in those areas, some of which the West particularly the US played a big part of?

In which case dealing with ISIL could be seen as cleaning up one's mess. That being said its debatable what is the best way to do so.

[CaptHawkeye]

As far as I'm concerned, the Islamic State is entitled to its little Sunni caliphate amongst the wreckage of Iraq and Syria. If the people under them want out, they can rebel, and their neighbors can spend their own godsdamned treasure containing, and otherwise dealing, with them. The West has proven so completely inept at intervening in that part of the world that the only credible thing we can do is step back, let them sort it all out themselves, and accept that the bed that we've made for ourselves by cocking about in that part of the world will have a very slightly elevated chance of violent death by jihadist going forward.

Problem is I can't see western leaders acting on these beliefs without more incentive. American interests in oil, political hegemony, etc are very deep seated. No one in Washington wants to step up to give Americans the *real* hard truths instead of more chest pounding horseshit about America's security. Leaders only represent those they work for though, and if Americans start to change at the lowest levels it should work it's way up. We just need to get to that point instead of saying shit as retarded as "anti interventionist rhetoric".

[K. A. Pital]

All this anti-inverventionist rhetoric is ignoring the glaring fact that actual U.N.-recognized governments, like the Shi'a government in Iraq, and the quasi-autonomous government of Kurdistan, were practically begging the US to come in and help out with air strikes. ... Would anyone be complaining if the US came to the aid of, say, the UK or France? But since it's the Mideast it's their problem, right?

There is no 'anti-interventionist' rethoric: you can bomb them if you so desire. It is just that the probability of drastic improvements in the area remains low... Pretty much no matter what you do.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the choices are to do things that probably won't cause drastic improvement but might at least keep things from getting actively worse, or to just... have no policy and pray everything works out all right on its own.

[Okay, there's the third choice of screwing up constantly and actively by doing huge things that make the situation far worse, but let's not go there anymore]

[Channel72]

Blah blah... cynicism... blah.

Anyway, these "chickenshit" airstrikes are actually reasonably effective in stalling and regressing ISIL's advance.

IS has pretty much lost Kobane at this point.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29532291

Kobane: IS and Syria Kurds in fierce gun battles
Kurdish fighters are engaged in fierce gun battles with Islamic State (IS) in the Syrian border town of Kobane, as US-led coalition air strikes continue.

In its latest report, the US Central Command said six air strikes had destroyed IS weaponry around Kobane.

An official inside Kobane said the Kurdish forces were now pushing back the Islamic State fighters.

Seizing Kobane would give the IS jihadists full control of a long stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border.

This has been a primary route for foreign fighters getting into Syria, as well as allowing IS to traffic oil it has captured.

Three weeks of fighting over Kobane has cost the lives of 400 people, and forced more than 160,000 Syrians to flee across the border to Turkey.

The images are powerful enough, but the sound is sometimes overwhelming. At times today, it seemed the entire eastern side of Kobane was one vast street battle. It was relentless. Thick clouds of smoke drifted across the town as grenades exploded.

And all day, another series of massive air strikes; each towering black cloud greeted with delighted cheering by Turkish Kurds who have come to watch, with mounting dread, the assault on their Syrian cousins across the fence.

In groups large and small, they gather as close to the fence as they can get, shouting chants of defiance and solidarity. They are furious with Turkey for what they believe is Ankara's complicity in the rise of Islamic State.

"They are now outside the entrances of the city of Kobane. The shelling and bombardment was very effective and as a result of it, IS has been pushed from many positions."

But he added: "Kobane is still in danger and the air strikes should intensify in order to remove the danger."

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group also said that IS fighters had withdrawn from several areas they had earlier controlled.

The BBC's Paul Adams, close to the border, says that at one point a suicide truck bomb driven by a lone jihadi detonated in flames - the Kurds said they managed to blow it up before it reached its target.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday the US was "deeply concerned about the people of Kobane".

But he said: "Horrific as it is to watch the violence, it is important to keep in mind the US strategic objective" - which, he added, was to deprive IS of command-and-control centres and the infrastructure to carry out attacks.

"We have been striking when we can... They don't fly flags and move around in large convoys the way they did. They don't establish headquarters that are visible or identifiable."

Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby said the battle against IS was "going to be a long, difficult struggle not solved by military power alone" and that it was a reality that "other towns and villages - and perhaps Kobane - will be taken by IS".

The US Central Command listed the damage done by six coalition air strikes south and south-west of Kobane over Tuesday and Wednesday.

It said an armoured personnel carrier, four "armed vehicles" and two artillery pieces were destroyed.

There were three further air strikes on IS in other parts of Syria and five in Iraq.

At least 19 people have reportedly been killed in Kurdish protests over Turkey's role.

Kurds are angry that Turkey has prevented fighters crossing the border to fight IS in Kobane.

Last week Turkey's parliament also authorised military action against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria, but so far no action has been taken.

"We have been striking when we can... They don't fly flags and move around in large convoys the way they did. They don't establish headquarters that are visible or identifiable."

And this here is pretty much a preview of ISIL's fate.... they are fated to end up mostly like Al Qaeda, and underground criminal organization that can't engage in large-scale operations anymore, constantly harassed by drone-strikes/airstrikes. It's pretty hard to run a functioning state when you can't go outside or gather for meetings.

[K. A. Pital]

Blah blah, baseless optimism blah. Sorry, but the city is still besieged.

[Simon_Jester]

Would you rather be in a besieged city surrounded by enemies who can't stockpile supplies or mass troops in the open than in a besieged city surrounded by people who can?

[Purple]

And this here is pretty much a preview of ISIL's fate.... they are fated to end up mostly like Al Qaeda, and underground criminal organization that can't engage in large-scale operations anymore, constantly harassed by drone-strikes/airstrikes. It's pretty hard to run a functioning state when you can't go outside or gather for meetings.

I would not say so. What is described in that quote is pretty much normal behavior for any army this side of WW1 and the invention of the airplane. Or do you think that Germany or the Soviet Union paraded their HQ's and supply convoys around with flags and prominent markings. The only reason why it even gets mentioned is because people have forgotten the age of proper wars and have gotten used to glorified occupations where the other side has little or no air power which is why they tend to see such things as remarkable.

[K. A. Pital]

Would you rather be in a besieged city surrounded by enemies who can't stockpile supplies or mass troops in the open than in a besieged city surrounded by people who can?

I would rather not be in that city. I am saying that the triumph over ISIL touted by Channel72 is a bit too early to announce - if at all. Strangely, there is no mention of great successes of the bombing campaign and the imminent collapse of IS in the US and British media.

[CaptHawkeye]

It's pretty easy to tell, actually, because he hasn't gone on about spiritual conviction or racial superiority.

He didn't. He went on about the superiority of the West, something that I have been hearing a lot ever since the Ukrainian crisis.

It's almost as if Ben Affleck was reading my mind!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Blah blah, baseless optimism blah. Sorry, but the city is still besieged.

The funniest part is Turkey does not want to intervene, and the US govt screeches.

What, people were expecting a nation whose government still refuses to acknowledge genocide, pogroms against ethnic minorities to save a town belonging to one of those minorities? That has got to be a good joke.

[madd0ct0r]

Isn't Turkey currently looking after 2 million refugees right now?

[Thanas]

Blah blah, baseless optimism blah. Sorry, but the city is still besieged.

The funniest part is Turkey does not want to intervene, and the US govt screeches.

Turkey does not want to intervene because they (at least in the past) supported IS and have nothing to gain from helping the kurds. THere is nothing more Turkey wants than for IS and the Kurds to kill each other off and them not having to deal with independent Kurdistan anymore.

[Channel72]

Would you rather be in a besieged city surrounded by enemies who can't stockpile supplies or mass troops in the open than in a besieged city surrounded by people who can?

I would rather not be in that city. I am saying that the triumph over ISIL touted by Channel72 is a bit too early to announce - if at all. Strangely, there is no mention of great successes of the bombing campaign and the imminent collapse of IS in the US and British media.

For fuck's sake, stop reducing everything to Boolean black & white nonsense. I didn't say we "triumphed over ISIL", just that the airstrikes appear to be having the intended effect of inhibiting ISIL's ability to function as a normal military. Face it, the reality is that all of my posts here are simply suggesting the logical end to this conflict: ISIL will likely go the way of Al Qaeda: they have no defense against air strikes, and they are severely, ridiculously, ludicrously, comically, hampered in their ground battles with the Kurds/Syrians/Iraqis precisely because they lack anti-aircraft technology and have no airforce of their own. They don't stand a chance in hell. (Especially now that Canada is going to conduct airstrikes; seriously, when Canada gets involved you know this shit just got real)

Anyway, after the Kurds kick their ass, ISIL will likely retreat further into northeast Syria, until they lose credibility as a serious military threat, their GCC donors get cold-feet, and the constant airstrikes force them to abandon their ambitions of statehood and go underground, becoming yet another Jihadist-terrorist-criminal organization that can't operate on a large scale but can pull off small-scale terrorist attacks. They will likely exist in such a state for a decade or so, in utter irrelevancy, similar to Al Qaeda. That is the logical end to this whole affair, and anyone who says otherwise hopelessly misunderstands the political reality here, or simply gets off on cynicism.

You can argue with me if you want, but in a few months or so it will be a moot point.

[cosmicalstorm]

Turkey is also run by Islamists so they have a natural friendship with IS. It's funny how the US has managed to suck the dick of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey while ignoring the natural friends in the region. Send help to Assad and send help to the Kurds before the entire region is etnhically cleansed of non-muslims, and then ethnically cleansed again of muslims who have the wrong sectarian passport. The current Middle East is a great example of how dangerous multiculture can be.

[madd0ct0r]

I think the middle east is a great example of how dangerous idiots with guns and ideology can be. I'm not sure you can blame multi-culturalisim for that.

Thanas - isn't turkey currently buying oil off the Kurds?

[General Brock]

Your logic holes are rather glaring. A technical's machine gun is probably only good for about a minute of firing before the entire barrel has to be replaced and who knows what else.

Really? We've had machine guns around since 1912 that only needed one barrel every hour - ten Vickers guns fired for twelve hours straight only needed a hundred barrels between them.

The Vickers you seem to be referring to is the .303 model used from 1912-1968; it used a water-cooled barrel. They don't make'em like they used to.

Today's air-cooled standard machine gun designs don't have nearly the same endurance. Nor has it ever been reported of a Khyber Pass copy that sophisticated ever being fielded.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Turkey is also run by Islamists so they have a natural friendship with IS. It's funny how the US has managed to suck the dick of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey while ignoring the natural friends in the region. Send help to Assad and send help to the Kurds before the entire region is etnhically cleansed of non-muslims, and then ethnically cleansed again of muslims who have the wrong sectarian passport. The current Middle East is a great example of how dangerous multiculture can be.

There's something terribly wrong and right at the same time about what you just said...

[General Brock]

...Damn. My computer ate a large post to Brock.

Been having problems here myself.

OK, short form:

Brock, this claim of yours that ISIL is specifically dependent on stealing specifically American aid to other rebels in Syria, and can be defeated by removing that aid, is fucking stupid. You have committed errors of basic arithmetic to support it, along with some really bad assumptions.

How is armed intervention not an error of outrageous proportions? You never explained this. All you've done is blow smoke.

If America withdraws aid to Syrian rebels, then its a decision with far-reaching effects even on its Gulf allies. No aid to Syrian rebels to give to ISIS, also means no aid to its Middle Eastern allies to give to the rebels/daeshi. So if Qatar wants to give the best equipment from its armories away, then don't look for resupply from the U.S..

Saudi Arabia came up with 3 billion dollars in Croation military surplus, smuggled across from Jordan; that's not very good equipment. It may also signal that despite the vast stockpiles of Syrian and Saddam-era arms once on the ground, arms in general are running a little tight. It also highlights what's actually available if America withdraws.

Stopping American aid to the Syrian rebels is a vital first step towards defeating ISIS and may on its own merits be enough to destroy the daeshi. Whereas, your armed intervention notions, oblivious to objective and discernible reality and history, strengthens and emboldens not only ISIS, but any dissing of stated Western concerns in favour of local ones.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's desire that ISIS smash Syrian Kurdistan, for example. Massed Turkish troops on the border by Ayn al Arab/Kobani may prevent an unlikely hostile ISIS intrusion, but for sure it prevented timely Kurdish reinforcments. This may have sabotaged a Kurdish attempt to flank ISIS/DAESH. While more compliant media outlets were claiming airstrikes were working, the daishi were actually repositioning to repulse a Kurdish attack from the east.

Erdogan also called for ground troops to attack ISIS; translation: "You first, Tukey's 700 000 man army will be right behind you." Even as he invites the Kurds to join the so-called Free Syrian Army.

Its critical for ISIS to take Kobani to prove they can conquer under interventionist pressure. Its critical for the Kurds to have their Kurdistan moral victory; a material victory would be bonus points, and ISIS has tried to take Ayn al Arab before and failed.

So, its likely the end of any rapprochement between Turkey and Kurds everywhere, which is fine for Erdogan, but also fine for Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters map of a new Middle East and Kurdish nationalists.

You seem to be engaged in pointless tail chasing for solutions; bomb ISIS; didn't work? Well bomb them harder, blame O-Bam-Aaa, and gosh darn it why not American boots on the ground. Never mind why it all happens in the first place.

I can support all this, but I refuse to burn another hour of my life trying; you're not worth it to me because of how long it's taken you to distinguish fact from fiction up to this point.

Real United States policy on the ground is fronted and popularly founded upon fictions far more ignorant than anything I could post, the first fiction being we need to go in after ISIS when pulling the plug on their support isn't happening first. So why isn't pulling that support happening? There is no 'Free Syrian Army', no genuine moderate rebel force, to support.

Get it through your head; there is no moderate Syrian opposition. All one could say is that not every Islamic extremist fights under the ISIS banner, and the notion that they all religiously stick to one label anyway is spurious.

The only moderate Islam left in the area are with Bashir Assad's multi-tribal, multi-sectarian secularist enclave, governed with far less brutality than ISIS. When that falls, its Christians to the sea and Allawites to the wall, the modernizing force of Baathism a historical footnote in more conscientious history books.

If you possess any real ability to distinguish fact from fiction, you will concede the point. It was already exploded before your most recent post. You just refused to notice.

Reality suggests armed intervention works just as poorly now as it did before. Worse even.

Then and only then, we could hope to have an intelligent discussion about the many other things you speak of. Because as long as you're prepared to support otherwise sane arguments with random pieces of fiction, and tenaciously defend those fictions, you are not ready to participate in adult conversations on a subject like this. You may be able to mirror or even create adult-level arguments, but you are not an adult-level participant...

Patronizing condescension will get you nowhere, because nowhere in your vaunted 'rational' and 'logical' approach is a way to deal with the moral and materiale logistical support ISIS receives. Bomb them... and then what? Bomb them some more... and then what?

Newspaper writing advocates delivering even high-level information at a grade six or so level of reading comprehension. So it should be clear even to a sixth grader reading the news, warmongers don't have an argument and are simply advocating a pointless war of attrition resting on no firmer grounds than misled public desire to 'do something' about daeshi predations.

It was Western armed interventions that caused all the trouble in the first place.

Your reason and logic dismisses if not outright omits the war experience of Afghanistan and Iraq, the history of American relations with the mujahadeen that became Al Qaida, the history of the United States petrodollar, that Continuity of Government protocols may still be in effect trumping the electoral process, everything relevant to genuinely understanding why we are intervening in Syria and why we should not.

You have not met my positions with sound and informed rebuttals overall, but clever appeals to empty intellectual conceits.

[General Brock]

...You're still on that?

Can you provide a count of the value of the stolen American weapons you keep harping on? Because the casual "oh, yeah, the US is a primary supporter of ISIL thing" is really sticking in my craw. You've asserted bizarre and delusional things on this point and have never shown even one sign of willingness to either prove your assertions or concede them.

I have been explaining them. You seem to just ignore the explanations.

And as I said before, your refusal to distinguish between fact, fiction, and wishful thinking in your claims about reality make your conclusions suspicious. Even when you generously salt them with commonplace truisms like "wars are won with logistics."

Reality presents the truism that ignorant warmongering doesn't work too good no matter how distorted the facts, wild the fictions, and wishful the thinking.

Wars that take out bad guy warmongerers are celebrated as just and noble wars worth fighting even when lost. Rare as they are in untainted form in the honest light of history. The Indian wars were once widely celebrated as a just war against violent savages who got what they deserved. Until it became apparent that the Aboriginals were provoked and many had worthy cultural beliefs and customs.

Is Assad really the villain he's supposed to be? Certainly, the Shia militias are as bad as DAESH - but that's not mentioned nearly as often as their military incompetence.


Writes George Monbiot, from the above linked article:

Why stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world?
Humanitarian arguments, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East

George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday 30 September 2014 19.26 BST


Let’s bomb the Muslim world – all of it – to save the lives of its people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at Islamic State (Isis), when the Syrian government has murdered and tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative. What’s changed?

How about blasting the Shia militias in Iraq? One of them selected 40 people from the streets of Baghdad in June and murdered them for being Sunnis. Another massacred 68 people at a mosque in August. They now talk openly of “cleansing” and “erasure” once Isis has been defeated. As a senior Shia politician warns, “we are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida”.

What humanitarian principle instructs you to stop there? In Gaza this year, 2,100 Palestinians were massacred: including people taking shelter in schools and hospitals. Surely these atrocities demand an air war against Israel? And what’s the moral basis for refusing to liquidate Iran? Mohsen Amir-Aslani was hanged there last week for making “innovations in the religion” (suggesting that the story of Jonah in the Qur’an was symbolic rather than literal). Surely that should inspire humanitarian action from above? Pakistan is crying out for friendly bombs: an elderly British man, Mohammed Asghar, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, is, like other blasphemers, awaiting execution there after claiming to be a holy prophet. One of his prison guards has already shot him in the back.

Is there not an urgent duty to blow up Saudi Arabia? It has beheaded 59 people so far this year, for offences that include adultery, sorcery and witchcraft. It has long presented a far greater threat to the west than Isis now poses. In 2009 Hillary Clinton warned in a secret memo that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban … and other terrorist groups”. In July, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until recently the head of Saudi intelligence, told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.” Saudi support for extreme Sunni militias in Syria during Bandar’s tenure is widely blamed for the rapid rise of Isis. Why take out the subsidiary and spare the headquarters?

The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East and west Asia. By this means you could end all human suffering, liberating the people of these regions from the vale of tears in which they live.

Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely Muslim countries, in each case citing a moral imperative. The result, as you can see in Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Yemen, Somalia and Syria, has been the eradication of jihadi groups, of conflict, chaos, murder, oppression and torture. Evil has been driven from the face of the Earth by the destroying angels of the west.

Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises and threatens. As Obama says, it is a “network of death”. But it’s one of many networks of death. Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what Isis wants.

Already Obama’s bombings have brought Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, a rival militia affiliated to al-Qaida, together. More than 6,000 fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began. They dangled the heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes. And our governments were stupid enough to take it.

And if the bombing succeeds? If – and it’s a big if – it manages to tilt the balance against Isis, what then? Then we’ll start hearing once more about Shia death squads and the moral imperative to destroy them too – and any civilians who happen to get in the way. The targets change; the policy doesn’t. Never mind the question, the answer is bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our governments wage perpetual war.

While the bombs fall, our states befriend and defend other networks of death. The US government still refuses – despite Obama’s promise – to release the 28 redacted pages from the joint congressional inquiry into 9/11, which document Saudi Arabian complicity in the US attack. In the UK, in 2004 the Serious Fraud Office began investigating allegations of massive bribes paid by the British weapons company BAE to Saudi ministers and middlemen. Just as crucial evidence was about to be released, Tony Blair intervened to stop the investigation. The biggest alleged beneficiary was Prince Bandar. The SFO was investigating a claim that, with the approval of the British government, he received £1bn in secret payments from BAE.

And still it is said to go on. Last week’s Private Eye, drawing on a dossier of recordings and emails, alleges that a British company has paid £300m in bribes to facilitate weapons sales to the Saudi national guard. When a whistleblower in the company reported these payments to the British Ministry of Defence, instead of taking action it alerted his bosses. He had to flee the country to avoid being thrown into a Saudi jail.

There are no good solutions that military intervention by the UK or the US can engineer. There are political solutions in which our governments could play a minor role: supporting the development of effective states that don’t rely on murder and militias, building civic institutions that don’t depend on terror, helping to create safe passage and aid for people at risk. Oh, and ceasing to protect, sponsor and arm selected networks of death. Whenever our armed forces have bombed or invaded Muslim nations, they have made life worse for those who live there. The regions in which our governments have intervened most are those that suffer most from terrorism and war. That is neither coincidental nor surprising.

Yet our politicians affect to learn nothing. Insisting that more killing will magically resolve deep-rooted conflicts, they scatter bombs like fairy dust.

A genuine humanitarian argument would recognize war is a fail. For that matter, a genuine war argument (as opposed to warmongering) would recognize this as a fail-in-waiting already failing and abort.

...One, that is not an official US contribution to ISIL, it is a contribution to their hated enemies. Said enemies are not just a money-laundering front for ISIL. You have never shown any sign that you understand this.

Um, I explained it was easier to go off the U.S. amount than investigate and enumerate each Syrian rebel/DAESH contributer. America is in this case, truly the indispensable nation.

The US is not providing high-tech weapons or intel to ISIL, even if they are (you allege) laundering aid through other rebel groups who are so weak that they can't stop ALL the aid which goes to them from being effortlessly stolen by ISIL and its :ten thousand reliable fighters."

That didn't make any sense at all. If one knowingly gives firearms to a gang, and some members of that gang used them to rob banks on a regular basis, and one knows this, but keeps giving them arms, one would be charged with being a straw buyer if not an accomplice, depending on the skills of the defense attorney vs the prosecutor.

...At this point you're starting to get incoherent, both about what 'petrodollars' are and about the role they play in conflicts like this. As opposed to other forms of currency, and about the precise relationship between reserve currency dollars and oil.

Connection or coincidence; you decide.

The implementation of the petrodollar was a diplomatic solution to a crisis that today would mean an invasion of Saudi Arabia, since diplomacy is no longer an option.

Saudi Arabia in 1973 agreed to only sell oil in American dollars, buy American bonds with its profits, and require that all nations purchase American dollars to buy oil, a deal eventually applying to all OPEC. This meant that the American dollar became the unofficial world currency, as nations began to make non-oil major transactions in American dollars. The Dollar was no longer tied to the production of goods and services in the United States alone.

The world economy benefited greatly from this and so did the U.S. Its in the links I provided. The United States did not abuse its influence noticeably until after the Cold War, and after it did, smaller nations hit back the only way they could.

Saddam in 2001 was one of the first to try and break with this system, with Iraq devastated by American-led sanctions, switching to Euros rather than American dollars to sell Iraqi oil. Syria soon followed in 2006, and Iran.

In 2009, the Pentagon officially announced financial war games in simulation, and also in 2009, the Eurozone Crisis began. European sanctions against Iran were already in place in 2006 so possibly contributed to the Eurozone Crisis. The war games connection, well, its quite the coincidence, isn't it.

How much knowledge of sophisticated financial warfare the United States government had before 2009 is not known. However, Wikileaks discovered that the U.S. sought to retaliate against France for refusing Monsanto GMOs in 2007 with a military-style trade war.

For now, Russia and China inch for the petrodollar's back door, hoping to preserve what wealth they can; they won't willingly spark a run on the U.S. dollar and seem to be hedging their bets.

This is far better documented by more capable people. The point is, bullying solutions seem to create more problems than they resolve, but honest diplomatic resolutions succeed sometimes beyond expectations. The petrodollar wars are a well-researched phenomenon and if you expect me to prove all this with extensive internal government documentations, the answer is no, I'm not as good as a real investigative journalist.

Well, to cut off their real source of supply, as opposed to the fictional one, you'd have to stop the Qatari and Saudi oil baron-types from funding them. Which is essentially the same problem we've had ever since oil was first found in Arabia shortly after World War One: the rulers of the peninsula are a bunch of monarchist religious fundamentalists. And there is no indigenous political movement capable of replacing them in a society that was mostly bedouin and sleepy farm villages only a century ago.

Finally, a real rebuttal. Sort of. Seems to me Saddam's Iraq and Assad's Syria, secular republics albeit with presidents for life, would have been far more natural allies given that they are Baathist modernists. To bad they had to be destroyed for some reason and the Gulf monarchies supported without question.

While it would be difficult to stop the Gulf monarchies from doing what they want, in this case cracking the diplomatic whip and reminding them who the superpower is might be a good idea; after all, the United States seriously contemplated trade war with France over GMOs and France probably knows how to hit back just as effectively. The Gulf monarchies can't torpedo the petrodollar without torpedoing themselves; its their only trick.

America has committed itself to fracking for oil. Its wasteful and destructive, but that's another debate. Suffice it to say, if America committed itself to peaceful redevelopment into an inevitable post-petrolium economy, even as it developed a comfortable level of petrolium self-sufficiency in the interim, America could guarantee its hegemony. What's being squandered right now in pointless wars to protect those who profit from the petrolium-centred monopolies, is everything the United States needs to stay ahead in the world.

The transition from a gold-backed dollar to an oil-backed dollar was a clever move, but it was never going to last forever. However, there is a natural need for a world reserve currency. Most nations choose to use the American dollar freely for this purpose; its stable and no-one is going to obliterate the U.S. the way Libya was obliterated for Gadaffi's pan-African gold dinar. Fair and benevolent hegemony may not flatter and entertain psychopathy as much as warmongering but it works far better.

Had people understood what was truly at stake in Libya, the monopolists in favour of keeping their sweet and brutal deals in the continent they darkened might have been left to hang while Libya's new currency opened up the African trade to more competent entrepreneurs. Perhaps an overoptimistic assessment of Gadaffi's capabilities, but he did OK for Libya considering what violent and backwards rivals he had to work with or around.

The world is not a better place for what the United States government did to Syria and Iraq, nor are Americans and other Westerners better off catering to the psychopaths among them or those in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Thus, they are at once promoters of vicious, primitive ideologies... and vastly wealthy on the modern scale, because of the happy accident that gave them a resource the modern world needs.

So getting rid of that supply network for ISIL is... hard. I personally would be willing to try it, but I would probably then have to live through a scaled up reenactment of the '70s oil embargoes.

The United States has surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia as a leading world oil producer.

I don't know enough about Islamic cultures to condemn them all for savagery as the Aboriginals were once condemned. I do know enough about history to know, we are the savages now and perhaps always were, the worse for knowing better and denying it. The prosocial amongst us, those gone before and those of the present day, and everything they accomplished to make this world a better place, have become merely the mask of the psychopaths that rule us. A mask that's become in many ways redundant, cracked and faded.

From a purely rational perspective, the United States is not acting in its own best interests by engaging in endless wars from either a moral or material point of view. This armed intervention is as ill-defined as the last and likely as ill-fated. All that's needed to complete the farce is for someone to claim DAESH has found Saddams WMDs.

[ArmorPierce]

If Syria started to use chemical weapons against ISIL will we condemn the attacks?

[General Brock]

BTW, it sucks that Brock is so incoherent and insane, because underlying his wild conspiracy theories are some valid concerns about the idea of "forever war" and the military-industrial complex. It's a cliche at this point, I suppose, but yeah - it definitely is valid to express some serious concern for the fact that an economic motivation exists for the US to continuously engage in military operations overseas. With companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin constantly lobbying for contracts, it's pretty unsettling that the US seems to be continuously involved in one military operation or another in the Middle East.

Pretty unsettling? Western civilization has been torpedoed by a bunch of bureaucratic goons no better than the Jihadis and you condescend to acknowledge this as a serious concern, well gee thanks for making sobriety so appealing.

But the problem is that Brock-type conspiracy theorists go way too far... they assume that since the motivation exists, then any military action taken by the US is part of the same organized scam, regardless of any actual specific parameters of the situation. Of course, the world is way more complex than that. Yes, there is a military industrial complex that has economic incentives to perpetuate war - and the war on terror is open-ended enough to provide a great reason to keep on manufacturing military equipment. But, at the same time - there's also fucking real terrorists motivated by a Jihadist mentality who want to indiscriminately kill anyone with opposing ideologies and create strict Sharia-law states. The US military industrial complex doesn't need to fucking invent enemies - at most it perhaps needs to exaggerate their capabilities in order to persuade politicians to grant them contracts.

Exaggerating their capabilities by helping them kill better for real was not the solution most reasonable observers would have expected.

It turns out the world is complicated - and in that sense military-industrial-complex/COG conspiracy theorists are just as intellectually bankrupt as the Jihadists in that they simplify everything down to black and white parameters.

If black and white parameters are too dumbed down, how does monochrome/monoshade warmongering supposed to be the epitome of intelligent thought?

A solution to the Continuity of Government question was developed by retired Canadian diplomat and Berkeley, Cal. Professor Peter Dale Scott.

How in the hell are you his intellectual equal? What are your credentials for intellectual rigour, experience and depth of thought? Dismissing other anonymous SDN forumers as you would is one thing; dismissing the work of genuine intellectuals and styling yourself above them is patently, stupendously, ridiculously pretentious.