That Light Footprint
"The President wants to use a light footprint now in hopes that he doesn't need a heavy footprint later."
"This approach was not terribly successful in Libya, which has fallen into chaos. I want our coalition to go all-in now, so that we do not risk having to use enormously more blood and treasure later."
"Any strategy that allows ISIL to squirt out into Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey will only make the fight more difficult. A coalition force, empowered by the Americans, could do just that."
"Counterterrorism has not stopped the growth of ISIL and the spread of terrorist groups in the region."
Rep. Buck McKeon, chairman, Arms Services Committee, Washington
"The President said this operation against ISIL will be like other CT (counterterrorism) operations over the last five or six years."
"No, it will not! This is not some small group of people running around with AK-47s. This is a full-blown army. They were going to defeat the Kurdish Peshmerga, a pretty tough fighting group, if we hadn't intervened ... They have howitzers. They have tanks. They are flush with money. They are getting fighters from all over the world. But they can and will be defeated. They must be defeated."
"One thing I can promise the American people. If we take on ISIL and lose, we will unlock the gates of hell. And hell will come our way."
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, Washington
 |
| Islamic State have released a new video showing the 44-year-old aid
worker being executed. The life of a second British hostage has also
been threatened
|
Retired general David Petraeus, whose advice to the president in 2005 was to commit to a "surge" of an additional 20,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq, and who managed to persuade Sunni tribal chiefs in Iraq that it would be in their best interests to work with U.S. troops to defeat the-then brutal Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq militias whose carnage the Syrian Sunnis found repulsive in the extreme, and whose plan worked brilliantly, now states his belief that Islamic State's strength and prowess is overplayed.
He argued that it is dangerous to overestimate the military strength of their militias. Even while the CIA has increased substantially its estimate of the group's numbers, threat and capabilities, to take into account its almost-daily expansion as it attracts new recruits constantly, lured by the excitement and adventure in joining an Islamist jihadist group for whom there are no forbidden boundaries whatever in the exercise of their entitlement to an Islamist caliphate.
Although the increase in their estimated numbers, from ten thousand to thirty thousand betrays a bit of incompetence on the part of American intelligence regarding the strength of Islamic State of Syria and the Levant, it is clear that something must be done to halt their steady progress and even steadier state of gruesome atrocities geared to shock the fearful victims into terror, and awe the onlooking wannabe jihadists into action to join their unstoppable momentum.
General Pertaeus's plan to enlist the support of Iraqi Sunnis at that time, with the Northern Awakening's agreement that they would battle the fanatical Islamists worked only so long as they operated under the command and cooperation with the U.S. forces in a common goal to defeat the Al-Qaeda jihadis. Once America turned their Sunni forces over to the control of the Shia-led government's military the die was cast.
Shunned and ignored by the Shia government and burning with resentment they finally threw their lot in with the extremists, in this way holding the Iraqi government to account for their disentitlement. And accounting in large part for the undeterred strength of the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant now rampaging through Syria and Iraq. Bringing, finally, the United States administration to the decision to become fully (almost) engaged.
To fight IS in possession of American weapons and tanks given to Iraq's Shia military. In all of this, little is commented upon of expectations and the failure of those expectations that the surrounding Arab and Muslim states would take it upon themselves through a coalition representing the Arab League's best interests to look after their own geography. Concern over Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan's fate aside, where are those countries' involvement in the hostilities?
Labels: Conflict, Iraq, Islamism, Jihad, Terrorism, United States
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, September 14, 2014
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