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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCan you say FUBAR? .... U.S."strategy" in the Middle East
(Truthdig) The United States Middle East strategy is in trouble and its policymakers know it. There was an important article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/world/isis-making-political-gains.htmlthis month by Anne Barnard and Tim Arango. It admits that the U.S. Iraq/Syria attacks arent going well and Islamic State is making political gains. It notes that Islamic State took Ramadi and Palmyra even after nearly 4,000 airstrikes by the American-led coalition and what United States officials say are the deaths of 10,000 ISIS militants. The Times authors say Washington is tinkering with tactics and weapons.
Mostly the writers talk about unnamed experts and analysts. One of these says that by attacking Islamic State in Syria while doing nothing to stop Syrian President Bashar Assad from bombing Sunni areas that have rebelled, the U.S.-led campaign was driving some Syrians into the militant groups camp. The U.S. has talked for months about training a force of Syrians, but, the Times writes, the program is small, with only 90 fighters in the first round of training. Ninety fighters!
The implication is that the experts want the air war to expand, to have the U.S. bomb Assad forces too. This is an embrace of the Saudi strategy that sees Assad/Iran as the main enemy and the slew of Sunni jihadi armies as either allies or a problem to be dealt with later.
It gets worse. Now the experts are toying with an alliance with al-Qaida. Were supposed to put the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center behind us and be ultra-crafty and use one group of fanatics against the other. ...............(more)
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_a_us_alliance_with_al-qaida_is_a_crazy_idea_20150630
bigwillq
(72,790 posts)TexasProgresive
(12,158 posts)System Normal all "F---ed" Up.
I think these strategist think that the great changes in Europe came about because solely because of the combined military might of the Allied forces, forgetting that it was the rebuilding of a demolished Europe that made even Germany our ally and friend.
The tactics of constant warfare will never change the hearts and minds of people except in a negative way. There needs to be a strategy that offers them a hopeful way out of there distress. The silent death of drone attacks on the sometimes innocent does more damage than ISIS or whoever carrying out atrocities. For every high level ISIS killed one faulty drone attack on a wedding party will create many more recruits.
We have no one on the ground (not boots) who are making us friends we just have bombs and guns with our name on them.