Iraq in Crisis- Merged Superthread

[tomahawk6]

Boycotts dont work.You go after their bank accounts and hit them when they are in the open.Somehow we have to coordinate with Assad to strike them inside Syria.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Boycotts dont work.You go after their bank accounts and hit them when they are in the open.Somehow we have to coordinate with Assad to strike them inside Syria.

Actually boycotts can, have and still do work IF they are either very, very well targeted or comprehensive, but, I'm really concerned with the Hobson's choice which President Obama seems to have created for himself. Here we have the delightful prospect of large numbers of Arabs we dislike killing large numbers of other Arabs we don't like ... what's not to like? If ISIS wins we have a stronger, sadistic, implacable enemy, if Assad wins we have a stronger, murderous, equally implacable enemy. I would rather leave one to weaken the other, accepting that there is NO "good" or even "not so bad" outcome.

 

[a_majoor]

We seem determined to do things the hard way.

For those people who are keen on a 7th century lifestyle, an application of EMP devices should be an appropriate response. Why allow them the convenience of 21rst century communications, transportation equipment, oil refineries and so on? It will be much harder for radical Islam to spread its message without the websites, Al Jezzera snuff videos or even radical Imans coming around and setting up shop in your neighbourhood. People without functioning electrical grids generally have a much lower GDP as well, giving them far fewer resources to work with.

And if there is a need to send in the Marines to deliver a hard smack to the head, they are not dealing with an asymmetric forces using cell phones and the internet to communicate and coordinate actions.

 

[George Wallace]

We seem determined to do things the hard way.

For those people who are keen on a 7th century lifestyle, an application of EMP devices should be an appropriate response. Why allow them the convenience of 21rst century communications, transportation equipment, oil refineries and so on? It will be much harder for radical Islam to spread its message without the websites, Al Jezzera snuff videos or even radical Imans coming around and setting up shop in your neighbourhood. People without functioning electrical grids generally have a much lower GDP as well, giving them far fewer resources to work with.

And if there is a need to send in the Marines to deliver a hard smack to the head, they are not dealing with an asymmetric forces using cell phones and the internet to communicate and coordinate actions.

Now that is a BRILLIANT idea.  Thinking well outside of the box, and coming up with a brilliant and novel solution.  Brilliant. 

 

[CougarKing]

And Canada's not far behind in sending a 6 pack of CF18s, we hope?

Defense News

US Lawmaker Sees UK, Australia, Turkey Joining Strikes on Islamic State
Aug. 28, 2014 - 10:23AM  |  By JOHN T. BENNETT 

WASHINGTON — The American military may be joined by some familiar allies in its fight against a violent Sunni group in Iraq, says a senior US lawmaker.

Under orders from President Barack Obama, US warplanes have been striking Islamic State targets in northern Iraq for several weeks. Obama administration officials and security experts say what Obama has described as “targeted” and “limited” airstrikes might last months — or longer.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., says US fighter, bomber and armed drone aircraft soon could be joined by warplanes from some of Washington’s closest allies.

“There are about 100 ISIS fighters with US passports. And, as you’ve heard, there are probably 150 from Australia and over 1,000 from [Europe]. And so this is a concern,” Royce said Wednesday on CNN.

“I think this is what is driving the US, Turkey, Australia, Britain to look at, potentially, joint operations with respect to airpower against [Islamic State] targets,” Royce said.

(...EDITED)

 

[a_majoor]

An analysis of using political and economic power to put some existing military muscle in the region to work against the IS. Doubtful if this administration will do so, but the idea of various regional powers directly intervening isn't off the table, since they have some pretty clear existential issues with allowing the IS to remain in place regardless of US actions:

http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/25/if-you-want-to-stop-isis-here-is-what-it-will-take/

If You Want To Stop ISIS, Here Is What It Will Take
Killing the Islamic State requires neither more nor less than waging war

By Angelo Codevilla
AUGUST 25, 2014

The Islamic State’ video-dissemination of one of its goons beheading an American is an existential challenge from which we cannot afford to shrink. Until the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) did that, it made sense for the U.S. government to help contain it because the Islamic world, which the IS threatens most directly, must destroy it sooner or later. But internetting that beheading was a gory declaration of America’s impotence—a dare-by-deed that is sure to move countless young persons around the globe to get in on killing us, anywhere they can. The longer the Islamic State survives, the more will take up its dare. Either we kill the IS, or we will deserve the wave of terrorism that will engulf us.

Killing the IS requires neither more nor less than waging war—not as the former administration waged its “war on terror,” nor by the current administration’s pinpricks, nor according to the too-clever-by-half stratagems taught in today’s politically correct military war colleges, but rather by war in the dictionary meaning of the word. To make war is to kill the spirit as well as the body of the enemy, so terribly as to make sure that it will not rise again, and that nobody will want to imitate it.

That requires first isolating the Islamic State politically and physically to deprive all within it of the capacity to make war, and even to eat. Then it requires killing all who bear arms and all who are near them.

Why It’s Now Our Business

The Islamic State is a lot more than a bunch of religious extremists. Its diverse composition as well as its friends and enemies in the region define its strength and its vulnerabilities. Its dependence on outside resources, its proximity to countries with the capacity and incentive to strike serious blows, and its desert location, make its destruction possible with little U.S. involvement on the ground, and providing the United States uses its economic and diplomatic power in a decisive manner.

It would have been better for America not to have taken sides in that region’s reshuffling, or to have done so decisively in a manner that commanded respect.

Geopolitically, the creation of a Sunni Arab state in western Mesopotamia should not be any of America’s business. For a thousand years, Sunni Assyrian Arabs from the northwest have fought for exclusive control of that area, against countervailing pressure from Shia Persians from the southeast and their Arab co-religionists. All the while, Kurds held fast to their northern mountains. In recent centuries, the Ottoman Empire arbitrated that ancient contest. In 1801, Sunni Wahabis from the Saudi clan invaded present-day Iraq and inflicted horrors that surpass even today’s. In response, the Ottomans nearly wiped out the Saudis and tortured the Wahabi leaders in the main cities of the empire. It would have been better for America not to have taken sides in that region’s reshuffling, or to have done so decisively in a manner that commanded respect. Alas, U.S. administrations of both parties intervened fecklessly. We are reaping the results.

Now one of the parties to the struggle is making itself our business, and is doing so globally. We have to mind that business.

How to Command Respect Again

To kill IS, take note of its makeup: Sunni Wahabis from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Syrian Sunnis who rebelled against the Alewite regime of the Assad family, the Naqshbandi army constituted by the Ba’athist cadre of Saddam Hussein’s army and security services that fled to Syria in 2003, that ran the war against the U.S. occupation, and that now runs the IS military, plus assorted jihadis from around the world including the United States and Western Europe.

Breaking the hold of ISIS on the people it now rules will require a rude ‘awakening.’

Note, as well, that the IS did not have to exert much power to conquer Sunni majority areas in either former Syria or former Iraq. The people there want to be ruled by Sunni, unless they are given a compelling reason to accept something else. In former Iraq, the local Sunni tribes supported the Sunni Ba’athists’ fight against the Americans until, in 2006, the Shia death squads slaughtered them in such numbers as to lead these tribes to beg for a deal with the Americans. What the American spinners called “the Sunni awakening” resulted from the reality of imminent Sunni mass death. Breaking the hold of the IS on the people it now rules will require a similarly rude “awakening.”

Note the material sources of the Islamic State’s power: supplies from and through Turkey’s Muslim Brotherhood government, paid for largely with money from notables in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, as well as from the government of Qatar. Beyond religious sectarianism, the motivation for this support is the Qataris’ and the Turks’ foreign policy seemingly based on promotion of Sunni political Islam wherever possible.

The first strike against the IS must be aimed at its sources of material support. Turkey and Qatar are very much part of the global economy—one arena where the U.S. government has enormous power, should it decide to use it. If and when—a key if—the United States decides to kill the IS, it can simply inform Turkey, Qatar, and the world it will have zero economic dealings with these countries and with any country that has any economic dealing with them, unless these countries cease any and all relations with the IS. This un-bloody step—no different from the economic warfare the United States waged in World War II—is both essential and the touchstone of seriousness. Deprived of money to pay for “stuff” and the Turkish pipeline for that stuff, the IS would start to go hungry, lose easy enthusiasm, and wear out its welcome.

Next, the Air War

Striking at the state’s belly would also be one of the objectives of the massive air campaign that the U.S. government could and should orchestrate. “Orchestrate.” Not primarily wage.

Saudi Arabia has some 300 U.S. F-15 fighter planes plus another hundred or so modern combat aircraft, with bases that can be used conveniently for strikes against the IS. Because Saudi Arabia is key to the IS’s existence, to any campaign to destroy it, and to any U.S. decision regarding such a campaign, a word about the Saudi role is essential.

Wahabism validates the Saudis’ Islamic purity while rich Saudis live dissolute lives—a mutually rewarding, but tenuous deal for all.
The IS ideology is neither more nor less than that of the Wahabi sect, which is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, which has been intertwined with its royal family since the eighteenth century, and which Saudi money has made arguably the most pervasive version of Islam in the world (including the United States). Wahabism validates the Saudis’ Islamic purity while rich Saudis live dissolute lives—a mutually rewarding, but tenuous deal for all. But increasingly, the Saudi royals have realized they are riding a tiger. Wahabi-educated youth are seeing the royals for what they are. The IS, by declaring itself a Caliphate, explicitly challenged the Saudis’ legitimacy. The kingdom’s Grand Mufti, a descendant of Ab al Wahab himself, declared the IS an enemy of Islam. But while the kingdom officially forbids its subjects from joining IS, its ties with Wahabism are such that it would take an awful lot to make the kingdom wage war against it.

American diplomacy’s task is precisely to supply that awful lot.

Given enough willpower, America has enough leverage to cause the Saudis to fight in their own interest. Without American technicians and spare parts, the Saudi arsenal is useless. Nor does Saudi Arabia have an alternative to American protection. If a really hard push were required, the U.S. government might begin to establish relations with the Shia tribes that inhabit the oil regions of eastern Arabia.

Day after day after day, hundreds of Saudi (and Jordanian) fighters, directed by American AWACS radar planes, could systematically destroy the Islamic State—literally anything of value to military or even to civil life. It is essential to keep in mind that the Islamic State exists in a desert region which offers no place to hide and where clear skies permit constant, pitiless bombing and strafing. These militaries do not have the excessive aversions to collateral damage that Americans have imposed upon themselves.

Destruction from the air, of course, is never enough. Once the Shia death squads see their enemy disarmed and hungry, the United States probably would not have to do anything for the main engine of massive killing to descend on the Islamic State and finish it off. U.S. special forces would serve primarily to hunt down and kill whatever jihadists seemed to be escaping the general disaster of their kind.

That would be war—a war waged by a people with whom nobody would want to mess. Many readers are likely to comment: “but we’re not going to do anything like that.” They may be correct. In which case, the consequences are all too predictable.

Angelo M. Codevilla is a fellow of the Claremont Institute, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University and the author of To Make And Keep Peace, Hoover Institution Press, 2014.

 

[CougarKing]

For those here who denigrated Maliki's US-trained Iraqi Army for losing the first major battles against ISIS, it seems the Iraqi Army actually starting to make some headway against ISIS now:

Military.com

Iraqi Forces Break Militant Siege of Shiite Town

Associated Press | Aug 31, 2014 | by Sinan Salaheddin

Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen on Sunday broke a six-week siege imposed by the Islamic State extremist group on the northern Shiite Turkmen town of Amirli, following U.S. airstrikes against the Sunni militants' positions, officials said.

Iraq Army spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said the operation started at dawn Sunday and the forces entered the town shortly after midday.
Speaking live on state TV, al-Moussawi said the forces suffered "some causalities," but did not give a specific number. He said fighting was "still ongoing to clear the surrounding villages."

(...EDITED)

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

For those here who denigrated Maliki's US-trained Iraqi Army for losing the first major battles against ISIS, it seems the Iraqi Army actually starting to make some headway against ISIS now:

Military.com

It was only a matter of time.... Speaking of which!

When can I start wearing a fedora in uniform???  This guy is my new hero, bringing style to the battlefield, one dead jihadi at a time!

 

[tomahawk6]

The Turkmen were rescued by a combined force of Iraqi Army,Kurds,Shiaa militias[read IRG],US airpower and probably TF Black assets.

 

[CougarKing]

No German-made vehicles for the Kurds then? 

Shanghai Daily/Xinhua

Germany decides to deliver arms to Iraq

BERLIN, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Germany decided on Sunday to provide anti-tank missiles and machine guns to the Kurds in northern Iraq to support the fight against the Islamic State (IS), German media reported.

The decision was made after a meeting attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

Germany will send 16,000 assault rifles, 40 machine guns, 240 bazookas, 500 anti-tank missiles and 10,000 hand grenades to the Kurds, said a statement by the German Ministry of Defence.

(...EDITED)

 

[Colin Parkinson]

It was only a matter of time.... Speaking of which!

When can I start wearing a fedora in uniform???  This guy is my new hero, bringing style to the battlefield, one dead jihadi at a time!

Love the NC Star laser over top of the scope. I await NC Star booth at SHOT stating; "Combat Proven hardware"

 

[Infantryman2b]

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/02/isis-releases-video-purportedly-showing-execution-of-american-journalist-steven-sotloff/

Steven Sotlof was reported to have been beheaded by the same masked ISIS militant. Another threat has been made that a Briton named David Cawthorne Haines will be the next to be executed if the airstrikes dont stop. ISIS isn't backing down and continue to grow stronger and bolder. Large scale conflict will eventually take place if we want to stop this group from forming a large hostile state capable of launching large scale attacks on the homefront and in the middle east.

 

[ShadyBrah]

If we don't go get them, they will come get us. It's obvious at this point that there isn't a diplomatic solution, and relying on the problem to solve itself is just stupid.

Our armed forces are for the protection of our country and our interests, but that doesn't mean we have to wait for the threat to come to our front door before blasting them away..

 

[jollyjacktar]

Amnesty International is now braying that ISIS are conducting industrial scale ethnic cleansing.  No sh1t Sherlock. 

Now that AI is blowing the whistle on the gig, I am sure that ISIS will cut it out and behave.  :sarcasm:

 

[CougarKing]

An article to add to what was said in the above post:

Business Insider

New Report Details The Horrific 'Ethnic Cleansing' By ISIS In Iraq

On Aug. 15, extremists from the group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) forced Elias Salah, a 59-year-old nurse, and about 20 others into the back of a Kia pickup truck in the Iraqi village of Kocho. The passengers were grouped into a tight cluster and photographed.

And then, backs turned, they were shot. Salah was hit in the left leg, falling forward. He immediately played dead, waited until the group from ISIS left, and fled the area.

(...SNIPPED)

In its report, Amnesty portrays stories like Salah's as one of many horrors committed by ISIS, the group that brutally executed American journalist James Foley last month. Beginning in June, ISIS made sweeping advances to gain control of large areas in northern and western Iraq.

Since then, according to Amnesty, ISIS has since only June "targeted non-Arab and non-Sunni Muslim communities" indiscriminately, killing or abducting hundreds and possibly thousands. And at least 830,000 others have been forced to flee in the face of the group.

"The massacres and abductions being carried out by the Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq," said Donatella Rovera, the author of the report.

(...EDITED)

What happened next, as he relayed to Amnesty, has become all too familiar. ISIS took the villagers to the edge of a hill and told them to convert to Islam. When they didn't, the militants opened fire.

(...END EXCERPT)

 

[cupper]

If we don't go get them, they will come get us. It's obvious at this point that there isn't a diplomatic solution, and relying on the problem to solve itself is just stupid.

Our armed forces are for the protection of our country and our interests, but that doesn't mean we have to wait for the threat to come to our front door before blasting them away..

And what would you propose that our (or any other) armed forces do that isn't being done already?

 

[Rifleman62]

The problem will be, whoever fights them, what do you do if some surrender or attempt to surrender? Multiple problems to be solved.

 

[CougarKing]

From wearing fedoras on patrol to wearing bandanas on APCs...

Iraqi soldiers wave to a humanitarian aid convoy en route to Amerli on Sept. 1 after Iraqi forces broke through to the jihadist-besieged Shiite town the previous day. (JM Lopez / AFP)

White House: 350 More US Troops Heading to Iraq

[defense news] - Sep. 2, 2014

President Obama has approved sending roughly 350 more US troops to Iraq, the White House announced on Tuesday.

The new troops will protect US diplomatic facilities and personnel in Baghdad, allowing some US troops already in Iraq to leave, according to a statement from the White House press secretary.

“These additional forces will not serve in a combat role,” the statement says.

Troop numbers in Iraq fluctuate, so although 763 US troops are on the ground now, that number will change by the time the additional 350 troops arrive, according to the Defense Department.

 

[tomahawk6]

This deployment will increase the number of US troops to 1000.The 22d MEU has been extended in the AO 3 weeks.

http://www.armytimes.com/article/20140902/NEWS/309020059/22nd-MEU-deployment-extension-unlikely-change-Marines-op-tempo-much-remains-flux

The 21-day extension of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit is unlikely to affect the deployment schedule for other MEUs, Marine officials tell Marine Corps Times.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the Camp Lejeune, North Carolina-based 22nd MEU, deployed with the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, to remain at its current location in the 5th Fleet area, near the Persian Gulf, until the beginning of October, according to an Aug. 30 announcement from the Navy.

 

[Rifleman62]

T6. FOX News is reporting 1,213 with the additional 350 tasked to protect US diplomatic facilities and personnel in Baghdad.

Here is the latest from the "leader" of the free world:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/03/conflicting-signals-obama-vows-to-destroy-isis-make-it-manageable/

OBAMA: 'Degrade and destroy' ISIS
— but let's keep it 'manageable'

PRESIDENT OBAMA SENDS seemingly conflicting signals Wednesday about his ultimate goal in the fight against ISIS — after the group released a video showing the beheading of an American journalist Steve Sotloff, inset — saying at a press conference in Europe that the aim is to 'degrade and destroy' the terror group — but moments later, claiming he wants to make it a 'manageable problem.'