Tag Archives: iraqi

Charts: Here’s How Much We’re Spending on the War Against ISIS

by CoraFeaster Posted on June 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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As the White House considers opening operating bases in Iraq and deploying troops to bolster support for Iraqi forces against ISIS, including one in ISIS-held territory, the cost of airstrikes in the region continues its steady rise.

The Department of Defense has spent more than $2.7 billion—some $9 million per day—since the United States began operations against the so-called Islamic State last August. To put that in perspective, the DOD is on pace to spend a little more than $14 million per day to combat ISIS in fiscal year 2015. That’s minuscule compared to the roughly $187 million the Defense Department is still spending on the Iraq War each day.

The result? More than 6,200 targets damaged or destroyed in the course of nine months, according to the DOD. Roughly two-thirds of that spending, or a little more than $1.8 billion, came from the Air Force, with air operations costing $5 million per day.

The newly released DOD data comes as the House passed a $579 billion defense spending bill for the coming fiscal year. Here’s the breakdown:

Source – 

Charts: Here’s How Much We’re Spending on the War Against ISIS

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This Guy From Baltimore Is Raising a Christian Army to Fight ISIS…What Could Go Wrong?

by ShaniceOUKW Posted on May 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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By Jenna McLaughlin | Thurs May 28, 2015 06:00 AM ET

In late February, a Baltimore-born, self-proclaimed freedom fighter named Matthew VanDyke beamed into Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show from Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region. A few days earlier, he had announced on Facebook that he was in Iraq to “raise and train a Christian army to fight” ISIS and that he had formed a company called Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) to provide “free military consulting and training to local forces fighting terrorists and oppressive regimes.” For months, the so-called Islamic State had terrorized Iraq’s Assyrian Christians, forcing many to flee their homes and villages and seek safe haven among the Kurds. With ISIS on the march across Iraq and Syria—and making headlines for its brutal beheadings of journalists and aid workers—the story of an American taking an on-the-ground role in the fight sparked a media frenzy. VanDyke, who is 35 and holds a master’s degree in security studies from Georgetown, was soon featured by media outlets across the country, including the New York Times, USA Today, the Baltimore Sun, and MSNBC.

This wasn’t the first time VanDyke had become a media sensation. A few years earlier VanDyke had made international headlines after he was captured in Libya, where he had been fighting alongside rebel forces to overturn the regime of Moammar Qaddafi. He eventually escaped, and he would later say that his Christian faith deepened during his six-month imprisonment. A film about VanDyke, who had traveled across the Arab world by motorcycle, won best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014.

Matthew VanDyke speaks with reporters at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport after returning home from Libya in 2011. Patrick Semansky/AP

“So, tell me what we can do to help?” Fox’s Van Susteren asked VanDyke, as he described his latest venture. VanDyke, who sported a beard and black suit and tie, made a plea for funding to continue the effort. “We’re really stalled right now, unable to really continue,” he explained. “I’ve put about $12,000 of my own money in and I’m going broke doing this, so we really need donations from the public to help these Christians defend themselves and take the fight against ISIS.”

But as VanDyke solicited donations, his operation was in trouble. By the end of February, the military director of the Iraqi Christian militia VanDyke’s company was training would issue a press release formally severing the group’s ties with the American (though he would later rekindle his relationship with VanDyke and SOLI). Meanwhile, the initial crop of US military veterans VanDyke had brought to Iraq as trainers had abruptly quit, citing concerns that VanDyke may not have obtained US government authorization to provide military training to foreign nationals, as required by US law. Flouting such rules can carry massive fines—even prison time.

Asked how he had prepared for this training operation, in terms of obtaining permission from US or Iraqi authorities, VanDyke told Mother Jones that initially “nobody was sanctioning it.” He added, “Part of the whole purpose of SOLI is to step in where governments had failed, so going and asking permission from the governments that have already failed is not particularly productive.” (VanDyke later said that his company had “complied with US registration requirements.”)

“Part of the whole purpose of SOLI is to step in where governments had failed, so going and asking permission from the governments that have already failed is not particularly productive,” says VanDyke, who describes his effort as “crowdfunding a war against ISIS.”

VanDyke says his company is “crowdfunding a war against ISIS.” And SOLI notes on its website that it is “the first security contracting firm run as a non-profit.” But elsewhere on the site, the company notes that “Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) is not a non-profit or 501c3; support is not tax deductible. SOLI is a company that operates on a non-profit business model.” VanDyke won’t disclose how much he has raised or spent. Doing so, he maintains, would put lives in danger: “I can’t give a number for how much we raised, because I don’t want our personnel kidnapped…The moment we announce what’s in the account, then our people become more of a target, and then we get grabbed and that’s what they’re gonna ask for.”

Last summer, ISIS began targeting the Assyrians of northern Iraq, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Militants massacred civilians, blew up ancient artifacts, and bulldozed settlements, including the 3,000-year-old city of Nimrud. Horrified by the slaughter—and by the beheadings of journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, both of whom VanDyke knew—he began contacting Iraqi Christian political leaders and offering his services to train a militia to repel the Islamic State from their territory. VanDyke wasn’t the only one with this idea. A California-based nonprofit group called the American Mesopotamian Organization had undertaken a similar effort, dubbed “Restore Nineveh Now,” to help the Assyrians defend themselves. Both VanDyke and the AMO would separately begin working with an upstart militia group that eventually dubbed itself the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU).

After securing the backing of some local leaders, VanDyke, who has no formal military training, began recruiting US military veterans to forge the NPU into a well-disciplined fighting force. One of his first calls was to Michael Cunningham, a retired Army sergeant who was featured in Restrepo, Sebastian Junger’s 2010 documentary about the fierce fighting in Afghanistan’s Korengal valley. VanDyke and Cunningham had met at a film festival, where Marshall Curry’s documentary on VanDyke, Point and Shoot, was screened alongside Restrepo.

“How do you feel about going over and training a Christian army to fight ISIS?” Cunningham recalls VanDyke asking him. Cunningham, who was finding it difficult to adjust to civilian life, tentatively signed on. But, he says, he knew VanDyke had some significant groundwork to cover before they could begin their work. Most important, VanDyke had to get formal approval from the State Department. The Arms Export and Control Act requires US citizens to obtain State Department licensing before offering formal or informal military services to foreigners. This includes providing training or military equipment. A subsection of the law known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations stipulates that licenses should be denied unless the activities are “in the interest of the security and foreign policy of the US.”

Cunningham says he repeatedly pressed VanDyke to obtain State Department approval. “I asked him every month leading up to our departure,” he recalls. “He was like, ‘No problem, I know all these people, and everything will be fine.'”

Cunningham’s worries persisted throughout November, as VanDyke organized their trip, but his misgivings were eclipsed by a personal crisis. Cunningham’s relationship fell apart, he was unemployed, and he was crashing on the couches of friends and relatives. “I could be homeless, or go to Iraq,” he remembers. “So I left.”

As VanDyke and Cunningham finalized their plans, the American Mesopotamian Organization, a nonprofit founded in 2009 to champion the interests of the Assyrian people, had been actively fundraising to equip and train the NPU, the same local force that VanDyke planned to work with. The AMO would eventually amass at least $250,000 to fund the militia, though the group, aware of legal concerns, was careful about how these funds were spent. It did not supply weapons, according to Jeff Gardner, the spokesman for the AMO’s Restore Nineveh Now project. The AMO planned to use some of the funds to hire a military contractor to train the NPU in basic security procedures and community policing techniques. (According to Gardner, the AMO was not required to receive State Department approval because it would not be supplying weapons or providing military training.)

When VanDyke entered the picture, the NPU decided to work with both him and the AMO. VanDyke’s arrival on the scene caught the AMO off guard. “I did not know that he existed,” says David Lazar, the AMO’s founder. “I had never heard of him.” Lazar asked Gardner to keep tabs on VanDyke and check his background.

On December 10, when Cunningham and VanDyke arrived in Erbil, the NPU had already assembled an initial crop of about 25 men for them to train. Working out of the small Assyrian village of Sharafiya, Cunningham put the recruits through a US-military style boot camp. Each day started with physical conditioning followed by what VanDyke describes as “combat simulations,” which included training in general military tactics, such as how to maneuver under fire. According to a training plan obtained by Mother Jones, the program also provided instruction in “room clearing,” “military operations in urban terrain,” “mortar employment,” and “communicating and coordinating targets.”

NPU members line up for early morning training in Iraq. Jeff Gardner, Picture Christians Project

SOLI’s training program was “secret,” VanDyke says, “and it actually remained that way for December, January, and February.” He says it was important to keep the program under wraps for safety reasons, since the Islamic State’s stronghold in Mosul was less than 25 miles away from its training camp. According to VanDyke, he ultimately revealed the existence of the training effort—though not the location of where it was happening—because he was running out of money and needed to solicit funds to keep the project going.

During the first month of the program, VanDyke says, the State Department had no idea his training operation existed. He eventually met with State Department officials at the consulate in Erbil to explain what he was doing. “When we went to the State Department and told them we’d been in country over a month training this force, it was a surprise to them,” he notes. “Essentially we were running a covert camp.”

“When we went to the State Department and told them we’d been in country over a month training this force, it was a surprise to them,” he notes. “Essentially we were running a covert camp. Nobody was sanctioning it.”

VanDyke says the State Department officials he met with responded positively to his training effort: “They encouraged us to continue working with NPU leadership.”

But a State Department official says, “We have checked with State Department personnel at our Consulate in Erbil and they have conveyed no such” approval of VanDyke’s training program.

In interviews with Mother Jones, VanDyke repeatedly said the State Department was initially unaware of his training efforts. He subsequently stated in an email that “Sons of Liberty International complied with US registration requirements prior to signing a contract with the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), as required by U.S. law.” The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls—with which all US-based military and security firms planning to provide services overseas must register—does not make public its registrants. But according to that office, approved registrants receive a certification form that they are free to share. VanDyke did not respond to a request to provide this documentation.

David Ellison, an arms-trafficking-law expert and consultant, said the penalties for providing military training to foreigners without State Department approval can be harsh, including millions of dollars in fines and possible criminal prosecution. “This all sounds very bad,” Ellison says of VanDkye’s training program. Scott Gearity, an expert on the Arms Export and Control Act at BSG Consulting, says that VanDyke’s activities might pose a problem: “This doesn’t seem like a very ambiguous case.”

In the past, the Justice Department has aggressively prosecuted military contractors who violate the Export and Control Act. One high-profile case involved the infamous military contractor Blackwater, which in 2010 was forced to pay the US government $42 million for violations that included offering “defense services” to the government of the Sudan “without first having obtained a license from the US Department of State,” according to an FBI press release on the settlement. As part of this case, Blackwater was charged with illegally providing training to Canadian law enforcement and military personnel.

Soon after Christmas in 2014, the initial group of 25 NPU recruits graduated from SOLI’s training program, and VanDyke returned to the United States to fundraise. Cunningham stayed behind to train the next class of recruits. The NPU had received hundreds of applications from Iraqi Christians eager to receive military training, and it chose 350 to participate in the next session. To accommodate this larger class, the Kurds gave VanDyke use of a former US base known as the Manila Training Center.

Because this contingent would be far too large for Cunningham to train on his own, he and VanDyke agreed that he would recruit a few friends—all of them US military veterans with experience in the Middle East—to join him in Iraq. The men would be unpaid. “They were volunteers, and they knew they were volunteers from the start,” VanDyke says. “We were going to try to fundraise, and if we fundraised, we had maybe the possibility of paying trainers in the future. But none of these guys came over expecting payment and wanting payment…The entire point of SOLI was to be all-volunteer.”

The NPU throws a surprise birthday party for Michael Cunningham in Iraq. Michael Cunningham

According to Cunningham and two of the trainers he recruited, they were each under the impression that VanDyke was trying to raise money to pay them. “I put off signing up for school for this,” says Miguel Gutierrez, a former Army corporal, who also appeared in Restrepo. “I got hopes and dreams. I didn’t get paid.”

By mid-January, with the second training program underway, Cunningham and the other trainers grew increasingly worried that they might be operating in Iraq illegally. Cunningham was concerned enough that when it was time to provide firearms training to the NPU recruits, he brought in members of the Kurdish military to teach them how to shoot. (In an interview, VanDyke dismissed the concerns of SOLI’s trainers: “They perhaps were worried about getting in trouble when they came back for what they had done, which is ridiculous.”)

In late January, the American Mesopotamian Organization’s Gardner visited Iraq to check on the NPU’s progress. He was also curious to find out more about VanDyke.

When Gardner visited the Manila Training Center, VanDyke was still in the United States. But Gardner did meet Cunningham and the other SOLI trainers, who unloaded on VanDyke. “They told me, ‘We cannot work with this guy,'” Gardner recalls. The trainers complained that VanDyke’s operation was disorganized, unprofessional—and possibly illegal.

Based on Gardner’s conversations with the trainers and others at the training camp, the AMO urged the NPU to cut its ties with VanDyke. The militia’s leaders agreed to do so after SOLI’s second training program ended in early February, according to Gardner.

By mid-February, Cunningham and the three trainers he’d recruited quit. Cunningham says he delivered the news to VanDyke in a phone call, telling him, “I don’t want to work with you; I can’t work with you.” According to Cunningham, VanDyke told him he had “fucked up real bad” for quitting. In a subsequent conversation, Cunningham claims, VanDyke made a loosely veiled threat: “I’ll never forget: He says, ‘I met with my Kurdish secret police friend and I told him about the situation between you and me, and he wanted to do something about it…You know they don’t have the best human rights record. I tried to call it off.'” VanDyke denies threatening Cunningham and calls him a “disgruntled former associate.”

On February 28—five days after VanDyke went on Greta Van Susteren’s show to tout his effort to build a Christian militia—the NPU issued a press release stating that it was no longer working with him. “The rank and leadership of the NPU wishes to clarify that Mr. VanDyke and his company Sons of Liberty International are no longer being employed in any capacity by the Nineveh Plains Protection Units,” the release noted, “and have not been since February 19, 2015.”

Gevara Zaya, the NPU’s military director, also sent a letter directly to VanDyke. “Your services are no longer being employed in any capacity,” he wrote. “Please refrain from using any image, title, or reference to the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU) in any capacity, commercial or otherwise.” (VanDyke says he never received this letter.)

Gevara Zaya’s letter to Matthew VanDyke

In an email interview, Zaya said that he was surprised and aggravated by VanDyke’s media blitz. Though he was satisfied with SOLI’s work at the training camp, Zaya noted, he believed that VanDyke was inflating his role with the NPU. “He was appearing in the media and spoke like he was our savior,” Zaya wrote.

A few weeks later, in late April, Zaya sent a text message to Mother Jones to say that he wanted to revise his earlier comments about VanDyke: “While we were glad to have Matthew speak good about us…Matthew and us do not want people to think…he was a leader of NPU. The press release was to make clear that he is not a leader of NPU.” Contrary to the NPU’s press release and his letter to VanDyke, Zaya now said the NPU had never cut ties with VanDyke and that the NPU was considering a new training proposal from SOLI.

The AMO was dismayed that VanDyke was back in the picture, and continued to press NPU leaders to disassociate themselves from him. “The Assyrian people have suffered enough,” Gardner says. “What they need are selfless men and women who have the skill and dedication to build a unified and peaceful future for all of Iraq’s people. VanDyke’s misadventures with a camcorder will likely have the opposite effect.”

On May 11, VanDyke once again took to Facebook, this time to announce that he had launched a “leadership training” program for NPU sergeants and officers, led by a “former West Point instructor.” He linked to a Sons of Liberty International press release, in which VanDyke was quoted saying, “The Christian community in Iraq has been pushed around for a long time, and it needs to stop. I have the right connections and experience to help.”

Days later, SOLI issued another press release noting that VanDyke’s training program had been cut short. VanDyke reported that his company had been barred access to the NPU’s headquarters, where the training of NPU fighters was taking place. He blamed the AMO for this development. “The result is that SOLI cannot provide the NPU with additional free training or resources…at this time,” VanDyke said in the press release. “Denying the NPU access to a training program before they are deployed against ISIS is unconscionable. It will likely result in the death of NPU soldiers.”

Undeterred after his break with the NPU, VanDyke was meeting with other Christian forces in Iraq to pitch his services, according to the release. “SOLI looks forward to its next mission to support the Christian community of Iraq in their fight against ISIS,” he said.

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This Guy From Baltimore Is Raising a Christian Army to Fight ISIS…What Could Go Wrong?

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Saudi Arabia’s Shiny New Air Campaign Not Working Any Better Than Anyone Else’s

by ValorieSilver Posted on April 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Back when Egypt started bombing Libya and Saudi Arabia started bombing Yemen, American conservatives were jubilant. That’s the kind of swift, decisive action Barack Obama ought to be taking against our enemies in the Mideast. Never mind that this already was the kind of action he had taken. It didn’t really count because he had been too slow to ramp up attacks and had demonstrated too little bloodthirstiness in his announcements. Did he really want to “destroy” ISIS or merely “degrade” it? Dammit man, make up your mind!

This weekend, though, the LA Times reminded us that regardless of who’s doing it, air strikes alone simply have a limited effectiveness in wars like this:

Officials in Saudi Arabia, the region’s Sunni Muslim power, say the air campaign is dealing a decisive blow against the Houthis, whom they view as tools of aggression used by Shiite Muslim-led Iran in an expanding proxy war….However, residents say the strikes have done little to reverse the territorial gains of the insurgents and restore exiled President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi to power in the quickly fragmenting country.

….Security experts question whether the coalition can achieve its goals through airstrikes alone. Saudi officials have not ruled out sending in tanks, artillery and other ground forces massed along the frontier. But Saudi leaders appear wary of such a move against the Houthis, hardened guerrillas who belong to an offshoot of Shiite Islam known as Zaidism.

The last time the Saudis fought the Houthis in the rugged mountains of northern Yemen, in 2009, more than 100 of their men were killed. Pakistan’s parliament voted Friday to stay out of the conflict, a blow to the Saudis, who had reportedly asked the country to send troops, fighter jets and warships.

“This war will turn Yemen into Saudi Arabia’s Vietnam,” said Mohammed al-Kibsi, a veteran journalist and commentator in Yemen’s capital, Sana, where the Houthis seized control in September.

Air strikes are useful components of a wider war. But to the extent anyone can truly win these conflicts in the first place, it’s going to take ground troops. Lots and lots of well-trained, well-equipped, and well-motivated ground troops. Saudi Arabia is “wary” of committing ground troops in Yemen and Pakistan is staying out. In Iraq, it’s still a big question whether the Iraqi army is up to the task. And to state the obvious, even among America’s most bellicose hawks, there’s no real appetite for sending in US ground troops.1

This is just the way it is, and everyone knows it. Air strikes can do a bit of damage here and there, and they can serve as symbolic demonstrations of will. But none of these conflicts—not in Yemen, not in Iraq, not in Syria, and not in Libya—are going to be affected much by air campaigns alone. They need ground troops. If you loudly insist that Obama is a weakling as commander-in-chief but you’re not willing to commit to that, you’re just playing political games.

1And don’t fall for the “special ops” ploy. Politicians who want to sound tough but don’t want ruin their careers by suggesting we deploy a hundred thousand troops in Iraq again, are fond of suggesting that we just need a bit of targeted help on the ground from special ops. This is clueless nonsense meant to con the rubes, but nothing more.

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Saudi Arabia’s Shiny New Air Campaign Not Working Any Better Than Anyone Else’s

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Middle East War Suddenly Getting a Lot More Warlike

by Kristin98I Posted on March 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’m a little behind on the news right now, but it sure looks like things are getting a whole lot hotter in the Middle East. Here are a few headlines:

Saudi Jets Strike Yemen in Bid to Halt Houthis

Tikrit airstrikes draw U.S. into battle between militants and Iraqi forces

Obama Says He Will Delay Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Afghanistan

Iran-backed rebels loot Yemen files about U.S. spy operations

U.S. Role in Middle East Revamped Amid Chaos

That last headline comes from the Wall Street Journal, and seems to sum things up pretty well. The story includes this:

Kenneth Pollack, the former CIA analyst, said the military campaign in Yemen is unlikely to have a positive effect on the country’s fractured dynamics.

“The idea that this is going to produce some kind of a peaceful settlement is ridiculous,” Mr. Pollack said. “The more likely outcome is it just prolongs the stalemate.” The Persian Gulf countries could consider the use of ground troops to make progress, which should be a concern for the U.S., he said.

What could go wrong?

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Middle East War Suddenly Getting a Lot More Warlike

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Why Did the Iraqi Army Collapse So Easily?

by KeiraTillery Posted on October 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

In June, tens of thousands of Iraqi Security Forces in Nineveh province north of Baghdad collapsed in the face of attacks from the militants of the Islamic State (IS or ISIS), abandoning four major cities to that extremist movement. The collapse drew much notice in our media, but not much in the way of sustained analysis of the American role in it. To put it bluntly, when confronting IS and its band of lightly armed irregulars, a reputedly professional military, American-trained and -armed, discarded its weapons and equipment, cast its uniforms aside, and melted back into the populace. What this behavior couldn’t have made clearer was that US efforts to create a new Iraqi army, much-touted and funded to the tune of $25 billion over the 10 years of the American occupation ($60 billion if you include other reconstruction costs), had failed miserably.

Though reasonable analyses of the factors behind that collapse exist, an investigation of why US efforts to create a viable Iraqi army (and, by extension, viable security forces in Afghanistan) cratered so badly are lacking. To understand what really happened, a little history lesson is in order. You’d need to start in May 2003 with the decision of L. Paul Bremer III, America’s proconsul in occupied Iraq and head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), to disband the battle-hardened Iraqi military. The Bush administration considered it far too tainted by Saddam Hussein and his Baathist Party to be a trustworthy force.

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Why Did the Iraqi Army Collapse So Easily?

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There Are No Magic Wands in Iraq

by CharliCYLL Posted on October 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Syrian border town of Kobani is the latest shiny toy for the press to latch onto in the war against ISIS:

As warplanes from the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates pounded Islamic State fighters near the Syrian city of Kobani for a third day, the U.S.-led military campaign began running up against the limits of what air power can accomplish. “Airstrikes alone are not going to save the town of Kobani,” Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

….Despite an intensifying air campaign in Fallouja and other cities not far from Baghdad, an effort that in recent days has included use of U.S. attack helicopters, the Iraqi army has continued to lose ground to the militants, U.S. officials acknowledged.

We all know what’s coming next, don’t we? Two weeks ago, everyone — absolutely everyone — was unanimous in agreeing that (a) we needed to act now now now, and (b) we should never put boots on the ground in Iraq. But now that the obvious is happening, I think we can expect an extended round of breast beating and humanitarian keening about the well-known limitations of air campaigns; the horror of watching innocent Kobanis die; and the lamentable lack of planning and leadership from the White House.

Some of this will just be partisan opportunism, but most will be perfectly sincere protests from people with the memory span of a gnat. What they want is a magic wand: some way for Obama to inspire all our allies to want exactly what the United States wants and then to sweep ISIS aside without the loss of a single American life. Anything less is unacceptable.

But guess what? The Iraqi army is still incompetent. America’s allies still have their own agendas and don’t care about ours. Air campaigns still aren’t enough on their own to stop a concerted ground attack. This is the way things are. There are no magic wands. If you want quick results against ISIS, then speak up and tell us you want to send in 100,000 troops. If you’re not willing to do that, then you have to accept that lots of innocent people are going to die without the United States being able to offer much help. Make your choice now.

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There Are No Magic Wands in Iraq

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Your Lesson for the Day: If You Decline to Use Military Force, You’ve "Kind of Lost Your Way"

by HarlanPrentice Posted on October 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Today the Washington Post summarizes a new book by Leon Panetta, former CIA director and secretary of defense in the Obama administration, as well as an interview Panetta gave to Susan Page of USA Today:

By not pressing the Iraqi government to leave more U.S. troops in the country, he “created a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it’s out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed,” Panetta told USA Today, referring to the group also known as the Islamic State.

….The USA Today interview was the first of what inevitably will be a series as he promotes his book, “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace,” which is sharply critical of Obama’s handling of the troop withdrawal from Iraq, Syria and the advance of the Islamic State. “I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war” that will also sweep in conflicts in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen and Libya, he told the paper.

My first thought when I read this was puzzlement: Just what does Panetta think those US troops would have accomplished if they’d stayed in Iraq? Nobody ever seems to have a very concrete idea on that score. There’s always just a bit of vague hand waving about how of course they would have done….something….something….something…..and stopped the spread of ISIS. But what?

My second thought was the same as Joe Biden’s: would it kill guys like Panetta to at least wait until Obama is out of office before airing all their complaints? Do they have even a smidgen of loyalty to their ex-boss? But I suppose that ship sailed long ago, so there’s not much point in griping about it.

In the end, what really gets me is this, where Panetta talks about Obama’s foreign policy legacy:

“We are at a point where I think the jury is still out,” Panetta says. “For the first four years, and the time I spent there, I thought he was a strong leader on security issues. … But these last two years I think he kind of lost his way. You know, it’s been a mixed message, a little ambivalence in trying to approach these issues and try to clarify what the role of this country is all about.

“He may have found himself again with regards to this ISIS crisis. I hope that’s the case. And if he’s willing to roll up his sleeves and engage with Congress in taking on some of these other issues, as I said I think he can establish a very strong legacy as president. I think these next 2 1/2 years will tell us an awful lot about what history has to say about the Obama administration.”

Think about this. Panetta isn’t even a super hawkish Democrat. Just moderately hawkish. But his basic worldview is simple: as long as Obama is launching lots of drone attacks and surging lots of troops and bombing plenty of Middle Eastern countries—then he’s a “strong leader on security issues.” But when Obama starts to think that maybe reflexive military action hasn’t acquitted itself too well over the past few years—in that case he’s “kind of lost his way.”

That’s the default view of practically everyone in Washington: Using military force shows strong leadership. Declining to use military force shows weakness. But most folks inside the Beltway don’t even seem to realize they feel this way. It’s just part of the air they breathe: never really noticed, always taken for granted, and invariably the difficult but sadly necessary answer for whichever new and supposedly unique problem we’re addressing right now. This is what Obama is up against.

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Your Lesson for the Day: If You Decline to Use Military Force, You’ve "Kind of Lost Your Way"

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A Wee Question About That Residual Force Everyone Keeps Blathering About

by ZenaidaNeblett Posted on September 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s something I don’t get. Republicans seem to universally hold the following two opinions about Iraq and ISIS:

  1. President Obama is to blame for the military success of ISIS because he declined to keep a residual force in Iraq after 2011.
  2. In the fight against ISIS, we certainly don’t want to send in combat troops. No no no.

“Residual force” has become something of a talisman for conservative critics of Obama’s Iraq policy. It’s sort of like “providing arms,” the all-purpose suggestion for every conflict from hawks who know the public won’t stand for sending in ground troops but who want to support something more muscular than sanctions. It’s a wonderful sound bite because it sounds sensible and informed as long as you don’t think too hard about it (what arms? for whom? is anyone trained to use them? etc.). Luckily, most people don’t think too hard about it.

“Residual force” sounds good too. But if we don’t want boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS, what exactly would it have done? Hang around Baghdad to buck up the morale of the Iraqi forces that came fleeing back after encountering ISIS forces? Conduct ever more “training”? Or what? Can someone tell me just what everyone thinks this magical residual force would have accomplished?

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A Wee Question About That Residual Force Everyone Keeps Blathering About

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The ISIS Speech: Obama and the Dogs of War

by EugeniaScholz Posted on September 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here is President Barack Obama’s challenge: how to unleash the dogs of war without having them run wild.

This dilemma applies to both the political and policy considerations Obama faces, as he expands US military action in Iraq (and possibly Syria) to counter ISIS, the militant and murderous outfit that now calls itself the Islamic State and controls territory in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. In a speech from the White House on Wednesday night, Obama announced what was expected: the United States would widen its air strikes against ISIS in Iraq, “take action” of some sort against ISIS in Syria, ramp up military assistance for the Syrian opposition, keep sending advisers to assist the Iraqi military’s on-the-ground-campaign against ISIS, and maintain pressure on Iraqi politicians to produce a national government that can represent and work with Sunnis and, consequently, undercut ISIS’s support and appeal in Sunni-dominated areas of the country—all while assembling a coalition of Western nations and regional allies. (He gave no details about the membership of this under-construction alliance.) The goal: to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. There were no surprises in the speech, and this strategy of expanded-but-limited military intervention—Obama referred to it as a “counter-terrorism campaign” different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has a fair amount of support from the politerati and the policy wonks within Washington and beyond, as well as from the public, per recent polling. But whatever he calls it, the president is attempting a difficult feat: waging a nuanced war.

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The ISIS Speech: Obama and the Dogs of War

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Let’s Not Give ISIS Exactly What They Want

by RefugioDurbin Posted on September 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Yesterday I wrote a post noting that a supposedly war-weary public had suddenly become awfully war happy. “All it took,” I said, “was a carefully stagecrafted beheading video and the usual gang of conservative jingoists to exploit it.” Here’s a Twitter conversation that followed (lightly edited for clarity):

DS: Think of what you wrote: “All it took was…beheading”? I opposed W’s but this is what wars are made from & I think rightly so.

Me: Really? So any group anywhere in the world merely needs to commit an atrocity to draw us into war?

DS: On what other basis should wars be fought if not to stop groups from committing atrocities against Americans?

I’m not trying to pick on anyone in particular here, but it’s pretty discouraging that this kind of attitude is so common. There’s no question that the beheading of American citizens by a gang of vicious thugs is the kind of thing that makes your blood boil. Unless you hail from Vulcan, your gut reaction is that you want to find the barbarians who did this and crush them.

But that shouldn’t be your final reaction. This is not an era of conventional military forces with overwhelming power and no real fear of blowback. It’s an era of stateless terrorists whose ability to commit extremely public atrocities is pretty much unlimited. And while atrocities can have multiple motivations, one of the key reasons for otherwise pointless actions like one-off kidnappings and beheadings is their ability to either provoke overreactions or successfully extort ransoms. Unfortunately, Americans are stupidly addicted to the former and Europeans seem to be stupidly addicted to the latter, and that’s part of what keeps this stuff going.

In any case, a moment’s thought should convince you that we’re being manipulated. We’ve read account after account about ISIS and its remarkably sophisticated command and publicity apparatus. The beheading video is part of that. It’s a very calculated, very deliberate attempt to get us to respond stupidly. It’s not even a very subtle manipulation. It’s just an especially brutal one.

So if we’re smart, we won’t give them what they want. Instead we’ll respond coldly and meticulously. We’ll fight on our terms, not theirs. We’ll intervene if and only if the Iraqi government demonstrates that it can take the lead and hold the ground they take. We’ll forego magical thinking about counterinsurgencies. We won’t commit Western troops in force because we know from experience that this doesn’t work. We’ll avoid pitched battles and instead take advantage of our chances when they arise. Time is on our side.

Above all, we won’t allow a small band of medieval theocrats to manipulate us. We need to stop giving them exactly what they want. We need to stop doing stupid stuff.

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Let’s Not Give ISIS Exactly What They Want

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