Tag Archives: isis

Let’s Take a Look at How Tough Republicans Would Be Against ISIS

by ConnorTrudeau Posted on November 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Following the terrorist attacks in Paris, conservatives are eagerly taking the opportunity to accuse Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of fecklessness and appeasement for not taking a harder line against ISIS. We need someone with the guts to lead, and who isn’t afraid to use the term radical Islam. Apparently that’s important.

Maybe so. But ground troops are the only way to destroy ISIS in the short term, and the Republican presidential candidates have all been oddly reluctant to get behind a serious American invasion force. So before we allow them to get too far up on their high horses about how tough they’d be, here’s a reminder of what they were saying about ISIS before two days ago.

Donald Trump wants to take away oil fields controlled by ISIS, but has explicitly dodged the question of whether he would use a substantial ground force to do it. His preference is for an air campaign: “I would just bomb those suckers. That’s right. I’d blow up the pipes. I’d blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left.”

From Tuesday’s debate: “If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, 100%.“

Jeb Bush has previously ruled out a “major commitment” of ground troops. He would support a modest increase in “supportive” troops, and wants to unite the moderate anti-Assad forces in Syria. But he also thinks Trump is crazy.

From the debate: “Let ISIS take out Assad, and then Putin will take out ISIS?….That’s not how the real world works. We have to lead, we have to be involved. We should have a no fly zone in Syria.“

Carly Fiorina has specifically said ground troops are unnecessary. Our allies should provide any troops necessary.

From the debate: “We must have a no fly zone in Syria….We also have a set of allies in the Arab Middle East that know that ISIS is their fight….King Abdullah of Jordan….The Egyptians, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Bahrainis, the Emirati, the Kurds….They must see leadership support and resolve from the United States of America.”

Marco Rubio said last year the he would like to see a permanent US presence in the Middle East. “I’m not saying 100,000 troops, but certainly some level that allows us to project power quickly and confront challenges and threats.” More recently, he’s backed off that position: “ISIS is a radical Sunni Islamic group. They need to be defeated on the ground by a Sunni military force with air support from the United States.” And this: “Intervening doesn’t mean ground troops. Intervening can be a lot of things.” His official position on his website specifically recommends air strikes, special ops, training, arms for Sunni and Kurdish forces, diplomacy, financial targeting, and better PR. It does not mention ground troops.

From the debate: “ISIS is now in Libya….Soon they will be in Turkey. They will try Jordan. They will try Saudi Arabia….They hate us because of our values. They hate us because our girls go to school. They hate us because women drive in the United States. Either they win or we win, and we had better take this risk seriously, it is not going away on its own.”

Ben Carson has suggested that ground troops “might” be necessary, but has declined to go any further.

From the debate: “We’re talking about global jihadists….We have to destroy their caliphate. And you look for the easiest place to do that? It would be in Iraq. Outside of Anbar in Iraq, there’s a big energy field. Take that from them. Take all of that land from them. We could do that, I believe, fairly easily, I’ve learned from talking to several generals, and then you move on from there.”

Ted Cruz has suggested that Kurdish pesh merga are all we need: “We need boots on the ground, but they don’t necessarily need to be American boots. The Kurds are our boots on the ground.” Cruz has generally dodged specific questions about sending in American troops, instead supporting an “overwhelming” American air campaign.

From the debate: Cruz declined to address ISIS during the debate.

And just for comparison, here is Hillary Clinton on her website:

ISIS and the foreign terrorist fighters it recruits pose a serious threat to America and our allies. We will confront and defeat them in a way that builds greater stability across the region, without miring our troops in another misguided ground war. Hillary will empower our partners to defeat terrorism and the ideologies that drive it, including through our ongoing partnership to build Iraqi military and governing capacity, our commitment to Afghanistan’s democracy and security, and by supporting efforts to restore stability to Libya and Yemen.

So Hillary is a little bit more categorical about not using American ground troops, but basically she’d fit in just fine on the Republican stage. She supports an air campaign; she supports a no-fly zone in Syria; she supports arming the anti-Assad rebels; and she supports partnerships with our allies. If the Republican candidates are any tougher on ISIS than Hillary, they’ve been oddly timid about saying so.

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Let’s Take a Look at How Tough Republicans Would Be Against ISIS

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Bernie Sanders: Yes, Climate Change Is Still Our Biggest National Security Threat

by LinoMortlock7 Posted on November 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bernie Sanders opened Saturday night’s Democratic debate by vowing to rid the world of ISIS, the terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for killing more than 100 people in Paris Friday. In a follow-up question, moderator John Dickerson pointed out that during a debate last month, Sanders had identified “climate change” as the greatest threat to national security. “Do you still believe that?” asked Dickerson.

“Absolutely,” replied Sanders. He added that “of course international terrorism is a major issue that we have got to address today,” but argued that “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.” Sanders warned that global warming could cause international conflicts “over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to…grow crops.” You can watch the full exchange above.

Sanders isn’t alone in arguing that climate change has the potential to make international conflicts worse. According to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “Extreme weather, climate change, and public policies that affect food and water supplies will probably create or exacerbate humanitarian crises and instability risks.” The Department of Defense says that climate change “poses immediate risks to US national security” and has the potential to exacerbate terrorism. There’s also substantial evidence that drought linked to climate change helped spark Syria’s civil war.

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Bernie Sanders: Yes, Climate Change Is Still Our Biggest National Security Threat

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Here Are the Most Horrible Tweets About the Paris Tragedy

by BethanyKier Posted on November 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here are some of the worst reactions we’ve seen so far to the tragedy in Paris. Follow our breaking news reporting on the attacks here.

Donald J. Trump had retweeted this one.

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Here Are the Most Horrible Tweets About the Paris Tragedy

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Republicans Are Still Totally Wrong About ISIS

by Pilar2325h Posted on July 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley made an astute observation about ISIS in an interview with Bloomberg.

“One of the things that preceded the failure of the nation-state of Syria, the rise of ISIS, was the effect of climate change and the mega-drought that affected that region, wiped out farmers, drove people to cities, created a humanitarian crisis that created the…conditions of extreme poverty that has led now to the rise of ISIL and this extreme violence,” said the former Maryland governor.

Republicans were quick to seize on the comment as an indication of O’Malley’s weak grasp of foreign policy. Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, said the suggestion of a link between ISIS’s rise to power and climate change was “absurd” and a sign that “no one in the Democratic Party has the foreign policy vision to keep America safe.”

Here’s the thing, though: O’Malley is totally right. As we’ve reported here many times, Syria’s civil war is the best-understood and least ambiguous example of a case where an impact of climate change—in this case, an unprecedented drought that devastated rural farmers—directly contributed to violent conflict and political upheaval. There is no shortage of high-quality, peer-reviewed research explicating this link. As O’Malley said, the drought made it more difficult for rural families to survive off of farming. So they moved to cities in huge numbers, where they were confronted with urban poverty and an intransigent, autocratic government. Those elements clearly existed regardless of the drought. But the drought was the final straw, the factor that brought all the others to a boiling point.

Does this mean that America’s greenhouse gas emissions are solely responsible for ISIS’s rise to power? Obviously not. But it does mean that, without accounting for climate change, you have an incomplete picture of the current military situation in the Middle East. And without that understanding, it will be very difficult for a prospective commander-in-chief to predict where terrorist threats might emerge in the future.

The link between climate and security isn’t particularly controversial in the defense community. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama called climate change an “urgent and growing threat” to national security. A recent review by the Defense Department concluded that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that exacerbates other precursors to war, while the Center for Naval Analysis found that climate change-induced drought is already leading to conflict across Africa and the Middle East.

In other words, O’Malley’s comment is completely on-point. If Priebus and his party are serious about defeating ISIS and preventing future terrorist uprisings, they can’t continue to dismiss the role of climate change.

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Republicans Are Still Totally Wrong About ISIS

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Quote of the Day: Mike Huckabee Wants American Wars to Last Ten Days Max

by Steven Posted on July 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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From noted national security expert Mike Huckabee:

Here is what we have to do: America has to have the most formidable, fierce, military in the history of mankind. So when we have a threat, whether it is ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranians, whatever it is, we make it very clear that we plan to push back and destroy that threat to us. And we won’t take 10 years doing it, we hopefully won’t even take 10 months, it will be like a 10 day exercise, because the fierceness of our forces would mean that we can absolutely guarantee the outcome of this film. That’s how America needs to operate in the world of foreign affairs, and foreign policy.

Damn! If only we’d known this before. If we had taken this stuff a little more seriously, we could have wiped out all these guys in a short series of ten-day bloodbaths. No more Al-Qaeda. No more ISIS. No more Hamas or Hezbollah. Even the entire country of Iran would apparently have fallen to our fierceness in ten days or so. Booyah!

Generally, speaking, I try not to obsess over each and every Idiocy of the Day™, since they fly fast and furious during campaign season. But I have to assume that Huckabee is being more than astonishingly ignorant here. He’s also channeling the beliefs of a lot of base conservatives, who figure if we stopped pussyfooting around and spending all our time worrying about PC crap like gay soldiers and whatnot, we could unleash the full might of America and destroy our enemies in a matter of days or weeks. And that would be that.

I wonder how many people are out there who believe this? More than we think, probably. Maybe someone should take a poll.

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Quote of the Day: Mike Huckabee Wants American Wars to Last Ten Days Max

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The Shocking Truth About Wednesday’s Apocalypse Involving Wall Street, China, ISIS, and United Airlines

by NapoleonWND Posted on July 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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When the New York Stock Exchange inexplicably halted trades at about 11:30 Wednesday morning, people around the Twittersphere reacted with their typical restraint, reasoned analysis, and careful double-checking of the facts.

Or not.

After all, there were an unusual number of suspicious events today, and Twitter was swirling with paranoid conspiracy theories linking Wall Street, the grounding of United Airlines flights, ISIS, and the Chinese financial meltdown.

Initial reactions were largely variants of this one:

But the conspiracy theories—involving the Chinese, the CIA, and even ISIS—were not far behind. Some came from on high. Here’s one from US Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.):

He wasn’t the only one taking things in that direction:

And even after the US Department of Homeland Security said there was no indication that the NYSE situation was due to a malicious act, some people weren’t buying it:

The theory that China might be behind this series of events could be supported by data from the Norse Intelligence Network, a California-based online security company. The company offers up a real-time cyber attack map, which seemed to show at midday on Wednesday that China was the number-one attacker and the US was the number-one target:

Screenshot from the Norse Intelligence Network attack map on July 8, 2015. map.norsecorp.com

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The Shocking Truth About Wednesday’s Apocalypse Involving Wall Street, China, ISIS, and United Airlines

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7 Reasons America Is Stuck in Never-Ending War

by BobbyeHeinz Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

It was launched immediately after the 9/11 attacks, when I was still in the military, and almost immediately became known as the Global War on Terror, or GWOT. Pentagon insiders called it “the long war,” an open-ended, perhaps unending, conflict against nations and terror networks mainly of a radical Islamist bent. It saw the revival of counterinsurgency doctrine, buried in the aftermath of defeat in Vietnam, and a reinterpretation of that disaster as well. Over the years, its chief characteristic became ever clearer: a “Groundhog Day” kind of repetition. Just when you thought it was over (Iraq, Afghanistan), just after victory (of a sort) was declared, it began again. Now, as we find ourselves enmeshed in Iraq War 3.0, what better way to memorialize the post-9/11 American way of war than through repetition. Back in July 2010, I wrote an article for TomDispatch on the seven reasons why America can’t stop making war. More than four years later, with the war on terror still ongoing, with the mission eternally unaccomplished, here’s a fresh take on the top seven reasons why never-ending war is the new normal in America. In this sequel, I make only one promise: no declarations of victory (and mark it on your calendars, I’m planning to be back with seven new reasons in 2019).

1. The privatization of war: The US military’s recourse to private contractors has strengthened the profit motive for war-making and prolonged wars as well. Unlike the citizen-soldiers of past eras, the mobilized warrior corporations of America’s new mercenary moment—the Halliburton/KBRs (nearly $40 billion in contracts for the Iraq War alone), the DynCorps ($4.1 billion to train 150,000 Iraqi police), and the Blackwater/Xe/Academis ($1.3 billion in Iraq, along with boatloads of controversy)—have no incentive to demobilize. Like most corporations, their business model is based on profit through growth, and growth is most rapid when wars and preparations for more of them are the favored options in Washington.

“Freedom isn’t free,” as a popular conservative bumper sticker puts it, and neither is war. My father liked the saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” and today’s mercenary corporations have been calling for a lot of military marches piping in $138 billion in contracts for Iraq alone, according to the Financial Times. And if you think that the privatization of war must at least reduce government waste, think again: the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated in 2011 that fraud, waste, and abuse accounted for up to $60 billion of the money spent in Iraq alone.

To corral American-style war, the mercenaries must be defanged or deflated. European rulers learned this the hard way during the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth century. At that time, powerful mercenary captains like Albrecht von Wallenstein ran amok. Only Wallenstein’s assassination and the assertion of near absolutist powers by monarchs bent on curbing war before they went bankrupt finally brought the mercenaries to heel, a victory as hard won as it was essential to Europe’s survival and eventual expansion. (Europeans then exported their wars to foreign shores, but that’s another story.)

2. The embrace of the national security state by both major parties: Jimmy Carter was the last president to attempt to exercise any kind of control over the national security state. A former Navy nuclear engineer who had served under the demanding Admiral Hyman Rickover, Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber and fought for a US foreign policy based on human rights. Widely pilloried for talking about nuclear war with his young daughter Amy, Carter was further attacked for being “weak” on defense. His defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 inaugurated 12 years of dominance by Republican presidents that opened the financial floodgates for the Department of Defense. That taught Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council a lesson when it came to the wisdom of wrapping the national security state in a welcoming embrace, which they did, however uncomfortably. This expedient turn to the right by the Democrats in the Clinton years served as a temporary booster shot when it came to charges of being “soft” on defense—until Republicans upped the ante by going “all-in” on military crusades in the aftermath of 9/11.

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7 Reasons America Is Stuck in Never-Ending War

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Hero Mom Has the Perfect Response to Son Begging to Join ISIS

by RosariaRan Posted on February 27, 2015

Mother Jones

Everyone of us can relate to having once been a stupid teenager, irrationally whining to our parents about needing to hang out with that group, wear this outfit, etc.

Such is the case of 19-year-old Akhror Saidakhmetov of Brooklyn who had a burning desire to join club ISIS, like all the cool kids seem to be doing these days. But despite having all the gear to prove he was ready to commit to the band, Saidakhmetov’s dreams were ultimately crushed by a very adolescent roadblock—his mom. From the Times:

Mr. Juraboev and Mr. Saidakhmetov bought tickets, planning to travel to Turkey and then sneak into Syria, court papers say, and as the date of their departure neared, they seemed eager.

But Mr. Saidakhmetov still needed his passport, and on Feb. 19 he called his mother. In a conversation recorded by federal agents, he asked for it. She asked him where he was going. He said to join the Islamic State.

“If a person has a chance to join the Islamic State and does not go there, on Judgment Day he will be asked why, and it is a sin to live in the land of infidels,” he told her, court documents say.

She hung up the phone. It is unclear if he managed to get his passport back. But the government’s informer helped Mr. Saidakhmetov secure travel documents. In the days before he left, he told the informer that he felt that his soul was already on its way to paradise.

Trust us, young Saidakhmetov, you’ll thank your mom one day. We already do.

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Hero Mom Has the Perfect Response to Son Begging to Join ISIS

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I Want to Hear the Republican Plan For Fighting ISIS

by TobiasKethel Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

The drumbeat for President Obama to “do something” to fight ISIS is growing louder every day among prospective Republican presidential candidates. It’s all a bit weird, since Obama rather plainly is doing something, as interviewers repeatedly point out whenever the subject comes up. But no matter. It’s a good sound bite, and in any case, whatever Obama is doing, Republicans insist they want to do more. Today, Paul Waldman points out that all these presidential wannabes are just reflecting what the Republican base wants to hear:

Four months ago, 57 percent of Republicans thought we should use ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria; that number has now gone up to 67 percent. Among the conservative Republicans who will dominate the primary contests, it’s even higher, at 71 percent. When Pew asked respondents to choose between “using overwhelming military force is the best way to defeat terrorism around the world” and “relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads to more terrorism,” last October 57 percent of Republicans chose the overwhelming military force option; that number is now 74 percent.

I don’t suppose that most voters have really thought this through in much detail, but I wonder just how far they really want to go. The ISIS stronghold of Mosul, for example, is about five times the size of Fallujah, and probably has about 3-4 times as many ISIS defenders as Fallujah had Sunni insurgents back in 2004. And Fallujah was a huge battle. It took more than a year to retake the city; required something like 15,000 coalition troops in all; and resulted in more than a hundred coalition deaths.

At a first guess, a full-scale assault on Mosul would likely require at least 2-3 times as many troops and result in several hundred American deaths. And Mosul is only a fraction of the territory ISIS controls. It’s a big fraction, but still a fraction.

So this is what I want to hear from Republican critics of Obama’s ISIS strategy. I agree with them that training Iraqi troops and relying on them to fight ISIS isn’t all that promising. But the alternative is likely to be something like 30-50,000 troops committed to a battle that will result in hundreds of American casualties. Are Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz willing to own up to that? If they are, then good for them and we’ll let the American public decide who’s got the better strategy. But if they’re not, then it’s all just a con job for the rubes. The GOP candidates are screaming for “more,” but not willing to acknowledge what “more” really means.

Let’s hear it, folks. When you say “more,” what do you really have in mind? Candidates for president shouldn’t be allowed to get away with nothing more than vague grumbles and hazy bellicosity any longer. Let’s hear the plan.

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I Want to Hear the Republican Plan For Fighting ISIS

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Letter From an Army Ranger: Here’s Why You Should Think Twice About Joining the Military

by LynellLamothe Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Dear Aspiring Ranger,

You’ve probably just graduated from high school and you’ve undoubtedly already signed an Option 40 contract guaranteeing you a shot at the Ranger indoctrination program (R.I.P.). If you make it through R.I.P. you’ll surely be sent off to fight in the Global War on Terror. You’ll be part of what I often heard called “the tip of the spear.”

The war you’re heading into has been going on for a remarkably long time. Imagine this: you were five years old when I was first deployed to Afghanistan in 2002. Now I’m graying a bit, losing a little up top, and I have a family. Believe me, it goes faster than you expect.

Once you get to a certain age, you can’t help thinking about the decisions you made (or that, in a sense, were made for you) when you were younger. I do that and someday you will, too. Reflecting on my own years in the 75th Ranger regiment, at a moment when the war you’ll find yourself immersed in was just beginning, I’ve tried to jot down a few of the things they don’t tell you at the recruiting office or in the pro-military Hollywood movies that may have influenced your decision to join. Maybe my experience will give you a perspective you haven’t considered.

I imagine you’re entering the military for the same reason just about everyone volunteers: it felt like your only option. Maybe it was money, or a judge, or a need for a rite of passage, or the end of athletic stardom. Maybe you still believe that the US is fighting for freedom and democracy around the world and in existential danger from “the terrorists.” Maybe it seems like the only reasonable thing to do: defend our country against terrorism.

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Letter From an Army Ranger: Here’s Why You Should Think Twice About Joining the Military

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