Tag Archives: Kurds

by Barry Kelly | May 30, 2015 · 7:54 am

INSIGHTS 209 –ADVISOR AND A NEW STRATEGY

The Advisor knew the president wanted to talk about domestic policies on his next visit and that would be easy for him. He knew what the president wanted and how he was going about it. The president’s only problem with his domestic policies is that he is running out of time and losing influence in his party, he thought. If you follow the news reports and are intelligent and skeptical enough to read between the lines, it is apparent the president, who is a political genius in the tactic of changing direction and misdirection, is turning to things he can do with or without Congress.

Hence the turn to ISIS, or ISIL, as the president prefers as it enables him to continue denying that the foundation for a radical Muslim state is already in place. The president’s basic plan will remain the same, even if the words change. His policy is to avoid the use of American military or economic power to achieve nationalistic objectives. In his mind, the world has seen enough of American dominance through capitalism and the use of military power to intervene in world events. The president seems to believe that his one great foreign policy or international accomplishment is in the prevention of American power to solve international problems. Like no other leader, foreign or American, he has driven the U.S. out of the Middle East. The remaining bastions of Western presence in the Middle East will gradually dry up and wither away, much like the last castle strongholds of the Crusaders. The president believes a progressive new world order will emerge to create a better life for all the victims of colonialism and racism. This much he has said right to my face in this very room.

The Advisor paused his musings long enough to pour himself a fresh cup of Sumatra roast coffee and sit back down at his desk. He took a long sniff of the fresh brew and sat back in his chair, the mug warm against his hand.

The president is not a dumb man but neither is he a wise one. His strength comes from his deep commitment to the redistribution of wealth and the destruction of American world dominance. His new strategy for ISIS will not be new. Just different words. Nothing in his new strategy will adjust to ground-truth reality, but it will avoid even the slightest offense to Iran. The president knows what many of the Pentagon’s analysts have said, but he has no intentions of following any of their advice.

It is clear many foreign policy and military analysts know how ISIS can be controlled. First, Western statesman have to recognize that the Western creation of Iraq after the fall of the Turkish Empire has failed. Iraq has always been an artificial state held together by vicious and cruel dictatorial leaders. Keeping the Kurds and Iraqi Sunnis individually weak pleased two Western Cold War allies, Turkey and Iran under the Shah. Even today, neither Turkey nor Iran want to see the United States arm and support either the Kurds or the Sunnis. But any American foreign policy that fails to arm and aid the Kurds and Sunnis will fail. The world has changed. Iran is now a deadly enemy and Turkey is becoming more and more driven by a radical Islamic fervor. Both of these old allies fear the establishment on their borders of a Sunni Caliphate made up of major parts of Iraq and Syria .

Rather than arm the Kurds and Sunnis with effective weapons, so far military aid to either of them has been in the form of words, the president will be guided by Iran and Russia’s alliance with Iran and not by what is in America’s interests. Give up on Iraq as a viable nation. Forget about bringing Iran into the family of nations. Let the Kurds and Sunni tribes establish their own borders. Employ American air power at several times the current level and deploy 10,000 combat and support troops. By combining these changes with a real effort to arm the Kurds and move the Sunni tribes away from ISIS by immediate military and economic support could still be successful, but the president would have to turn his back on Iran and follow American strategic goals. That he will not do.

The Advisor shook his head and sighed heavily, then took a long sip from his mug. If only the president would listen, he thought.

The above is a fictional account of the writing of a legendary but fictional Advisor.

“ISIS: Quiet Justice,” a new Jack Brandon novel by Barry Kelly dealing with ISIS in America, is now available from your local book store, This is the fifth novel in the “Justice”series. Follow the author on Twitter @factsfictions80.

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Iran, ISIS, Israel, Kurds, political solutions, Russia, Shiite, Sunni

Tagged as Iran, iraq, Kurds, Middle East, Obama, politics, sunnis, turkey

by Barry Kelly | July 8, 2014 · 7:31 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 125

NEW MAP NEEDED

Put your old map of the Middle East in the pile of historical documents. For a hundred years, the national boundaries of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon followed the contours of the lines diplomats drew to show the demise of the Turkish Empire. Their inked lines paid little or no mind to the impact those lines would have on language groups, cultural and religious realities, and tribal territories.

Iraq is not now and never has been a nation with the common things that make a nation, a nation. Instead, it worked around religious animosities, language differences, and conflicting tribal affiliations. The work around was only possible due to the harsh policies of a Sunni aristocracy that had no hesitation about using brutal tactics to subjugate Shia and Kurdish minorities. The Kurds have wanted and fought for their own nation for decades. At times they have sought Western support only to be betrayed time after time. The Shia are pulled eastward to the strong Persian and Shia state of Iran, the same state that the Sunni leadership in Iraq fought a brutal war with in the 1980s. During that war, poison gas was used against the Iranians. Saddam Hussein was an equal dispenser of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He also used poison gas on the Shia and the Kurds. Only ruthless cruelty and fear kept Iraq a nation.

Vice President Joe Biden, who almost got nothing right in his entire political career unless he copied it from someone else, stumbled on the right solution at the wrong time when he proposed dividing Iraq into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish areas, provinces, or whatever. It was not to happen. His solution was too far outside the box for most of us.

President Obama made all the wrong moves and gave the wrong signals when he took power and pulled all our forces out of Iraq. But let’s be fair. The only way for Iraq to exist as a nation was to put a ruthless Sunni dictator back in power. That wasn’t going to happen. In its wisdom, the Bush Administration destroyed the Sunni-led Iraqi Army and ruling political party, clearing the way for weak Shia leaders to win or manipulate a democratic voting process that prepared the path for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to run a Shia regime that looked eastward to Iran for support and guidance, turning Iraq into an Iranian province.

Century after Western Diplomats drew ink lines to create Iraq and Syria. The tribes are re-drawing them in blood. These borders may last.

— Barry Kelly (@factsfictions80) June 30, 2014

Our president, who has a strong Sunni bias, knew he could not provide real military support to assist a Shia faction to battle a Sunni force. So all the hand-wringing over the number and kind of troops sent now to Iraq and what the president should do is wasted. Iraq is history. Now we need to seek common goals among the Sunnis and Kurds.

Either way, this is a perfect issue for President Obama to follow his mantra, “the issue is never the issue.” He never tries to solve issues anyway, he only uses them to destroy the opposition. In Iraq, doing nothing is close to being the perfect solution. The Republicans will find some way to use the Iraq issue against themselves.

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 120

IT’S TRANSFORMATION, DUMMY

If you watch the news long enough, you will see things that just make your head hurt. I remember Senator McCain pleading for the president to get a new national security staff because his current one was not serving the president well.

Where has the senator been?

Obama is not and never will be a fixer of issues. His only goal is transformation. After the progressives become the only political party and the opposition is gone, then, maybe, he will take on some issues. Until then, it is the issue is never the issue. Please, Senator McCain, write that down and study it.

The president has no interest in getting into a war among Muslims. His base wouldn’t stand for it. His interest is ending American interference with the sovereignty of other nations. He is after a weaker America that takes its proper role in the international order. I think without American boots on the ground and control of the air over Iraq and Syria, the entire area will separate into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish areas. Even then the Kurds will need support from us to hold off the ISIS.

The ISIS is a primarily Sunni organization and its doubtful if President Obama would destroy a Sunni-backed and financed organization. The blood and treasure we poured into Iraq, the remarkable defeat of Saddam Hussein’s vaunted military, the near destruction of al-Qaeda, and the birth of a struggling democracy faded away when for deep seated ideological reasons, Obama did not want a residual force agreement to allow American troops to remain in Iraq. A strong, tough negotiating stance on our part would have crafted an agreement allowing some strategically placed bases to remain in Iraq. That process is part of winning. With U.S. bases in Iraq, the current disaster in Iraq and the chaos in Syria would either have not occurred or would have been solvable. But that is not the Obama way.

Our president has his eye only on transformation and he has a personal flaw of believing the world is as he sees it. If he wants foreign policy change, he resorts to words and pretends his words are all that is needed. His lines are not straight and red. They are swirls and very pale. Not one of our former allies or enemies trusts our words or believes in our resolve. A new national security team would make no difference. It is not about issues and under Obama it never will be.