Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

[touchring]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

whither or wither?

my favorite contrarian take on what's happening in the middle east, from scott adams' blog

President Obama: Wizard or Failure?

Posted October 6th, 2015 @ 11:50am in #ISIS #trump

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Russia is moving into Old Syria. Iran already owns the parts of Old Iraq that ISIS and the Kurds do not. Israel fears that the nuclear deal with Iran is a mistake of unthinkable proportions.
The data suggests that President Obama is a total failure when it comes to the Middle East.
Or… he is one of the most gifted wizards of persuasion and strategy our generation has ever seen.
The data fits both interpretations. You already know the interpretation that says Obama failed. Allow me to give you another interpretation – one that isn’t necessarily true – but happens to fit the data.
And the fun part is that we can make predictions based on both filters and see which one does the best job of explaining our reality. Just for fun. Don’t get your opinions on world politics from cartoonists.
The Master Wizard Hypothesis says there are people so skilled in the art of persuasion that they control world events while sometimes pretending they are inept, to cover their tracks.
The Master Wizard filter says that President Obama – magnificent bastard and Commander in Chief – just suckered Russia and Iran into the quicksand while taking The United States out of an endless and unwinnable fight.
And … doomed ISIS in the process.
The United States can’t defeat ISIS militarily because doing so would require killing too many civilians. Russia and Iran will have fewer problems in that regard because they control their media and their leaders don’t need to ask permission.
And let’s say you want to build a virtual wall around ISIS to contain them. You would need a substantial military power to guard the coast.
You need Russia.
Right where they are deploying.
The Master Wizard filter says President Obama has a winning plan for eradicating ISIS at the lowest cost for Americans. America’s frenemies have now encircled ISIS, and the American media with their freedom of the press will not be there to watch what happens next.
ISIS is reportedly planting landmines around captured cities to keep the civilian population from escaping. They expected the United States to avoid bombing population centers.
They were right.
But they they did not expect the United States to turn over the fight to Russia and Iran.

ISIS is done.
Unfortunately, so is the civilian population in ISIS-held territory. But living under ISIS probably isn’t much of a life either. And I have heard no one suggest a more humane solution.
The Master Wizard filter says President Obama either created this perfect situation or recognized the opportunity and encouraged it.
That would be totally bad-ass.
The Master Wizard filter also says Iran and the United States are cooperating behind the scenes and getting more comfortable as allies. In the long run, Iran was going to get a nuke if it wanted one. A Master Wizard of Persuasion would seek to keep his enemies close, where persuasion works best. Distance and non-contact are the enemies of persuasion. According to the Master Wizard filter, building an active engagement with Iran, combined with skillful persuasion, reduces risk. (Only a Master Wizard could feel confident in that plan.)

I’m not saying the Master Wizard interpretation of reality is true. I’m just saying the data fits the interpretation. We shall see what the future holds.
Donald Trump, another skilled deal-maker and persuader, also favors walling off ISIS territory to strangle them. In Trump’s case there is also a branding benefit when you define a border. One side can be TERRIBLE while the other is FABULOUS.
Update: Iran’s Supreme Leaders banned further negotiatingwith the United States because he says we are trying to “influence” Iran. Have you ever heard language like that before?

This article gives too much credit to Obama.

I think with the Russian campaign, it is very obvious that the Nobel Peace Prize Obama has no intentions to eradicate ISIS and what he wants is never ending war in Syria, pitting the Sunni against the Shiites, and the Moderates against the ISIS extremists.

Henceforth, I would think that Obama is completely caught by surprise with Russia's strike on Syria. By giving the Shiites an upper hand, Russia has spoiled his plan. Syria is or rather was suppose to be the modern day equivalent of the Roman Colosseum, never ending fighting, slaughter and blood letting.

Will the modern Spartacus succeed?

[don]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

retired US Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

[jk]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

This article gives too much credit to Obama.

I think with the Russian campaign, it is very obvious that the Nobel Peace Prize Obama has no intentions to eradicate ISIS and what he wants is never ending war in Syria, pitting the Sunni against the Shiites, and the Moderates against the ISIS extremists.

Henceforth, I would think that Obama is completely caught by surprise with Russia's strike on Syria. By giving the Shiites an upper hand, Russia has spoiled his plan. Syria is or rather was suppose to be the modern day equivalent of the Roman Colosseum, never ending fighting, slaughter and blood letting.

Will the modern Spartacus succeed?

leaving aside the question of whether obama manipulated the current set of conditions into existance or is in fact surprised [something we will never know], is there any difference between what you've just said and what adams says are the facts on the ground?

syria was ruled by shiites before the current slide into chaos, and it appears it will continue to be ruled by shiites. with shiites in control of of baghdad AND damascus and receiving aid from iran AND directly from russia, what do you think the prospects are for isis? [of course the same fate awaits the so-called "moderate" rebels supported by the u.s. who have in fact been fighting alongside nusra.]

who will carry out the human rights catastrophe involved?

and to whom must the saudis now appeal for an extra measure of protection?


edit: latest developments

Obama Administration Ends Pentagon Program to Train Syrian Rebels


and
Wary of Escalation in Syria, U.S. Is Waiting Out Putin’s Moves


how is any of this not consistent with adams' [amusing] theory?

quote from the second nytimes article:
“There isn’t a solution at this point that they’re going to get done on their watch,” said Michael McFaul, a former White House adviser to Mr. Obama who later served as ambassador to Russia before returning to Stanford University. “They’re just going to contain it.

quote from scott adams:
...let’s say you want to build a virtual wall around ISIS to contain them. You would need a substantial military power to guard the coast.You need Russia.

[don]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

Python-esk . . .

US axes $500m scheme to train Syrian rebels, says NYT

Pentagon expected to announce end of training programme for Syrian troops fighting Assad regime, reports New York Times


The US has axed its $500m (£326m) programme to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State in another move highlighting western failures as Russia seizes the initiative by launching direct military intervention in support of Bashar al-Assad.

Pentagon officials were expected to officially announce the end of the programme on Friday as the US defence secretary, Ashton Carter, left London after meetings with his British counterpart, Michael Fallon, about the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, the New York Times reported.

The Money Shot:




Syrian rebels use a catapult to launch homemade bomb

(wouldn't this be in their DNA?)

[Woodsman]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

Python-esk . . .

US axes $500m scheme to train Syrian rebels, says NYT

Pentagon expected to announce end of training programme for Syrian troops fighting Assad regime, reports New York Times...(wouldn't this be in their DNA?)

Our Suez.

[jk]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

Our Suez.

that's not clear to me. how are we worse off in the current situation than supporting so-called "moderate rebels" who were in fact fighting alongside nusra? seems to me we just saved $500million, and now russia has the tar-baby.

do you think this outcome is worse than what we "achieved" with u.s. blood and treasure in iraq and afghanistan? it seems to me a much better outcome.

[see my post #498 above]

edit:
from the second nytimes article:
But American officials hold out little hope of being able to deter Russia from continuing its military operations in Syria or of being able to raise the political or economic cost high enough to stop them. At the same time, some officials dismiss what they call wishful thinking that the United States and Russia could come to some agreement on the way forward. So they wait for Russia to bog down the way it did in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

or as we've done in iraq and afghanistan. i say better them than us.

[don]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

Our Suez.

You may be right, Woody. Suez was the definitive "putting England in its place" event by the then-definitive new top dog. The question is, who's now behind the curtain?

[jk]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

btw, we know saudi and qatari money is funding sunni fundamentalists. now russia and iran et al will take care of that problem, while driving the oil-rich gulf states into further dependency on the u.s. [china has been trading with iran and supplying the latter with weaponry - e.g. silkworm missiles]

we end up with a shiite crescent - iran, iraq, syria, southern lebanon, perhaps with a kurdish mini-crescent to its north, the shiites to the south and perhaps west.

[astonas]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

This article gives too much credit to Obama.

Certainly true, but mostly in the sense that everyone does.

It's helpful to remember that while people credit/blame the president personally for just about everything, there is in fact an army of career foreign policy strategists in the State Department who actually do most of the foreign-policy thinking. All the president has to do is understand enough of their arguments to be willing to say "go" to one of the plans presented to him. Same with military strategy, for that matter. A big part of the presidency is just deciding which advisor to listen to on any given issue. Does he give the most weight to State? Or the Pentagon? It seems like Obama goes with State more, where Bush went mostly with the Pentagon.

I, too, would have a very hard time believing that a sophisticated game theory analysis of extremely complicated and millennia-old conflicts could be forged in the highly distracted mind of the guy in the White House (whoever that may be at any moment). But imagining that State has a pulled together a decent team of experts whose sole job has been to do exactly that over the last few decades is not a big stretch to me.

I'd actually be rather surprised if it hadn't, to be honest.

Henceforth, I would think that Obama is completely caught by surprise with Russia's strike on Syria.

This may still be true. But if it is, it would be the analytical failure of much more than just one man.

The "Obama as Wizard" spin is a rhetorical device, and for what we are discussing here it is really a red herring. Giving full credit to a single man is not justified by the structure of the decision-making process, and it distracts us from the more important question of whether it's a good tactical move. That question is independent of the identity of the person who listened to whatever pitch was made, and nodded his head.

[Woodsman]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

that's not clear to me.

Leaving aside the many rhetorical and historical pitfalls of such an exercise, I think this an easy compare and contrast. To wit...

Suez:Syraqistan

Suez was a war of choice.

As is the Syraqistan Adventure.

As such history has judged it as illegitimate from the standpoint of international law and the UN Charter.

As is the Syraqistan Adventure.

Furthermore, it was a strategic defeat for Britain and serves as the temporal marker of an empire's decline.

As is the Syraqistan Adventure.

While the Suez crisis did not mark the end of British influence in the Middle East, Suez was a blow to British prestige in the Near East that Britain never recovered from.

As is the Syraqistan Adventure, with the British supplanted by Americans.

Suez was at best a "preventive war" whose aim was to restore the hegemony of the European powers over Egypt and the Middle East.

As is the Syraqistan Adventure, with the British supplanted by Americans and allied with Saudis, Turks, Qataris et. al.

Israel, the United Kingdom and France attempted to regain control of the Canal, previously nationalized by Egypt.

As is the Syraqistan Adventure, with the aforementioned parties and with pipelines analogous to canals.

Plans for a $10bn Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline were shelved due to the Syrian civil war. In 2012 an analyst cited by Ansa Mediterranean (The Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata, or ANSA is the leading wire service in Italy, and one of the leaders among world news agencies) suggested that Qatar's involvement in the Syrian civil war was based in part on its desire to build a pipeline to Turkey through Syria.

"The discovery in 2009 of a new gas field near Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria opened new possibilities to bypass the Saudi Barrier and to secure a new source of income. Pipelines are in place already in Turkey to receive the gas. Only Al-Assad is in the way.

The pipeline would be a competitor to the Qatar-Turkey pipeline which had been proposed by Qatar to run from Qatar to Europe via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Syria's rationale for rejecting the Qatar proposal was said to be "to protect the interests of [its] Russian ally, which is Europe's top supplier of natural gas."

Israel, the United Kingdom and France attempted to orchestrate a regime change in Cairo as one of the main aims of the operation.

As is the Syraqistan Adventure.

Sources too numerous to cite. A "must read" by the CRF (by way of Brookings - talk about elite consensus) is as good as any.

[T]he unrest in Syria, which is now entering its second year, also offers some important opportunities, ones that would come from the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Asad, whose family has ruled the country with an iron grip for over forty years. Syria is Iran’s oldest and most important ally in the Arab world, and the Iranian regime has doubled down on Asad, providing him with financial aid and military support to shore up his regime. Asad’s departure would deal a significant blow to Tehran, further isolating it at a time when it has few friends in the region or the world. In addition, Damascus is steadfast in its hostility toward Israel, and Asad’s regime is also a longtime supporter of terrorist groups like Hizballah and Hamas, and has at times aided al-Qa’ida terrorists and former regime elements in Iraq. The regime’s collapse, therefore, could have significant benefits for the United States and its allies in the region. Actually ousting Asad, however, will not be easy.

Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change

Should I go on?

How are we worse off in the current situation than supporting so-called "moderate rebels" who were in fact fighting alongside nusra? seems to me we just saved $500million, and now russia has the tar-baby.

do you think this outcome is worse than what we "achieved" with u.s. blood and treasure in iraq and afghanistan? it seems to me a much better outcome.

[see my post #498 above]

edit:
from the second nytimes article:
But American officials hold out little hope of being able to deter Russia from continuing its military operations in Syria or of being able to raise the political or economic cost high enough to stop them. At the same time, some officials dismiss what they call wishful thinking that the United States and Russia could come to some agreement on the way forward. So they wait for Russia to bog down the way it did in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

or as we've done in iraq and afghanistan. i say better them than us.

I don't say this as any sort of lament.

The entire enterprise is part of the larger neocon project that began with PNAC and continues to this day. The geopolitical and resource grab elements of both Suez and Syraqistan are well established. As is my longstanding opposition to these misadventures.

I'd say "welcome to reality, we've been expecting you" to the fellas at Foggy Bottom, Arlington, McLean or wherever the center of the nuthouse lies. Only I fully expect that sooner than later they will gin up yet another utterly pointless and futile exercise in chaos as a retort to the Russians. They just can't help themselves. Talk about DNA.

I guess I'm a little surprised by the credulousness I read in your post(s). I think it seems pretty obvious that the Times is really laying it on thick with this idea that it was all part of a cunning plan to saddle Russia with a new Afghanistan. Russian military and political elites are about as wary of foreign adventures today as the Yanks were in the aftermath of Vietnam.

That they are acting so decisively now is I believe a function of Putin's strength as El Lider Maximo, the unifying effect of western sanctions on the Russian elites beside and behind the Russian President, and of course the historic strategic importance of Syria to Russia (as is Crimea and Ukraine). All I can say is that there seems to be no one in the American foreign policy, intelligence, and defense nomenklatura that knows a thing about Russian and Soviet history before 1989.

I still read the Times and the Post, still cite them as sources, but do we really need to go over the mockingbird thing again? I bet folks would love a Time/Post:Pravda/Izvestia exercise, but I plan on hitting the surf this weekend rain or shine.

[don]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

I fully expect that sooner than later they will gin up yet another utterly pointless and futile exercise in chaos

No need to wait, Woody . . .

A senior US official told the Financial Times that the ships would sail inside the 12-nautical mile zones that China claims as territory around some of the islands it has constructed in the Spratly chain. The official, who did not want to be named, said the manoeuvres were expected to start in the next two weeks.

China's response was quick, clear and unequivocal:

"We will never allow any country to violate China's territorial waters and airspace in the Spratly Islands, in the name of protecting freedom of navigation and overflight," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing.

"We urge the related parties not to take any provocative actions, and genuinely take a responsible stance on regional peace and stability," Hua said in response to a question about possible U.S. patrols.

[jk]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

woodsman, most of what i posted wasn't from the times. the most insightful parts, and the largest, were from the blog of scott adams, who writes the dilbert cartoon. you have to be more careful to know your sources. also, when you said "america's suez," the context was such that it certainly appeared to point to the syrian adventure only, not "syraqistan" further, it was clear, or so i thought, that my points were directed at the syrian situation only, especially since i contrasted what was happening in syria to the loss of "blood and treasure" in iraq and afghanistan. so it hardly seems appropriate to now conflate all 3.

[Woodsman]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

... it hardly seems appropriate to now conflate all 3.

Understood. Just a lone opinion, jk, but I think it's entirely appropriate to do so.

[jk]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

Understood. Just a lone opinion, jk, but I think it's entirely appropriate to do so.

i agree that all 3 are in the bigger picture very much related. but they were distinguished and - to my eye- only the latest syrian developments were under discussion. i posted adams' piece because i thought it had an interesting slant on what's been happening in the very recent past with russia, iran, syria, hezbollah, isis, etc. w. got us into iraq for questionable reasons, obama wanted to make afghanistan his war, since he had to have a war he was willing to fight to be taken seriously as a candidate, but maybe he learned something. whether by design or by accident, it appears we've been - for the most part- extricated from the syrian mess courtesy of vladimir putin.

[GRG55]

Re: The Empire Strikes . . . ?

i agree that all 3 are in the bigger picture very much related. but they were distinguished and - to my eye- only the latest syrian developments were under discussion. i posted adams' piece because i thought it had an interesting slant on what's been happening in the very recent past with russia, iran, syria, hezbollah, isis, etc. w. got us into iraq for questionable reasons, obama wanted to make afghanistan his war, since he had to have a war he was willing to fight to be taken seriously as a candidate, but maybe he learned something. whether by design or by accident, it appears we've been - for the most part- extricated from the syrian mess courtesy of vladimir putin.

I'm increasingly of the view that the USA no longer sees the Middle East/Persian Gulf as particularly important to it. Slowly, but steadily declining oil product consumption in the USA, declining imports from that region and, perhaps, a growing recognition of the root sources of the terrorism it fears may be some reasons. Perhaps it sees China as now being more dependent on Middle East crude supply. The USA might be quite serious about shifting its focus from the historic Atlantic-Europe-Middle East alignment to the Pacific, as it has stated, and let China figure out how to deal with the "War Against Beheadings"