US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

[Polish_Silver]

your tax $ at work

. . . sending the US air force to Iraq to drop bombs to bomb the US bombs that ISIS was bombing Iraqis with, so as to make Iraq "safe" again. Further, the US will now also arm the remaining Syrian rebels, whom originally split off and created ISIS in the first place, to fight the ISIS terrorists expanding into Syria and threatening the Assad regime . . .

Loved your summary Adeptus. I highly recommend the Vintage woody Allen film "Bananas ."

According to the BBC, Isis is sheer ruthlessness, but I don't see how it threatens the security of the United States.

It's hardly the only place that could generate terrorists. Getting rid of Isis would just scatter the radicals in different directions. At least now, they are kept busy by having to defend territory and fight with Kurds, Assad, etc.

[GRG55]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

I have 2 questions. I assume the "other" is mostly the US itself. Is this correct? Who else makes up the "other" category in any significant amount? Thanks for all of the info you post GRG55. It is always enlightening and appreciated.

The chart shows imports, and does not include domestic USA production. Import source will vary over time, but a snapshot of June 2014 data the USA imported crude oil from (in descending order of volume in each category):

• OPEC Other: Kuwait, Angola, Ecuador, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates and Algeria;

• Non-OPEC Other: Colombia, Brazil, Chad, Peru, Argentina, Congo, Indonesia, Guatemala, Thailand, Mauritania.

[Polish_Silver]

Oil definitely part of it!

What do you think is the real purpose of our seemingly endless military involvement in the Middle East? . . ..

I'd say oil is definitely part of it. The US may get it's oil from Venezuela, not Arabia, but the US economy is vulnerable to oil prices, which are set by the world wide supply, which is critically dependent on the middle east. The US foreign policy has been influenced/manipulated by allies who are also dependent on ME oil. I am thinking of Iran. Britain tricked the US into deposing Mosaddegh because they thought the Shaw would sell the oil more cheaply.

Opec raised prices in the 1970s as blowback for the US helping Israel. There was also a deal that the Saudi's would recycle petro dollars by hiring US companies to build infrastructure and by buying T-notes.

My brother thought the USSR cared about Afghanistan because of it's proximity to the Persian Gulf.

If you watch Farenheit 911, there is an argument that the US occupation of Afghanistan was focused on oil pipline routes.

I don't think oil is the whole story. If it was, the US would not be supporting Israel. I think religious loyalty is also a factor.

There is now also the popular fear of terrorism. I doubt that this is the "real" reason for USA middle eastern exploits, but it certainly creates some grass roots support for all the wars. People don't seem to grasp that air craft carriers and jet fighters cannot defend you from terrorists.

[GRG55]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

+1

I appreciate your correction GRG. Facile. Good word.

What do you think is the real purpose of our seemingly endless military involvement in the Middle East? The usual reasons given are oil, to protect the USD reserve currency status, or because there's money to be made in war. Or one which is seldom discussed, which is to keep our soldiers over there rather than have them discharged and unemployed over here. All likely either too simple or red herrings.

As hard as I try to suss out the truth of things, much of what I read is either too technical for me to understand or it seems reasonable until I read a rebuttal, which then seems reasonable until I read another rebuttal... I don't know how to weight the significance of all the pieces of data in relation to the big picture. I rarely know when vital information has been omitted from an argument. Asking the right questions is the best way to get to the right answer, but I seldom even know what questions to ask. Thus I am all too often too easily influenced without even realizing it. Facile.

Sharp as a marble. That's me.

Not a correction shiny!...just an observation that it seems a great deal more complicated than a simple "It's all about the oil".

The USA, and some of the western European nations, have become quite adept at raining down bombs (or firing drone carried missiles as the case might be) on the heads of foreign civilians in recent years. Many of these targets would not seem to have much strategic importance as oil sources.

And in some of those instances the mis-information being promulgated in the western press is breathtakingly idiotic. The talk about mixing it up in Syria somehow being tied to a pipeline route to move Qatari gas to Europe is an example. To the get the gas to Syria, Qatar would have to build a pipeline overland across Saudi Arabia, or underwater to the head of the Gulf through either Saudi or Iranian waters and then overland across southern Iraq. Relations between Qatar and these nations have never been good, and they are at a particular low point now given Qatar's funding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and their allies in Syria (against both the Iranian backed Assad regime and the allegedly "moderate" USA/Saudi backed fighters).

According the Wiki, the global arms industry is estimated to be $1.5 trillion annually, some 2.5% of world GDP. Not all of that would seem to be about oil...

[Polish_Silver]

Shades of Ike

Not a correction shiny!...just an observation that it seems a great deal more complicated than a simple "It's all about the oil".
. .

According the Wiki, the global arms industry is estimated to be $1.5 trillion annually, some 2.5% of world GDP. Not all of that would seem to be about oil...

Not chump change. And given that each $ of armament that is actually used probably has a cost many times that in health and property damage, we have a major cause of the world's poverty. Remember when Carter wanted to make the US the breadbasket of the world, instead of the Arms merchant? At least he had the guts to talk about it.

[shiny!]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

Not a correction shiny!...just an observation that it seems a great deal more complicated than a simple "It's all about the oil".

The USA, and some of the western European nations, have become quite adept at raining down bombs (or firing drone carried missiles as the case might be) on the heads of foreign civilians in recent years. Many of these targets would not seem to have much strategic importance as oil sources.

And in some of those instances the mis-information being promulgated in the western press is breathtakingly idiotic. The talk about mixing it up in Syria somehow being tied to a pipeline route to move Qatari gas to Europe is an example. To the get the gas to Syria, Qatar would have to build a pipeline overland across Saudi Arabia, or underwater to the head of the Gulf through either Saudi or Iranian waters and then overland across southern Iraq. Relations between Qatar and these nations have never been good, and they are at a particular low point now given Qatar's funding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and their allies in Syria (against both the Iranian backed Assad regime and the allegedly "moderate" USA/Saudi backed fighters).

According the Wiki, the global arms industry is estimated to be $1.5 trillion annually, some 2.5% of world GDP. Not all of that would seem to be about oil...

Thank you for this, GRG. This reminds me of how the media reported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At the time of the invasion, the USSR had been struggling with poor wheat harvests. They were going broke from importing both oil and wheat. The press reported the invasion of Afghanistan as a drive towards Iranian oil but many Punjabi Sikhs believed it was a drive towards Punjabi wheat. The Punjab is considered the breadbasket of India.

More misinformation six years later with Operation Bluestar. The state-controlled media reported it to be about suppressing Sikh terrorists; this was the story carried by the rest of the world. It was actually about suppressing a growing secession movement stemming from resistance to governmental policies on water and wheat.

Sikh farmers were protesting the diversion of their water to other regions of India in violation of international water laws. At the same time, India was also trying to force these farmers to sell their entire wheat crops to the government for less than the cost of production. The farmers were going under. They refused to sell to the government at a loss and began blocking the wheat trains. A secession movement was growing, with calls to turn the Punjab into a Sikh homeland. Operation Bluestar was the government's response.

[GRG55]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

Thank you for this, GRG. This reminds me of how the media reported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At the time of the invasion, the USSR had been struggling with poor wheat harvests. They were going broke from importing both oil and wheat. The press reported the invasion of Afghanistan as a drive towards Iranian oil but many Punjabi Sikhs believed it was a drive towards Punjabi wheat. The Punjab is considered the breadbasket of India.

More misinformation six years later with Operation Bluestar. The state-controlled media reported it to be about suppressing Sikh terrorists; this was the story carried by the rest of the world. It was actually about suppressing a growing secession movement stemming from resistance to governmental policies on water and wheat.

Sikh farmers were protesting the diversion of their water to other regions of India in violation of international water laws. At the same time, India was also trying to force these farmers to sell their entire wheat crops to the government for less than the cost of production. The farmers were going under. They refused to sell to the government at a loss and began blocking the wheat trains. A secession movement was growing, with calls to turn the Punjab into a Sikh homeland. Operation Bluestar was the government's response.

And the inevitable result for Mrs. Ghandi...

[don]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

Wallerstein weighs in . . .

"The United States Heading for a Crash"

President Barack Obama has told the United States, and in particular its Congress, that it must do something very major in the Middle East to stop disaster. The analysis of the presumed problem is extremely murky, but the patriotic drums are being turned to high pitch and almost everyone is for the moment going along. A cooler head might say that they are all flailing around in desperation about a situation that the United States has the major responsibility for creating. They don't know what to do, so they act in panic.

The explanation is simple. The United States is in serious decline. Everything is going wrong. And in the panic, they are like a driver of a powerful automobile who has lost control of it, and doesn't know how to slow it down. So instead it is speeding it up and heading towards a major crash. The car is turning in all directions and skidding. It is self-destructive for the driver but the crash can bring disaster to the rest of the world as well.

A lot of attention is focused on what Obama has and hasn't done. Even his closest defenders seem to doubt him. An Australian commentator, writing in the Financial Times, summed it up in one sentence: "In 2014 the world has grown suddenly weary of Barack Obama." I wonder if Obama has not grown weary of Obama. But it's a mistake to pin the blame just on him. Virtually no one among U.S. leaders has been making alternative proposals that are more sensible. Quite the contrary. There are the warmongers who want him to bomb everybody and right away. There are the politicians who really think it will make a lot of difference who will win the next elections in the United States.

A rare voice of sanity came in an interview in the New York Times with Daniel Benjamin, who had been the U.S. State Department's top antiterrorism advisor during Obama's first term. He called the so-called ISIS threat a "farce" with "members of the cabinet and top military officers all over the place describing the threat in lurid terms that are not justified." He says that what they have been saying is without any "corroborated evidence" and just demonstrates how easy it is for officials and the media to "spin the public into a panic." But who is listening to Mr. Benjamin?

At the moment, and with the help of gruesome photos showing the beheading of two American journalists by the caliphate, the polls show enormous support in the United States for military action. But how long will this last? The support is there as long as it seems there are concrete results. Even Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey in advocating military action says it will take at least three years. Multiply three by five and one might come nearer to how long this will go on. And the U.S. public is sure to become quickly disenchanted.

For the moment, what Obama is proposing is some bombing in Syria, no U.S. troops "on the ground" but increased special troops (up to about 2000 now) as trainers in Iraq (and probably elsewhere). When Obama was running for president in 2008, he made many promises, as is normal for a politician. But his signature promise was to get out of Iraq, and of Afghanistan. He is not going to keep it. Indeed, he is getting the United States into more countries.

Obama's coalition is going to offer "training" to those they define as "good guys." And it seems this training is to take place in Saudi Arabia. Good for Saudi Arabia. They can vet all the trainees, and judge which they can trust and which they can't. This may make it possible for the Saudi regime (at least as confused as the U.S. regime) to appear to be doing something, and help them survive a little longer.

There are ways of tamping down this catastrophic scenario. They involve however a decision to shift from warfare to political deals between all sorts of groups who don't like each other and don't trust each other. Such political deals are not unknown, but they are very difficult to arrange, and fragile when first made, until they solidify. One major element in such deals coming to fruition in the Middle East is less involvement of the United States, not more. Nobody trusts the United States, even when they momentarily call for U.S. assistance in doing this or that. The New York Times notes that, at the meeting Obama convened to pursue his new coalition, support from the Middle East countries present was "tepid" and "reluctant" because there is "increased mistrust of the United States on all sides." So even if they go along in some limited fashion, nobody is going to show gratitude for any U.S. assistance. The bottom line is that the people of the Middle East want to run their own show, not fulfill a U.S. vision of what's said to be good for them.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

[touchring]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

Wallerstein weighs in . . .

"The United States Heading for a Crash"

President Barack Obama has told the United States, and in particular its Congress, that it must do something very major in the Middle East to stop disaster. The analysis of the presumed problem is extremely murky, but the patriotic drums are being turned to high pitch and almost everyone is for the moment going along. A cooler head might say that they are all flailing around in desperation about a situation that the United States has the major responsibility for creating. They don't know what to do, so they act in panic.

Because of MH17, regardless of who the actual culprit is, the US has lost a lot of credibility through the initial accusations followed by a sudden media blackout and now a blackbox report that reveals nothing, not even the weapon used. You can't fool the world forever.

Had Romney won the election, the world will be less chaotic and the US will be in a much stronger position.

[vt]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

Credibility??

Why did the rebels prevent access to the crash site for days?

What evidence was removed in those days?

No one would expect a black box to show anything with a sudden missile strike.

The credibility issue is with the Russians and rebels. The entire world understands that except for Putin apologists.

Now one can make a case for both Russia and the U.S. playing power games with Ukraine.

Romney and Hillary (with Bill's help too) would have been better than Obama.

[touchring]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

The credibility issue is with the Russians and rebels. The entire world understands that except for Putin apologists.

Now one can make a case for both Russia and the U.S. playing power games with Ukraine.

Of course, Russia is destabilizing East Ukraine to thwart the pro-West revolution, no doubt about that, and the stealth annexation of Crimea is not honorable either.

But MH17 is really another point which in my opinion is even more important than the entire Ukraine itself.

In Asia, if you ask the man in the street where is Ukraine, he won't be able to point out.

MH17 is bigger and more important than what happens in Ukraine. Whoever is responsible, it's a big black mark for the free world.

[aaron]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

What is "MH17"? --> That was my first thought. Oh... it must be the plane that was shot down.
...Or was that the one at the bottom of the ocean? Remember the pings?

[LazyBoy]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

Wallerstein weighs in . . .
...
A rare voice of sanity came in an interview in the New York Times with Daniel Benjamin, who had been the U.S. State Department's top antiterrorism advisor during Obama's first term. He called the so-called ISIS threat a "farce" with "members of the cabinet and top military officers all over the place describing the threat in lurid terms that are not justified." He says that what they have been saying is without any "corroborated evidence" and just demonstrates how easy it is for officials and the media to "spin the public into a panic."

Could this be the case? Are we being convinced that ISIS is a bigger deal than it really is?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

Could this be the case? Are we being convinced that ISIS is a bigger deal than it really is?

Yes.

[don]

Re: US declares war on ISIS - Double FacePalm

what we've been set up for . . .

Pentagon: US ground troops may join Iraqis in combat against Isis

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and General Martin Dempsey say US is ‘at war’ with Isis, which will ‘threaten our homeland’

The US defense secretary told senators on Tuesday that America is “at war” with the Islamic State (Isis), while the senior US military officer suggested US ground troops might directly join Iraqis in combat.

Stripping away an earlier reluctance by the Obama administration to declare its airstrikes against Isis a full-blown war, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said Isis will “directly threaten our homeland and our allies” unless the US confronts the jihadist army militarily.

“This will not be an easy or brief effort,” Hagel said, who defined victory as “when we complete the mission of degrading, destroying and defeating” Isis.

A day after US warplanes expanded the war south-west of Baghdad, Hagel and General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended Barack Obama’s newest war before the Senate armed services committee, many of whose members have wanted Obama to take the US into war in Syria even before the rise of Isis.

On Wednesday, Hagel said, General Lloyd Austin, the commanding officer of US Central Command, will brief Obama on upcoming “targeted actions against [Isis] safe havens in Syria”, the clearest signal yet of an imminent expansion of an air war Hagel said would “not be restrained by a border in name only”. On the targeting list is Isis “command and control, logistics capabilities, and infrastructure”.

Dempsey, who has long been reluctant to re-introduce US forces into Middle Eastern wars, signaled that some of the 1,600 US military “advisers” Obama deployed to Iraq since June may directly fight Isis, despite Obama’s frequent public assurances that US ground troops will not engage in combat.

“If we reach the point where I believe our advisors should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific [Isis] targets, I will recommend that to the president,” Dempsey said, preferring the term “close combat advising”.

Dempsey said the air war in Iraq and Syria “won’t look like a shock and awe campaign”, but will instead be “persistent and sustainable”. He envisaged no end for it, but said Isis’ ultimate defeat will be a “generational” effort during which “moderate” Muslims abandon its ideology – raising questions about what the US military’s actual endpoint will be in pursuing the goal of “degrading and ultimately defeating” Isis, Obama’s stated goal.

now who wouldn't go for that ?