That great unembedded reporter Patrick Cockburn offers a beginning-of-the-year summary of the mess that is Iraq War 3.0 (and Syrian War 1.0) for the U.S. He sums things up in a nutshell this way: The mutual hatreds of its enemies remain Isiss strongest card. Heres how his piece begins. Tom Islamic State (Isis) will remain at the centre of the escalating crisis in the Middle East this year as it was in 2014. The territories it conquered in a series of lightning campaigns last summer remain almost entirely under its control, even though it has lost some towns to the Kurds and Shia militias in recent weeks. United States air strikes in Iraq from 8 August and Syria from 23 September may have slowed up Isis advances and inflicted heavy casualties on its forces in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani. But Isis has its own state machinery and is conscripting tens of thousands of fighters to replace casualties, enabling it to fight on multiple fronts from Jalawla on Iraqs border with Iran to the outskirts of Aleppo in Syria. In western Syria, Isis is a growing power as the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad loses its advantage of fighting a fragmented opposition, that is now uniting under the leadership of Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda. Yet it is only a year ago that President Obama dismissed the importance of Isis, comparing it to a junior university basketball team. Speaking of Isis last January, he said that the analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think it is accurate, is if a JV [junior varsity] team puts on Lakers uniforms it doesnt make them Kobe Bryant [famed player for the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team]. A year later Obamas flip tone and disastrously inaccurate judgement jumps out at one from the page, but at the time it must have been the majority view of his national security staff. Underrating the strength of Isis was the third of three great mistakes made by the US and its Western allies in Syria since 2011, errors that fostered the explosive growth of Isis. Between 2011 and 2013 they were convinced that Assad would fall in much the same way as Muammar Gaddafi had in Libya. independent.co.uk/voices/comment/war-with-isis-the-west-is-wrong-again-in-its-fight-against-terror-9955853.html
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 15:00:00 +0000
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