++Israelis across the political spectrum think the Iran deal is flawed but they don't want Bibi to make his speech. The former mayor of New York,Rudy, tells Iranian Americans that Bibi fights for his country unlike President Obama.
++Now first off, there is no Iranian deal and what has been said is pure speculation about what such a deal may or may not look like. Also there doesn't exist an Iranian bomb. I guess we go to war now before anyone gets Weapons of Mass Destructions.
++I would like to remind people that we have had warnings since 2002 about the Iranian bomb. It hasn't appeared. The interim agreement actually did reverse momentum in this area.
++Now John McCain was upset with President Obama's conference on violent extremism because "You can't win a war unless you can name the enemy."
++Ok,that sounds reasonable. Who's the enemy? For most of Congress, not just John McCain, the enemy is Assad, Hezbollah,the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,Al-Nusra,and ISIS.
++The US military claims it is preparing an offensive to take back Mosul from ISIS in the spring. But They doubt their strategy because the Iraqis don't trust their army and fear the bloodthirsty Shi'ite militias. In addition,the Kurds don't work well with either Iraqi groups.
++Bernard-Henri Levy,the French Jewish intellectual who did not leave Paris for Israel,recommends arming the Kurds. One of the problems with that is that the US still insists Iraq is a nation-state and funnels its support through Baghdad. I'm sure there is a covert operation assisting the Kurds.
++Not that you would know from our media. The Kurds look like they will separate ISIS in Syria from ISIS in Iraq by seizing the critical highway between the two countries.
++ISIS is a millennial cult which believes the end times will come when "Crusader' troops enter southern Turkey and a small town in eastern Syria. Their whole strategy is to hang on if attacked by US and allied ground forces.
++As the Young Turks said this week, we are falling into their trap.
++So I go back to my previous posts asking what is in the national interest and how can we avoid a strategy that has so many enemies and so many moving parts.
++What has not been mentioned is the massive upheaval of populations in Syria,Iraq,Lebanon and jordan. It still seems to me that the United States and all its allies should pump billions and billions of dollars in relief aid and humanitarian assistance, including the construction of schools in these areas. It will pay off a hundred fold. Aid agencies report they are way behind the demand in servicing these people, who also now pose to destabilize Lebanon and Jordan.
++Rachel Maddow in Friday has a short clip of the three teenage girls from England who skipped school to travel to Syria. This segment of her show was matched by a young child soldier, who had been wounded in a firefight and escaped ISIS.
++It seems we have to step up a program to rehabilitate the child soldiers before it is too late. We failed in Liberia and Sierra Leone, which left a generation of young paralyzed with guilt over their brutal acts. American assistance programs did not deal with the aspects of their problems, which were ruled by drug addiction and alcoholism. Certainly, a sophisticated program came be developed with international aid agencies that would facilitate the re-entry of this younger population into their societies.
++Human Rights reporters have been cataloguing the atrocities of all sides. One of the peculiar events of the past two weeks has been the exclusive attention to ISIS while neglecting the Assad regime's accelerating their war crimes. This is also true of the Iraqi militias in Iraq who have been slaughtering Sunnis who have had nothing to do with ISIS.
++So you want to get into this. At least with the Iraq War, you had a dictator and his sadistic son, which were the prime targets. So anyone could believe anything about them. But strip away the situation where personalities are murky and alliances are uncertain you have a situation worse than Vietnam or even the last Iraq War.
++If President Obama ever decides to love America,he can prove it by keeping us out of that mess.
++Today,the DHS announced they were taking Al Shabab phone calls threatening to attack American shopping malls seriously. The prime target is the Mall of America in Minnesota.
++So what do our Congressional warriors want to do, defund Homeland Security. They have two work days to sort this out.
++And meanwhile,our warrior Congresscritters haven't considered the Authorization Of Military Force Resolution. House conservatives don't want to pass it because they do not trust President Obama. Liberals on the Democratic side want it to be restrained and not as open as Obamas draft.
++Sheppard Smith at Fox News has been frustrated with all the critics of Obama's plans and interviewed one of my old employees at IRI, Ambassador Stuart Holliday. Stuart had worked on the Middle East in my days at the Republican Institute. But Sheppard cut him a new one when Stuart fell back on the right-wing cliches--more intelligence, coordination among allies,possible boots on the ground.
++What struck me about Holliday's statement was his support of President Cessi in Egypt and his bombing of ISIS in Libya. Conservatives love the Egyptian President because he has slaughter thousands of so-called adherents of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, Cessi says openly that the United States supports ISIS along with Qatar. Great ally.
++Another potential ally, according to Holliday, is Morocco, which illegally holds the Western Sahara. Lately the Spanish and Moroccans have collaborated in sweeping jihadists out of Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Northern Africa.
++Curious about this. This is a pure Republican formulation. It was Algeria that stopped Al Qaeda from seizing their oilfields. But in GOPland, Algeria is not a potential ally. Instead, it is a model of counter-insurgency as run by the French and includes water boarding.
++I'll let Holliday off on this one because only Democrats back Algeria. That's an old one that goes back to the last century.
++So what do you have? A region going through an epic upheaval without any visible strategy to bring order there. And don't even try to play a mental game where you could. It's not feasible.
++I still say my all-humanitarian approach will bring you better results. But the zeitgeist won't allow it.
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