There’s a great deal of speculation about how we didn’t see ISIS becoming a big time threat until they were rolling through Iraq, murdering villages full of non-Sunni Muslims and making a general nuisance of themselves. How come?
We do, after all have 17 security agencies with a total of 1.5 million people in them who hold top security clearances. So how come we don’t know what the hell is going on in the world. 1.5 million people with top security clearance? That figure alone is ludicrous. If two people know a secret it isn’t a secret anymore. How the hell does that relate to 1.5 million? We have no security, none at all, and less intelligence.
Homeland Security comes with 250,000 employees and still we are worried about one of the 14 (That’s the figure quoted by FBI Director James Comey), Americans, who have fought with ISIS, coming home and blowing up the local post office. Why don’t we already know who these guys are? Actually, Comey says we do and it’s all under control. So what the hell is the media panicking about? I watched at least five different talking heads babbling in blind panic this weekend, blathering that we need more security when it looks like things here are mostly under control. Comey certainly seemed to think so. The problem is, that most of what our security apparatus does is protect their own asses, from their own screw-ups. Make no mistake, Snowden’s theft of files and Manning’s were intelligence fuckups. The government’s brutal and concentrated attacks on those two whistleblowers are all about revenge and very little about security.
The big question on the political side, the one that’s getting all the play, is how come we didn’t know about ISIS? The answer is we did. When Obama called them the JV of terrorism, they were. Like most JV players they grew up, got bigger and better and that’s actually where we didn’t pay attention. Ever since letting that one slip by, the intelligence community has been working overtime, covering its ass, just like they did after missing the disappearance of the Soviet Union; but there is also blame for the political side for not wanting to see what was happening in Iraq, especially since our military was telling them that after ten years and billions of dollars spent Iraq military was capable of defending its borders. It just wasn’t true, mainly because of the political situation in Iraq, caused by Maliki. So basically everyone is to blame.
The problem isn’t lack of knowledge. Everyone has known about the growth of militant Arab Islam all along. The problem is much more complicated than it seems and most people just don’t want to, or are not capable of dealing with, complicated problems. This is especially true in Syria.
There are four separate groups, fighting with regard to Syria. There is al-Nusra, ISIS, The Free Syrian Army and The Islamic Front, among others. All are fighting Assad and all are fighting each other. ISIS is ahead of the rest because for over a year they have had recruiting offices in Europe, Britain and the US. The primary objective of these groups was to topple Assad. That’s how they started. They have been able to grow because other interests in the area like Saudi Arabia found it convenient to use them as proxy forces against Assad and by religious association against Iran which is primarily Shiite. But it has backfired, just like the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 80’s who we supported against the Russians and who eventually turned against us as the Taliban.
Like the Mujahedeen in their battle with Russia, these groups started out only fighting Assad, moved to fighting each other and now, having had a little success, are fighting everyone who isn’t them.
John Allen coordinator of the American and Iraqi forces has said that the Iraqi army will not be ready to push ISIS out of Mosel for a year. There are those who think that estimate is a bit much if the political structure above it proves adequate to reforming the military high command. Interestingly enough, there are those in our government that will look to Iran to help with the problem by pressuring the new Iraq government to be more open and cooperative than was Maliki and possibly to provide troops to fight ISIS in Syria. None of the ISIS or other rebel forces would have been successful in Iraq if not for the fact that they were supported by Sunni tribal groups, backed by Saudi money.
Back in 2008, David Petraeus had an excellent plan to unite all the disparate fighting groups in Iraq. It was working but we allowed Cheney’s puppet, Maliki to get involved, He replaced Sunni officers who led the Sunni troops with Shiite officers to whom the Sunni troops had no alliance. Maliki then attacked the political structure of the country, hunting down Sunni’s, jailing and often killing them. Those who survived, sought new alliances with other Sunni groups in order to overthrow the government in Baghdad and the army fell apart when the Sunni troops refused to fight for Shiite political appointees, often untrained and incompetent. They just jettisoned their arms and uniforms in the face of another Sunni force, ISIS.
It is a very complicated situation, much more so than our main stream media is making it out to be, much more so than the average US citizen will understand because they cannot get to the facts or the competent research necessary to make an informed decision.
So what happens is that instead of putting together some kind of all encompassing foreign policy for the Middle East, because it’s too complicated for our politicians to understand and way too complicated for them to sell to a fairly slow public, we keep bombing places to get peace. But what happens when you end up with places that have no history of peace, when all the occupants of those places know is continual war and death. Even if you get peace or at least a secession of hostilities they don’t know how to deal with it; how to establish a country or a region where peace reigns. Iraq is the perfect example of this phenomenon. We invaded a country that had been crushed under a dictator for decades. We killed the dictator and we tried to show them how to set up a peaceful democracy but they had no history of peace and less of democracy, so even the guy we put in place as the best candidate, turned out to be a religiously bigoted ignorant, incompetent asshole who tried, as was the history of the country, to screw the Sunnis, the cult that was in the majority, and managed to completely screw up a perfectly laid out plan for peace in his country.
After 911 there was ample support for Bush’s war in Afghanistan and that support carried over when he took us illegally into Iraq with a mouthful of lies. After years of war there was no support for bombing last year in Syria or Iraq but now with the help of a gutless media and the barbarian behavior of ISIS we have accepted bombing and we are almost back to accepting boots on the ground. Then we get stupid statements from people like Chris Matthews who whines that if they can behead to one of our citizens overseas, what’s to stop them from coming here and doing the same? That’s right Chris, run out to Fire Island and keep watch for those LST’s full of Arabs.