Atlas Monitor | 25 Sept 2014
Obama’s ISIS strategy is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma
US president Obama unilaterally authorized attacks on targets in Syria this week bringing his war card tally to seven countries since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. The irony cannot be overstated. Other countries include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq.
The justification for this latest attack is to “destroy and degrade” the radical jihadi group ISIS that has overrun parts of Iraq and established control and command capabilities inside Aleppo and Raqqa in northern Syria.
Obama has concocted a 40 nation “coalition of the willing” which includes five Arab nations – Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates; some of whom, along with the US helped create and have supported the rise of radical jihadi groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Martin E. Dempsey admitted before a senate committee that US allies are funding ISIS. US senator Rand Paul notes that America’s involvement in the transfer of 600 tonnes of weapons to Syrian “rebels” last year alone has made ISIS stronger.
Obama’s plan to fight ISIS by arming ISIS calls into question the wisdom of strategy for dealing with this putative threat. Startling revelations have emerged that the Obama regime are paying Syrian rebels monthly salaries.
Veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk has suggested that attacks on ISIS will have the effect of keeping the Bashar al-Assad government in power, whom the Obama regime have been attempting to overthrow by covert means.
On top of the incoherent strategy for dealing with ISIS is the equally incoherent legal justification which invokes the 2001 Authorization of Use of Force (AUMF) passed by the US Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. However, the AUMF stipulates that it is meant for the perpetrators of 9/11 who predate the existence of ISIS and is therefore not applicable.
In appealing to outdated and inapplicable legislation, Obama has also unconstitutionally bypassed Congress as he did when authorizing the attack on Libya in 2011. Not only has Obama no justification under US domestic law, there is no international legal justification for this military action.
As equally incoherent as the legal basis for attacking ISIS in Syria is the strategy which US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power admits is to attack the Assad government with whom ISIS is fighting.
The US is effectively attacking ISIS who they’ve previously supported in ISIS’s fight against the Assad government as well as running a covert agenda to attack Assad who is fighting ISIS. Attempts at rationalizing this seemingly incongruent policy argue that the US are not supporting radical jihadi groups, such as ISIS, but “moderate” rebels of which there are none according to Pentagon advisor Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer.
Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters have been defecting to the Al Qaeda affiliated Jabat al-Nusra group who FSA officers note are better resourced. In May 2013 it was reported that over 3000 FSA troops had defected.
In 2011 Assad noted that the FSA was simply a front for Al Qaeda The West and America in particular have had; at best a bizarre relationship with Islamic radical groups; and at worst been involved in a duplicitous and cynical conspiracy.
Hilary Clinton perversely admitted that the US funded these group to the point where they attained the capabilities to run amok globally.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8A6Gq4I6ys?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360]
From the beginning of the Syrian crisis Al Qaeda and its affiliates have constituted a significant faction of the rebels who are backed by the West, including NATO member countries and partners, in what could be characterised as a 21st century manifestation of the ‘Carter-Brzezinski doctrine’. Just as the US mobilised and supported the militant Islamist Mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s, today this same militant Islamist movement is receiving similar support.
Ultimately the US led coalition attacks on ISIS in Syria is about an ongoing US and NATO led, “in collaboration with the feudal Persian Gulf Monarchies of the GCC,” destabilizing campaign designed to reconfigure the Middle East by forging strategic alliances in the region to precipitate regime change.
This plan serves US & NATO geopolitical interests and has been exposed, articulated and documented by various sources including Wesley Clark, Seymour Hersh and the Project for the New American Century.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360]
