Military So ISIS & the Middle East

I'll be sure to remember that, Abdul.

Meanwhile I won't lose a nanosecond of sleep worrying about raghead propaganda.

 

That article is a load of partisan crap. Tony Badran is with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neo-conservative think tank and, being Lebanese, is obsessed with Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Iran. In the article he ignores everything else that is involved with Iran, such their nuclear weapons program, their hostility towards ISIS and AL Qaeda, and the fact that they are a major regional player that cannot be ignored.

“The fact that you are anti-Semitic,” Obama said of the Islamic Republic of Iran, “doesn’t preclude you from being rational.” Most subsequent commentary focused on whether the president actually understood anti-Semitism — by definition, a marker of unreason."​

In fact the definition of anti-semitism has nothing to do with rationality at all, it is simply racism against Jews. The Iranians may be hostile to Israel (and vice versa!) but they are not stupid, naive, or irrational. To imagine so is itself naive and foolish. He goes on to suggest that Obama is "aiding Hezbollah" because the US shares intelligence on Syria with the Lebanese Armed Forces, who of course are NOT Hezbollah. Hezbollah is fighting with Assad to make Lebanon part of Syria, which the Lebanese government opposes, of course.

He says that "the Camp David summit is a polite, public announcement of divorce between Obama and the countries of the Gulf'', which is utter nonsense. We have long-standing formal alliances with the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia including US military forces based there. We don't even have diplomatic relations with Iran and have them under crippling sanctions.

He says, "The function of the president’s studied comment on Iranian anti-Semitism, therefore, is to whitewash Khamenei and the hardliners." How can you take this tripe seriously? What Obama has said all along is that a treaty with Iran strengthens Iranian moderates and diminishes Iranian radicals. Ahmadenijad is already gone, Iranian youth are increasingly west-leaning and it is the islamic nationalism spurred by decades of anti-Americanism that is endangered by opening up Iran to more western influences and more importantly, reducing their capacity to develop nuclear weapons. All Obama said was that their anti-Israel rhetoric does not make them irrational, which is the truth. Iran cannot beat the US nor Israel in a nuclear war and they know it better than anybody.
Negotiating away Iranian nuclear weapons will be a great boon to Israel, obviously.

Explain this one to me. How exactly are Russia and China "playing" Obama? China is barely involved in the middle east and Russia is the biggest threat to Iran and has been for 80 years. Russia borders Iran and covets Iranian warm-water ports and oil wealth.

How can he stop Iran from being hostile to Israel when they are under a threat of military pre-emption from nuclear-armed Israel. The very idea is preposterous. He can stop them from developing nuclear weapons and enable the moderate elements in Iran to gain more power and eventually return to the secular state they were before 1979.

 

There is no united Sunni front. Far from it. We support the Syria rebels who happen to be Sunni. We fight ISIS because they are jihadists who happen to be Sunni. When the rags are fighting each other, they aren't fighting us. Right now Assad and Hezbollah are fighting ISIS and we should go on letting them kill each other. ISIS is fighting the corrupt Iraqi Shia and we should go on letting them kill each other. We support the Kurds, who are the only players in Iraq that are friendly to us and who will fight for their own turf.

 

Don't confuse the Syrian rebels with ISIS just because both are Sunni. Most muslims worldwide are Sunni. The Syrians are fighting a Civil War against their government. They range from moderates to jihadists radicals but their agenda is the overthrown of Assad.

ISIS was born in Iraq and is composed mostly of Iraqis who fought the US as Al Qaeda in Iraq until their atrocities and beheadings caused a rift between them an Al Qaeda. They took advantage of the civil war in Syria to grab territory for themselves on both died of the border. They have no interest in a new moderate Syrian government. They intend to establish their caliphate in its place. As soon as Assad is gone, they will turn on their Syrian rebel counterparts.

Are you talking about ISIS? I cannot agree. If you are talking about the Syrian rebels . . . it depends. There are hundreds of different rebel groups and no central leadership. Many of them we cannot trust. Some of them, like Khorasan are definitely terrorists plotting against the West. But some of them have been vetted and are being trained by the CIA in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. We can't just give the advanced weapons without training or they will simply fall into the hands of ISIS, who can't do much with them either. I think we will support Syrian groups like we did the Kurds if they are willing to fight and will accept training.

But honestly, even the best Syrian rebels are anti-American for the most part and would never make a democracy out of Syria. It's in our best interests to let them kill each other for as long as we can.