Obama Is Taking Personal Control Over The War Against ISIS In Syria

Discussion in 'Middle East' started by longknife, Sep 18, 2014.

  1. longknife

    longknife New Member

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  2. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    US President Barack Obama will personally sign off on any airstrike targeting Islamic State militants in Syria, Julian Barnes and Carol Lee of The Wall Street Journal report.

    With the high level of personal control in Syria, "Obama can better ensure the operation remain focused on his main goal for that part of the campaign: weakening the militants' hold on territory in neighboring Iraq," WSJ writes.

    The US has conducted 174 strikes in Iraq and is preparing Islamic State (aka ISIS) targets in Syria. Obama has sent hundreds of special operations advisers to Iraq to assist Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish peshmerga while asking Congress to grant the authority to train and arm vetted factions of the Syrian opposition.

    Officials told The Journal that the commander-in-chief wanted "to make sure the military actions in Syria are more like the counterterrorism operations in Somalia or Yemen."


    Obama first detailed the "counterterrorism strategy" model last week, and NBC correspondent Richard Engel subsequently blasted the Somalia-Yemen comparison as an "oversimplification" and "wildly off-base" because both of the African governments cooperate with the US and American special forces on the ground.

    "It's not at all the situation we are seeing in Iraq and Syria," Engel said, noting that Assad was a hostile adversary of the US. Furthermore, Iraq's government is heavily influenced by Iran, Assad's main backer.

    In any case, it seems the US commander-in-chief is focused on ISIS while avoiding Assad. Obama said he would retaliate if US planes were targeted in Syria, but Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. would "communicate" with Assad's government to avoid any potential clashes.

    Meanwhile, the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels fighting Assad are currently being bombed out of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and the last urban area in which the FSA has a significant presence, while ISIS continues to be largely left alone.


    Even ISIS admits it's not being hit by air strikes; only FSA is. Again, no US plan to stop this: http://t.co/J0yUWLCoTf
    — Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) September 18, 2014
    And Washington has hinted that it wants the FSA to primarily fight ISIS as opposed to Assad. But the nationalist Syrian rebels are furious at this demand and have vowed to use any support provided to them against the brutal regime.


    To understand rebel priorities, ask about origins of barrel bombs killing their children. (It's regime's Hama Airport, not ISIS's al-Raqqa.)
    — Abu al-Jamajem (@AbuJamajem) September 14, 2014

    Assad's Plan

    The immediate danger of Obama's Syria strategy is that the FSA would be effectively wiped out before the US training program, which will take 8 to 12 months to deploy fighters, makes an impact.

    Basically, it's a trap, given that the primary objective of Assad and his backers in Tehran and Moscow since the beginning of the Syrian uprising has been to create a choice between the regime and Sunni extremists like ISIS.


    "A major step in the achievement of this objective would be the killing of the nationalist opposition in Aleppo and elsewhere," Fred Hof, a former special adviser for transition in Syria under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrote in the Atlantic Council.


    Hussam Marie, the Free Syrian Army spokesman for northern Syria, told The New York Times that the loss of FSA positions in and around Aleppo would be “unrecoverable” and “a blow to our shared goals of a moderate Syria.”


    Hof told NYT that the US was "unconsciously walking into an ambush" as Assad and ISIS obliterate the revolutionaries.

    In any case, Obama is now taking control of a conflict that has been shaped by his reluctance to be involved in the Middle East amid attempted rapprochement with Iran.

    Consequently, it seems the president "is still keeping the [Syrian] civil war at arm's length, still skeptical of building up the FSA, and as unwilling as ever to support the ouster of Assad," Mike Doran, senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy, told Business Insider earlier this week.

    "Practically speaking, Obama is in an alignment with Iran against ISIS," Doran added. "That includes alignment with Assad."
     
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  3. Marlowe

    Marlowe New Member

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    Old Arab proverb. --- ------.:wink:


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  4. Riot

    Riot New Member

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    So Obama wants to arm the rebels that are corrupted by Al Qaeda ! Nice. Didn't he try this already? Didn't Americans spoke out against arming Al Qaeda. Please explain to me again why Obama really wants to over throw Assad? Isn't this what the left complained about with Qaddafi and Saddam? How has that worked out for us?
    Libya in turn oil while Isis gains ground there.
    Iraq? Nough said.
    But the left wingers are all for doing exactly the same in Syria? Wanting to arm radical rebels.
    Left wing hypocrites. As usual
     
  5. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    What about oil in Libya? Production is at an all time low because oil company personnel leave when it heats up and becomes dangerous.
     
  6. longknife

    longknife New Member

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    And I cannot believe anyone in Congress approved this.

    Don't they remember how Truman screwed out troops in Korea?
    Or LBJ screwed our troops in 'Nam?

    At least Pres Bush 1 & 2 let the generals make the decisions. Well, almost? We should've gone all the way to Baghdad the 1st time.
     
  7. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Papa Bush was smarter than Dubya... He knew what would happen if they forced Saddam out.
     
  8. Toefoot

    Toefoot Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I said the same in another thread. I can not wrap my head around it. Recent US history shows this has been a bad road to travel.

    This tells me the selective targets in Syria are going to be very limited and are of political consideration in nature. Another bad road.




     
  9. stayingconfused

    stayingconfused New Member

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    We can not win a war from the white house. He needs to hand over the reigns to our military leaders and let them take the fight to them. Obama needs to give the resources to our military to squash this NOW, not next month not a year from now but NOW.
     
  10. Riot

    Riot New Member

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    All Isis want is an Islamic state. I say give them Mexico. The Mexican people don't want to be there anyway. Problem fixed
     
  11. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    Obama wanting to get rid of Assad may boil down to him saying "Assad must go" and then Assad... not going.

    But arming the Syrian rebels put's our strategy to diminish (or whatever we're doing) ISIS at cross purposes. The rebels don't care about ISIS, they care about Assad. Although I'm all for a robust response to ISIS, arming the rebels don't do anything to accomplish that mission. I'm surprised there wasn't more discussion about this in the House when they voted for it.
     
  12. Riot

    Riot New Member

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    So we are arming the Syrian rebels to take out Isis when they can nearly manage to stay alive fighting Assad. We are asking them to fight two fronts when they can't even fight one. Aren't some of these rebels Al Qaeda anyway?
    Why does Obama want Assad out so bad? There is UN proof that it might have been the rebels that launched that chemical attack. Not Assad. Besides there are worst killings going on in Africa then Assad ever done. What's in it for Obama? Could it be just like Qaddafi and Saddam? Is it because Assad wants out of the American petro dollar?
    Please explain to me why Obama wants Assad out so bad?
     
  13. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    That's all I got.

    Getting rid of Assad right now hurts our strategy to get ISIS. This whole plan is crazy
     
  14. longknife

    longknife New Member

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  15. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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  16. longknife

    longknife New Member

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    Uh, shouldn't this go into a Conspiracy Theory thread? :roll:
     

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