Your Other Left: Sectarian Doldrums

Every journalist, public intellectual and mouthbreathing tv personality has an opinion on what western strategy should be in Syria in light of the Russian involvement.  It makes for a chaos in perpetual regeneration. However, the vacuum we've created in Syria by our inaction and the lack of leadership from president Obama and Mr Cameron having now been filled by the vile dictator Putin might make western strategy more simple.  That is if we operate under the assumption we take advantage of the opportunity.

Many Sunni Arab nations in the region have been unwilling to take action against ISIS and in many cases have been supporting the Islamic State materially and strategically.  This is because the dominant concern for the Sunni regimes is the threat posed by the rogue axis of the Syrian Ba'athist Alawite regime of Bashar Al Assad, the Shia twelver rapture cult IRGC, and their protector Vladimir Putin.  Setting aside the many severe human rights offenses and the warped ideological export regime in Saudi Arabia and the embarrassment that is Turkey under the AKP and the unabashed Hitler loving islamist Erdogan, it isn't difficult to see their point.  Saudi Arabia and Turkey have long been allies to the west.  Saudi Arabia is actually surprisingly eager and cooperative in diplomatic matters despite their vile domestic barbarism and their fetish for pushing wahabbi islam on the world, and Turkey has become a serious liability in recent years after only being a problematic partner in the Cold War.  Perhaps AKP lobbyist Porter Goss has something to do with it.

The Sunni powers are the worst kind of allies but they aren't wrong about the rogue theocratic axis.  The Islamic Republic of Iran is controlled by a Twelver Shia Armageddon cult of revolution hijacking Bonapartists, pseudo-democratic Bolshevists, and sadistic senior citizens with a lust for WMD who lead the world in terror sponsorship, human rights violations, executions, and abuse of civil liberties.  Their private Libyan fascist militia Hezbollah has a nifty flag featuring a not at all subtle mushroom cloud, as if promotion of the Rosetta Stone of anti-Semitism aka the Protocols of the Elders of Zion weren't despicable enough.  The Islamic Republic has been successful at keeping their overwhelmingly young population of regime haters from executing a coup, but their Alawite subsidiary in Syria, the Ba'athist mass murderer Bashar Al Assad has not had the same luck keeping his prison riot of a country under control.

The Syrian Civil War is quite possibly the most confusing conflict in history with the sectarian militias, foreign fighters, state proxies, side dealing enemies, jihadist guerillas and the criminal sex shame cult as alternative makeshift startup state with dystopian fantasy appeal for the young and repressed youth seeking the medieval slave state of their dreams.  The success of the Iranian cult and the survival of the genocidal tumor Assad would not be ongoing if not for their benefactor who is neither Shia or Alawite, the crimeboss, demigod, media magnate and "all things to all creeps" dictator leading the Russia Today Orthodox Church Federation to the ideal Russian imperial future: the Russian imperial past.  Vladimir Putin may seem like a mutant villain from a cyberpunk comic book, but he's much worse.

Imagine the absurdity of a former KGB bureaucrat with a predilection for poisoning, shooting and bludgeoning political opponents being elected, reelected and then claiming squatters rights in the Kremlin.  Once there he merges government with the imperial nostalgist-cum-Stalin revivalist colporteurs of arch-Christian national chauvinism in the Russian Orthodox church, reverses decades of nuclear non-proliferation, recycles the Sudetenland strategy in Crimea, and melds Europe's preeminent cultural felo de se in the masochistic far left and the sniveling far right.   He sashays his way across the wreckage of his Caligulan bacchanalia fueled by adrenaline, tabloid journalism standards and Mafia panache, and remakes his proud country into a bitter vassalage of his knavish personality, a dour thraldom of belligerent jingoism, and a quickly closing society of maimed subjects to a theocratic syndicate of crony corporatist oligarchs and feudal lords oblivious to their state of geopolitical Siberia and with Herculean poll numbers Putin comes to the rescue to "fight Isis." In fact he is the bodyguard of an empowered Assad and the errand boy for the rogue axis of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 The goal whether he knows it or not is the crushing of Saudi Arabia, which is simultaneously pure tribalism and a totally legitimate threat to the security and economy of the region and the world. The increased influence of Iran and Russia, their support for Assad and the racism against Kurds, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities makes ISIS the more attractive choice for Turkey and their neighbors.  This is obscene, but it is also the reality.

The presence of Russian troops along with Iran and Assad is going to be tough for the Islamic state and the other jihadist and radical groups fighting Assad in Syria.  The alliances between these groups and the regional regimes will be increasingly difficult to conceal as this conflict continues.

The western democracies should leave Syria to this emerging international disaster.  It does nobody any good to have Arab countries see the US and our allies as partners with Iran and Assad.  Let Russia be the visible enemy in that regard.  What western democratic open societies should do is focus efforts on Iraq and the Kurdish areas of Syria.  The strategy should be to support the Kurds, remove ISIS from all Kurdish areas and Iraq, in so doing humiliate ISIS militarily and drive them into Syria where there will no doubt be a clusterfuck of mammoth proportions.

There really is no winning strategy or path to victory conceivable in Syria with Russia and Iran so heavily involved.  We really can't say what victory in Syria would look like. We want to defeat ISIS and al Qaeda but everyone else wants to defeat Assad and Iran (and now Russia). We should define victory as securing Kurdish territory and removing ISIS from Iraq.

In Syria, apart from the Kurdish territory, we have good options.  If we side with the regional regimes we are putting ourselves at odds with our Kurdish friends and cooperating with parties that have different goals and conflicting agendas with regards to ISIS.  Siding with Assad was never an option and Russia can make the entire region their enemy by backing Iran and Assad without our involvement.

This is going to be a mess. It is time to take sides and declare to The Kurds and Yazidis and all people who wish to be free from terror and tyranny: "we are on your side and we are staying there until you're in and they're out."

Your Other Left: Reparations Accounting

Race mythology is big news these days.  I am a member of the human race.  Genetic difference between people with different skin tone is like that of people with different hair color.  We are all African in fact.  This is what Black Lives Matter does not know.  Now we have to talk about this bullshit.

I would like to know which of my Irish, Swiss and Italian ancestors ever owned slaves and if any did how that makes me or any other descendent of immigrants culpable for the slavery which so many Americans shed blood to end.  There is only one race.  Human solidarity.  Fuck identity politics.

Let's not include the body count preceding the the existence of the United States by African slavers and European merchants since that would be ridiculous.  You can take that up with the British, French, Turks and whichever African tribe still stands related to those barbaric villains.

Beginning in 1776: Jefferson (who married one of his slaves, who was his sister in law) tried to include abolition in the declaration, Paine and Franklin started the anti slavery society and Paine repeatedly tried to get the early presidents to fight the South Carolina delegations on slavery, from there we have 60 to 70 years of slavery in the United States before the civil war and during which time there were abolitionists, politicians, and journalists involved in fighting and breaking the law to free slaves.  In 1860 we begin a war to preserve the union over the issue of slavery and more Americans died fighting this war than in all wars combined before or since.  The war began with the election of an anti-slavery president and the idea that no new slave states could be added to the union.

I'm a major advocate for civil equality (as well as a lover of black people and culture in this country) but that is a separate issue.  The issue of reparations affects the tens of millions of immigrants and descendants to arrive in this country since 1865. It would have to include an accounting of who is related to slaves and slave owners.  It would run the risk of penalizing people who are not related to slave owners and rewarding people for nothing other than the color of their skin.  I'm not about to sit down while anybody is treated to any institutional benefits or prejudice based on anything as asinine as skin color.  You and I are the same race.  Every human being has common ancestors from Africa.  We are lucky enough to live in the most free nation on earth at a time where global poverty is 70% lower than it was in 1970.  Let's talk about something we haven't already figured out.  We are beyond this bullshit of skin color.  Now maybe we can free the slaves in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Africa.  Once we have freed the slaves I will have a Coke.

Comrade Communique: Do You Feel Plucky, Punk

By Ejder Memis, a plucky Kurd.

The Spectator article, "the myth of the plucky Kurdish warrior" is fine, I suppose, for a hatchet job.  It requires a rejoinder, and I might muster the pluck to take on the task.

For Kurds, Newroz signifies the birth of the nation. It has a mythology distinct to that of Persians. In Kurdish Newroz, the ironsmith Kawa defeats the tyrant Dehaq and saves children who become the ancestors of the Kurds. It is ignorant and preposterous to Kurds to suggest that we celebrate 'Persian New Year.'  This is elementary and it ought to be well-known to the author Paul Wood.

It is true that the Peshmerga forces stationed in Shengal fled before the Yazidi civilians, but it is also true that the YPG forces from Syria were the first to engage ISIS and open a corridor to the Sinjar mountain without any military assistance. The difference between the Peshmerga and the YPG was that the former had not been as battle-hardened as the latter.

Since Shengal, the YPG and the Peshmerga have been the only serious ground force to consistently roll back ISIS gains while the Syrian and Iraqi regime forces continued to lose ground in Palmyra and Ramadi. Neither the YPG nor the Peshmerga enjoyed the vast arsenal the US had bestowed on Iraq.

Still, the suggestion that Erbil, a city of 1 million, was nearly evacuated before several dozen ISIS 'technicals' is far-fetched and fanciful. The most ISIS achieved was to threaten Erbil airport with a few long range artillery pieces they had captured from the Iraqi army. Destroying those from the air hardly amounts to saving the city from falling. It was Kobani in Syria that was saved by the US intervention where the plucky Kurdish warriors' resistance reached mythical proportions.

The division among the Kurds and their loyalty to the political parties over and above loyalty to the nation is real and was aptly described as "neo-tribalism"  by David McDowell who authored "A Modern History of the Kurds". This is an ongoing blight on our reputation. Our national epic, Mem and Zin by Ahmede Xhani, is a metaphor to the endless divisions besetting the Kurds either by circumstance or by the actions of our nefarious neighbours.

It is also hard to re-reconcile Wood's statement, "The truth is that both Iraq and Syria long ago ceased to exist as nation" with his earlier, somewhat uncritical, re-statement of the West's insistence to preserve Iraq's and Syria's territorial integrity. It was not Kurds who ended Iraq and Syria; it was the sectarian Sunni, Shia and Alewite Arabs and their masters in Ankara, Riyadh and Tehran who did that.

The Kurds in Iraq missed a historic opportunity to unify separate KDP and PUK civil administrations and security structures. The early departure of US forces from Iraq and Kurds' unanswered pleas for the US to set up a permanent base in Kurdistan are among the causes for the growing divisions and corruption in KRG. The US enjoys unparalleled influence on KRG leadership as well as the populace. It was the Washington agreement in 1998 that ended the Kurdish civil war stoked by Saddam. With a permanent US airbase in Kurdistan, the US could have continued to be a force for peace.

Nevertheless there is much to be proud of for Kurds, who are the only genuine pro-Western nation in the region, besides Israel, regardless of what the detractors say. Kurds' fondness and hopes for western style liberal secular democracy is a ground up affair. In human rights stakes Arabs do/did so much better under Kurdish rule than Kurds ever did under Arabs. There was for example no pay-back for Halabja or for the genocide inflicted during the Anfal campaign.

Unlike Kawa and Dehaq, the plucky Kurdish warrior is no myth; they may have lousy arms and training but pound for pound the Kurdish fighters' courage will more than match what our enemies throw their way. The Peshmerga and the YPG will continue to be a nightmare for the barbarian 7th century reinactors in ISIS and the multiple theocratic fascist cults turning the Middle East into a humanitarian disaster. Only a Kurdish re-birth, a fresh Newroz, can eliminate that threat to region and to the world. The Kurdish men and women fighting the islamists in Iraq and Syria have more mettle than weapons, and they deserve our gratitude.

Your Other Left: United States & Turkey: an Exercise in Masochism

                   
The half billion dollar program to recruit and train a moderate Syrian rebel force to fight ISIS has been a failure. This is due largely to the fact that nearly everyone fighting in Syria is more interested in fighting Bashar Assad's government than fighting ISIS.  Its not like we in the west are fans of Assad (his biggest international fan is Vladimir Putin) but with the country in chaos and full of domestic and foreign warring factions, removal of Assad's government root and stalk would only perpetuate and worsen the chaos.  If some sense of order is restored then a new government would be a better prospect, especially if the civil servants, bureaucrats and military leadership can keep some semblance of continuity.  This is incredibly naive in light of everything we know about the Syrian civil war.  Assad is going to be removed and his government will be extirpated.  We cannot save him and we don't want to.  

Our alliance with regional players who are actively sabotaging our efforts makes the entire prospect of stabilizing Syria seem far fetched.  The United States relationship with Turkey is the most cringe-worthy example of this duplicitous trend. The willingness of Turkish officials to do business with ISIS and al Qaeda and refrain, until recently, to take any part in the fight against ISIS seems to have been forgotten.  The United States government seems to be ignoring the Turkish attacks on Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq and domestic police violence against Kurdish dissidents inside Turkey.  Turkish politics has descended into blatant authoritarianism.  The so called 'buffer zone' that Turkey wants between itself and Syria would be another in the series of new Berlin walls that are popping up all over the globe.  

This 'buffer zone' is least of all the distressing behavior of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  Since his party, the AKP, lost it's majority in recent elections, his covert support for ISIS and his unhinged paranoia about the Kurds and Assad have become more transparent and more well known.   We in the west can't even acknowledge the seriousness of ISIS as an enemy or measure our successes and failures on the battlefield since the administration, congress and the Pentagon have no coherent voice on this war. The assessment of this foe and the threat they pose has been delusional from the outset. The effort to motivate the various regional interests to work together against the Islamic State is a halfhearted approach to a serious problem.  Almost no regional party of importance is interested in the western objective which is eliminating ISIS as top priority



.

Turkey has worked hand in hand with ISIS and al Qaeda to fight the Kurds and the Assad regime and these relationships have not ended.  Saudi Arabia has been working with al Qaeda in Yemen.  Iran has a clear desire to fight ISIS, but they are terrible to the Kurds, supportive of terror groups in Yemen and have genocidal aspirations for Israel.  Iraq is just trying not to fall apart, but the Iranian influence has filled the void left by the US.  We can hope the new leadership can free itself from Iranian influence to some degree and make progress bringing moderate Sunnis back to the government. Iraq is still no accepting all of the arms the US has offered, and since they're the middle man between the US and the Peshmerga, this is an embarrassment.

The only people who are only interested in fighting ISIS happen to be the people who value pluralistic democracy, humanitarianism and equal rights above theocracy and tribalism.  The Kurds are eager to trade resources and ideas with any people that wish for such peaceful engagement.  Shouldn't the US policy be to double down on our support for the Kurds, who have been most effective at defeating and scattering ISIS from towns in Syria and Iraq, rather than this masochistic organizing strategy?

The creepy crawl of the Turkish state towards fascism and their known terror sponsorship should negate the longstanding relationship with the west, at least until democracy is restored and the police violence is stopped.  The various parties in the  region are more worried about Assad returning to power, greater Iranian or Saudi influence over Iraq and Syria, and Kurdish territorial expansion or establishment of a Kurdish state than about ISIS. Our efforts in Syria, Yemen, Iran and the region at large have put us on both sides of many confrontations.  Our support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen has helped al Qaeda. Our dealings with Turkey have hurt our Kurdish allies and helped ISIS and al Qaeda.  We don't need to cater to these regimes and double agent diplomacy serves only to drag this war

This absurd strategy is steeped in our geopolitical identity crisis.  Do we in the west care about preserving our principles and confronting undemocratic ideas? Might we forge new alliances with people because they share our values instead of the double agent diplomacy we've been mired in with burdensome friends like Saudi Arabia and Turkey? The fear of a Kurdish state is inspiring the Turkish collusion with ISIS and al Qaeda as much as the fear of Syrian Baathists returning to power.  The Kurds in Syria and Turkey, to their credit have said they do not want a state of their own but rather self determination and autonomy within existing states. 

While the Kurds have taken territory from ISIS, they've been hospitable to inhabitants and refugees and tried to deliver basic services.  Maybe what we ought to be doing is promoting the Kurds as an example of democratic ideals and altruism. A Kurdish state would be a strategic victory against the theocratic fascists and corrupt regimes in the middle east.

I think we ought to arm, support and equip the Kurds to completely secure Kurdish territory first.  From there we have several options and nine are certain to be available.  One possible outcome is that the Kurds defeating ISIS savagely and decisively will decimate the morale of ISIS fighters, dry up their recruitment and encourage others to fight ISIS in other territory.  Ultimately this whole fight requires unwavering leadership from the US and allies.  Part of that leadership may be to encourage Kurdish and international volunteer fighters to go beyond Kurdish territory simply to remove ISIS, free slaves and confiscate weapons and resources.  If the coalition is more committed to defeating these monsters, then the Kurds and other allies may be encouraged to take ISIS controlled territory for humanitarian purposes, not to hold the territory or annex it.  This means the forces fighting ISIS beyond Kurdish territory cannot fight under a Kurdish flag or Kurdish militia emblem.  A new regional force like NATO, if not NATO itself, including Kurdish, Iraqi, Syrian and international volunteers could take the remaining ISIS territory and hand it back to locals once peace is restored.  This is not too likely a scenario, but at the moment no good ideas seem likely.  Leadership is needed to defeat ISIS.  We need to forget this exercise in futility of begging others in the region to fight this enemy.  The US and UK have been in the middle east for so long that it's silly to pretend we can extricate ourselves while conducting air strikes and diplomacy.  We have alienated Arabs just by being there.  Lets go all in with the Kurds to defeat ISIS quickly, surge style, rather than continue a strategy that accepts ISIS as a long term reality.

Counter insurgency expert and pillow talk media source David Petraeus has been suggesting that the coalition work with the Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, al Nusra Front against ISIS since they are indeed more moderate than ISIS and he has successfully recruited al Qaeda militants in Iraq to assist US forces briefly in the past.  First of all, it isn't necessary to work with al Qaeda against ISIS since we are already working with both al Qaeda and ISIS through our masochistic relationship with Turkey. There is only one available option that would not indirectly aid at least one jihadist group, and that is to go all in with the Kurds to take and secure the Kurdish areas and remove ISIS from Iraqi cities. If we have military success and effectively diminish ISIS territory, the humiliation will start to dry up their recruitment and it will only be a matter of time before ISIS is isolated in Raqqa. At that point, everyone who was reluctant to help before will smell blood in the water and begin fighting over who will take Raqqa. In the meantime we will have killed a good amount of barbaric thugs and freed some slaves. Every minute we are not freeing slaves is a minute we are complicit in the slavery, rape and torture we have the means to stop. And nobody is going to tell me we have to work with al Qaeda to get this done.