ISIS is Islamic, but we should still shut up about them

Islam has never been united. For one thing, there is no Muslim pontiff who speaks for the world's 1.6 billion Muslims living on six continents. Yet even the Roman Catholic Pope speaks for only about half of the world's 2.2 billion Christians; and millions of those Catholics choose to disregard him on such crucial matters of the faith as birth control, premarital sex, divorce and gay relationships. 

If we sat down and took a deep breath, we'd all admit that there is no perfect, ideal version of Catholicism, or Christianity for that matter, that exists separately from the people who call themselves Christians. Anybody who says he is Christian and practices some form of the faith, no matter how strange, is a Christian. Attempts to label practitioners on the margins of a faith as "heretics" or "not true believers" has been tried, will continue to be tried, in vain. It only comes with conflict, violent schisms, cults and new denominations.

The same is true of Islam, with its Sufi, Sunni, Shia branches... and a bunch of sects and sub-sects that I don't know or understand. It is diverse and always changing.

ISIS in particular, with upwards of 30,000 fighters, or about 0.00002 % of the world's Muslims, is Islamic, just as they claim. A dark and evil part, but a part of Islam nonetheless. Just as violent white supremacists in the KKK or Branch Davidians are indeed part of the Christian pageant, because they profess themselves to be so. You or I can stand aloof and say they're not, but Christianity is what Christians do; Islam is what Muslims do; including all the good and bad. These religions are not what some sacred texts say. We can't just define away the behaviors -- and the believers -- that we don't accept as pure or "mainstream." (Although millions of believers will continue to do just that, to the detriment of world peace and understanding....)

Likewise, the U.S. should not -- and I'm thinking of Barack Obama specifically but before him scores of prominent conservatives -- engage in pointless, unwinnable schismatic debates about who is or isn't Islamic. It's apparent why both sides are tempted to do so: conservatives want to stoke xenophobic fear among Americans that justifies, post facto, their wars of choice in the Mideast and continued spying and infringements on our civil and constitutional liberties; and President Obama, in response, wants to calm Americans' nerves, and avoid antagonizing one-fifth of the globe, including America's peaceful 2 million+ Muslims. Conservatives' anti-Islamic argument is mean and stupid on its face; Obama is stupid for engaging seriously with stupidity.

Just as our arguing that ISIS is not Islamic does not seem to affect their appeal to disaffected recruits from all over the world, nor does our paying so much attention to ISIS hurt their cause. Just the opposite. When the most powerful nation in the history of the world -- not to mention the "Great Satan" -- declares that ISIS is scary and powerful, it's the best possible endorsement for the Islamic State's recruitment and fundraising efforts.   

Keeping a cool head and maintaining perspective on global threats are responsibilities of being a superpower. We must be serious when choosing our enemies, and more serious in how we fight them. That doesn't automatically mean all guns -- and mouths -- ablazing.

I've said it before: With all of its vast power, the U.S. shouldn't say that ISIS is an "existential threat," "clear and present danger," or anything of the kind.  It's the equivalent of a well-armed huntsman hyperventilating at a swarm of mosquitoes. 

Since 9/11, almost no leaders of any political stripe are willing to say the truth: We cannot defend ourselves against every attack on U.S. soil by extremists, especially by lone wolf terrorists inspired by the Internet and driven by deep personal resentments and/or violent mental illness. (ISIS's forte.)  And especially against those attacks on U.S. soil that require very little coordination or preparation (that could tip off domestic spies), and make use of readily available weapons of mass terror: assault-type weapons, ammunition, and bomb-making ingredients.  

In October 2002, I grasped this sad fact immediately and personally during the DC sniper attacks. The terrorists, who everyone was sure must be al Qaeda, ended up being a disgruntled, mentally disturbed Army vet (the sniper) and his impressionable teenage nephew (the spotter and getaway driver).  They were armed only with a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle. They killed 17 people and wounded 10 others, and perhaps worse, caused widespread terror in several states before they were caught, by selecting victims at gas stations and shoppers in parking lots, two of the commonest places in American life. That's how easy terrorism is. And there's nothing stopping anybody today from doing exactly the same thing. Nothing. Nowadays we just have a few more cameras around that anyway wouldn't pick up snipers tucked away in the distance.... 

Our leaders continue to lie to us that by eliminating (as in 100%!) the threat of Islamist extremism "over there," and oppressing the peaceful Muslims at home, we can keep ourselves safe "over here."  In fact, by persecuting Muslims at home, and making stupid wars of choice over there, we make Americans less safe over here, in ways that we've witnessed numerous times. (In a word: blowback).  And worse, we who usually refuse to trust our leaders, who know they tell us what we what we want to hear, choose to believe their lies. (The 240,000-employee strong Dept. of Homeland Security, which didn't exist prior to 9/11, the NSA, the Pentagon's top brass, and the military-intelligence contractors getting $285 billion a year certainly thank us for our choice!)  We should know better.

When influential bloviators like Glenn Beck, and even conservatives that I know, say that radical Islam is one of America's most dire problems, nobody dares laugh at them. Yet if I said the KKK was something every U.S. Presidential candidate should propose a plan to fight, I'd be laughed out of town. Never mind that there are upwards of 3,000 Klan members in the U.S., in all 50 states, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, as opposed to 100 or fewer members of ISIS in the United States, according to the Pentagon.

Either way it's like arguing which is worse, the mosquito or the fly. The West, in particular the United States, has many more important problems to address. 

Publicly, we should ignore ISIS; outside the public eye of cameras and journalists, we should fight ISIS seriously but in proportion to the threat they pose, in the time and manner of our own choosing, and not have our actions be driven by the release of disgusting YouTube videos.

Taibbi: 'American Sniper' too dumb to criticize

No comment here except to kind of echo Michael Moore's comment... At least in my youth we had movie war "heroes" like Stallone and Schwarzenegger who actually got their hands dirty and (sort of) risked death, as opposed to a covered sniper on a roof shooting women and children. 

Sean Hannity went nuts over this movie before it was even released, which instantly made me suspicious. I haven't seen it yet but feel like I have. 

'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize

By Matt Taibbi

January 21, 2015 | Rolling Stone

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-sniper-is-almost-too-dumb-to-criticize-20150121#ixzz3PWZ0AHY0

Retired general: 'Why we lost' in Iraq, Afghanistan

This is nothing new if you've been reading me for the past, oh, eight years, but since often the messenger matters more than the message, here you go, from a retired Army Lt. General.

A 3-Star General Explains 'Why We Lost' In Iraq, Afghanistan

November 9, 2014 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/1yYEegl

Being an 'indispensable nation' is killing America

This op-ed is worth re-posting in full.

Never let it be said I'm a partisan hack: I support Borosage's indictment of President Obama's executive overreach in conducting military operations without Congressional approval for war. 

More damning to my mind has been President Obama's failure to articulate to the nation (and Congress) a national security-military doctrine/vision (call it what you will) that makes it clear when he thinks the United States should send its troops into battle, and when we shouldn't. Granted, this may be the most difficult job of any POTUS in an ever-changing world, and with inherited conflicts of past presidents.

Is it because Obama and his team doesn't have the strategic capacity to develop such a vision? Is it because Obaama is too arrogant to articulate it for us, we're just supposed to trust him not to do "stupid shit"? Or, most likely, is it because a timid Obama fears that no matter what he says, it will be parsed and pilloried by Republicans -- who also can't agree among themselves on a foreign policy -- looking to score partisan political points?

Borosage is right to point out that the opportunity cost of U.S. military adventures abroad is investment in piss-poor education and crumbling infrastructure at home. Maybe our government can buy guns and butter... but not forever, not at a sustainable cost. This is where the "fiscally responsible" yet "pro-military" Tea Parties and Republicans have fallen on their faces as an opposition, by refusing to specify just what they are willing to give up to achieve their stated top priority of fiscal balance.

Being the ‘indispensable nation’ is killing American democracy

By Robert L. Borosage

October 20, 2014 | Reuters

America — proudly dubbed the “indispensable nation” by its national-security managers — is now the entangled nation enmeshed in conflicts across the globe.

President Barack Obama, scorned by his Republican critics as an “isolationist” who wants to “withdraw from the world,” is waging the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan, boasts of toppling the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya, launches airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against Islamic State and picks targets for drones to attack in as many as eight countries, while dispatching planes to the Russian border in reaction to its machinations in Ukraine, and a fleet to the South China Sea as the conflict over control of islands and waters escalates between China and its neighbors.

The indispensable nation is permanently engaged across the globe. But endless war undermines the Constitution. Democracy requires openness; war justifies secrecy. Democracy forces attention be paid to the common welfare; war demands attention and resources be spent on distant conflicts. Democracy involves forging coalitions to get action in the Congress; war is waged on executive order. The Constitution restrains the executive in times of peace; constitutional strictures are trampled in times of war.

When the founders wrote the Constitution, they worried about the tendency of kings, or presidents, to make war for personal aggrandizement or national glory.  So they gave Congress the power to declare war, intent on “clogging, not facilitating” the rush to war.  For the Republic, peace would be the normal state of affairs. War was a disruption — entered into only with prior debate and consideration by  Congress, the elected body whose members best reflected the attitudes of their constituents.

The United States, in the words of conservative John Quincy Adams, would provide a shining example of liberty as long as “she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

But now the pursuit of monsters to destroy is unrelenting. Almost inevitably, it seems, the restraints of the Constitution are being trampled. With little debate, U.S. leaders have chosen permanent global intervention even at the cost of undermining the Republic.

For the cost of war can be measured in dollars not spent here at home.

An educated citizenry is the foundation of a robust democracy. Yet from the absence of free, full-day pre-K to affordable colleges to advanced training, the United States is skimping on investment in educating its citizens. A modern infrastructure is also essential to a competitive, high-wage economy. But while Washington spends $3 trillion on Iraq, there hasn’t been a serious discussion about bringing America’s aged infrastructure, including our roads, bridges and airports, up to standard — which would cost about the same. 

A bridge to somewhere... now a bridge to nowhere.

Instead of this funding, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies spend more on their militaries than the rest of the world combined. Washington maintains more than 1,000 bases, called “military sites,” across the globe, plus 11 aircraft-carrier task forces that are essentially moveable bases. U.S. conventional and nuclear forces are unrivaled — yet Washington plans to spend another trillion dollars over the next 30 years modernizing nuclear weapons that the United States aims never to use. U.S. intelligence and covert forces are permanently engaged, often secretly creating the implicit commitments that will force the next intervention.

It is only America, as the president said in a speech announcing his intention to “degrade and ultimately defeat” Islamic State, which he refers to as ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, that “has the capacity and the will to mobilize the world against terrorism … against Russian aggression … to contain … Ebola and more.”

This president, more than his predecessors, understands the perils of being the “indispensable nation.” Elected in large part to get the United States out of the seemingly endless wars in the Middle East, he now finds himself forced into another open-ended commitment.

In his speech to the National Defense University in 2013, Obama argued, “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ ” Obama warned specifically about this. “The choice we make about war,” the president said, “can impact —  in sometimes unintended ways — the openness and freedom on which our way of life depends.”

Yet even with this awareness, and no reelection race facing him, Obama could not escape the imperatives of America’s role as the indispensable nation. The commitments are too many,  the engagement too permanent, the capacity unrivalled — seemingly making all things possible.  As a result, this former professor of constitutional law has governed over the greatest assertion of executive authority — claiming the power to make war, to surveil, arrest, detain and even kill Americans without prior judicial review or due process.

Ike warned us about the growing "military-industrial complex" that sought to feed itself at the federal trough.

His Justice Department has used espionage laws against reporters and whistleblowers.  The secrecy shields massive waste, fraud and abuse, as the military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against consumes the bulk of the national budget, aside from payments on the national debt and the insurance programs of Social Security and Medicare.

When President George W. Bush was about to launch the war in Iraq, millions of Americans – as well as many people around the globe — marched in protest. The large demonstrations against war led the New York Times to dub world public opinion a second superpower. Bush sought authority from Congress and a dramatic congressional debate took place, with strong dissent against the war.

When Obama committed the United States to the fight against Islamic State, he claimed the authority to act without Congress, though adding he would “welcome” congressional support. Yet with the midterm elections then a few months away, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress chose to postpone the debate and the vote.

The bombing began on presidential order. Americans accepted their role as spectators, registering no significant objection to this presidential war-making.  The indispensable nation is not only spending lives and resources on endless wars abroad, it is shredding its Constitution at home.

Ironically, America’s democracy is still strong enough to render it less than competent as a global policeman. Our military is the finest in the world, but still finds it hard to win a war. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that while presidents can commit the nation virtually anywhere, Americans sour on long, costly interventions on the other side of the world.

This leads to strategies like “no boots on the ground” — designed not to rouse public opposition but almost certain to fail. Polls show that Americans have no interest in policing the globe. If the Constitution no longer constrains the president from making war, the public still limits his ability to wage it.

Blackwater gets U.S. justice for 2007 Iraq killings

Sedulous readers will recall my opposition to private military contractors, (aka mercenaries), or at least our increasing reliance on them to do jobs the U.S. Military used to do for itself, such as security, logistics and even intelligence.

Why? Because in Iraq and Afghanistan, they haven't been subject to local law, military discipline or the chain of command. They are almost a law unto themselves. 

I also argue they're bad for morale, what with their fat paychecks while our troops' families back home depend on food stamps to survive. And strategically, it's dangerous for our military to lose capabilities it once had and become dependent on outside contractors. 

We do know why the explosive growth in mercenaries though, since 2001: 

  1) They don't count as "troops" that we should care about when generals or politicians talk about U.S. forces overseas; 

  2) None of us has to mourn them when they die or hang a yellow ribbon to keep them safe; 

  3) They are a great way for Republicans to hand out government cheese and re-collect it in the form of campaign contributions (Blackwater alone has collected more than $1 billion in U.S. Government contracts, many of them non-compete); and

  4) There isn't a single government service that Republicans don't want to privatize or outsource, as the eight year of Dubya-Cheney's regime proved.

U.S. mercenaries caused tragedy in September 2007, when a group of Americans from Blackwater, LLC opened fire at a crowded Baghdad intersection and killed 17 innocent Iraqi civilians and seriously wounded 20 others. I posted about it then, writing:

When Blackwater's highly-paid mercenaries indiscriminately shoot and kill innocent Iraqis, the Iraqi people don't know it was mercenaries who did it, they think it was U.S. soldiers. Mercenaries in Iraq are harming the mission of our real troops by turning the Iraqis against America.

Blackwater is a deadly menace, and yet another blight on America's image as our real soldiers try to win hearts and minds in Iraq. 

Or as I've said before in more sanguine terms, it's hard to "win hearts and minds" when you're shooting them in the head and chest. This has always been the fundamental contradiction of America's occupations, er, counter-insurgency efforts  in Afghanistan and Iraq. We call these places "wars" but we also "liberated" their people who we're trying to help while fighting them. 

Even now I hear hot-air pundits like Limbaugh and Hannity say we "lost" Iraq after gaining territory here or there, as if it was a conventional fight to take and hold ground from the Nazis. 

Anyhow... finally justice has been done for some of the Blackwater killers, in the U.S.: Three were found guilty of manslaughter and one of first-degree murder.

And as for Blackwater, well... like many PMCs, they change their name as often as most people change jobs. It went from Blackwater Worldwide to Xe Services, LLC to Academi, LLC and most recently, through a merger with a rival, to Constellis Holdings. Check out Blackwater's detailed but murky history here, including other U.S. federal charges against Blackwater, and its cozy connections with Republicans and even the Family Research Council! 

I'll leave you with this this beaut [emphasis mine]:

[T]he State Department's chief investigator [of Blackwater] reported being threatened by a Blackwater official in Iraq in August 2007. The investigator said project manager Daniel Carroll told him "that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq."

With such an attitude, it's not surprising that a few weeks later Blackwater killed and wounded all those Iraqis. Good thing somebody could and did do something about it!

US jury convicts Blackwater guards in 2007 killing of Iraqi civilians

By Dan Roberts 

October 22, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/42kcf

War Nerd: ISIS threat is still overblown

The War Nerd maintains that Islamic State is indeed the JV team, albeit with good PR and a penchant for child rape, yet certainly not an existential threat to the U.S. or indeed Iraq or even the Kurds.

Check it out!

The War Nerd: Let’s put Islamic State’s menacing advance into perspective by… looking at a map

By Gary Brecher

September 28, 2014 | Pando Daily 

URL: http://pando.com/2014/09/28/the-war-nerd-lets-put-islamic-states-menacing-advance-into-perspective-by-looking-at-a-map/

What we know about IS leads back to Iraq debacle

According to this report, the top three leaders of Islamic State are Iraqis: one from Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI); and two Sunni ex-generals from Saddam's army.

The leader and religious figurehead of IS, born Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai, (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aka Caliph Ibrahim), was captured in 2004 or 2005 and released in 2009 under "unknown" circumstances.  (Smooth move!)

The two Sunni generals, we can surmise, almost certainly lost their jobs after Dubya's Coalition Provisional Authority issued an order on May 15, 2003 to dissolve the 250,000-man Iraqi army, a day after the order to implement "De-Ba'athification" of all public and government posts.

So it's still correct to blame Bush.

Here's What We Know About How The Islamic State Is Run

By Nick Robins-Early

September 27, 2014 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/YjQcnC

U.S. should stay out of bloody Mideast religious wars

Hear, hear!  Before we insert ourselves in a sectarian conflict of Sunni vs. Shia in Syria, Iraq and beyonjd, Hoffman asks us to consider what bloody horrors we "reasonable, rational" Europeans inflicted on ourselves during our sectarian wars [emphasis mine]:

The agreements reached in Westphalia followed 130 years of strife, including the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, when Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England beat back Catholic King Philip II of Spain’s rampage across Europe to put down heresy. Other rulers fomented mob violence with incidents such as the 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France, when the Catholic king targeted well-born Protestants. The king’s assassins murdered nobles in their beds while commoners knifed and strangled Protestant neighbors in the streets.

One-quarter of Europe’s population was killed during the devastating Thirty Years' War (1618-48), another bloody phase of the Reformation. Brutal punishments included burning at the stake and pouring excrement down the throats of captives, a torture known as the “Swedish drink.” War spread famine and bubonic plague across Europe. Like now, greed complicated religious conflict, as combatants wrestled over lands and gold.

Exhausted, Protestants and Catholics finally agreed to negotiate. Gathering in separate towns, they sent messengers back and forth to avoid seeing one another’s despised faces. After five years of argument, the Peace of Westphalia concluded the tragic wars of religion. Separation of church and state took hold.

Avoid a classic blunder: Stay out of religious wars in the Middle East

By Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman

September 16, 2014 | Reuters

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS9679781720140916

Frum: 'Emotional' war on ISIS is a 'policy of aid-Iran-but-don’t-admit-it'

There's plenty of criticism of Obama in conservative Republican Frum's opinion piece, but this graph sums it up best for me [emphasis mine]:

Debates over foreign policy have a bad tendency to vaporize into abstract discussions of first principles: intervention or non-intervention? Responsibility to protect or mind our own business? Iraq and Syria today present a case that makes nonsense of abstractions. Intervene? The United States and its allies should intervene when intervention will advance U.S. and allied interests, consistent with U.S. and allied values. But where do we find the U.S. and allied interest in a war between al-Qaeda’s even nastier younger brother, on one side, and the mullahs of Iran on the other? If Iran were saying, “Please help us, and we’ll reorient our policy in a friendlier direction,” that would be one thing. They are not saying that. They are not doing that. They are doing the opposite.

And then here's Frum's body slam to finish:

It’s not crass, not narrow, not unethical for the president of the United States to test any proposed foreign policy—and most especially the use of armed force—against the criterion: “How will this benefit my nation?” That test is not a narrow one. The protection of allies is an important U.S. interest. The honoring of international commitments is an important U.S. interest. And it could even be argued that humanitarian action can be justified when it will save many lives, at low cost in American blood and treasure, without creating even worse consequences inadvertently. This new campaign against ISIS does not even pretend to meet that test. It’s a reaction: an emotional reaction, without purpose, without strategy, and without any plausible—or even articulated—definition of success.

'Nuf said. But it's spoken too late.

Don't Go Back to Iraq, Mr. President

By David Frum

September 10, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/obama-speech-iraq-syria-isis-war/379979/

Younge: Americans want U.S. power without cost or risk

Gary Younge is right, American's are schizo, post-Dubya, when it comes to the POTUS and foreign policy:

Obama’s apparent inability to make anything happen on the international stage is unnerving many. Big things keep taking place to which he appears to offer only incremental responses within a strategic void. [...]

Obama’s foreign policy approval ratings, once one of his strengths, are now pitifully low. According to a Pew research survey, more than half of Americans believe that he is insufficiently “tough”. This is partly presentational: Obama has always found showy rhetoric in the face of serious problems hokey. His deliberative style owes more to the constitutional law professor he once was than the leader of the armed forces he now is.

His reputation for “weakness” is also ironic given the number of people Obama has assassinated with drones. [...]

The public actually supports most of what Obama has done. Polls show that a majority of Americans back air strikes against Isis and troop withdrawals from Iraq; the use of drones to kill “suspected terrorists” abroad; and overwhelmingly prefer sanctions over military action against Russia. A plurality believe that Obama is removing troops from Afghanistan at the right pace. But a president is more than the sum of his policies.

As I've said before, I don't think there is an Obama Doctrine, besides, I suppose, "Don't do stupid shit"... whatever, that is, Obama and his inner circle consider to be stupid.

But does every President need a doctrine?  That's a separate question. But one must question how much freedom any POTUS has to make his own strategic choices without succumbing to policy inertia of past presidents. Just look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia... The choices and facts on the ground were already made over years if not decades before. But I digress....

Almost certainly what Obama is planning now against Islamic State is not doctrinal; it's reactive to media and public pressure after ISIS killers publicly cut off the heads of American hostages and persecuted Arab Christians. He wouldn't be the first president pushed by the public into military action, but it's certainly no way to run a foreign policy.

Obama's dilemma is America's appetite for power but aversion to political risk

By Gary Younge

September 7, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/4xc5j

Bergen: Americans fighting for ISIS will die over there

We're all gonna diiiiieeeeeeee!  Mobilize the army! Scramble the bombers!  DEFCON 1!  Kill 'em all! Kill, kill, kill!  Aaaaaaaaaaa!

Now that I've done the obligatory Scaring The Shit Out Of You, followed by the customary Let's Kill Them All First that you've become accustomed to on cable and talk radio, here's some more sober analysis of the actual threat to America posed by Islamic State, from CNN's resident Islamist terrorism expert Peter Bergen (and some other dude).

ISIS threat to U.S. is mostly hype

By Peter Bergen and David Sterman

September 5, 2014 | CNN

ISIS has Americans worried. Two-thirds of those surveyed in a recent Pew Research poll said they consider the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to be a "major threat" to this country. But are such fears really justified?

Despite the impression you may have had from listening to U.S. officials in recent weeks, the answer is probably not really.

For a start, U.S. officials have been inflating the numbers of Americans fighting for ISIS, which has muddied the issue for the public. U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, for example, told CNN's Jim Sciutto on Wednesday, "We are aware of over 100 U.S. citizens who have U.S. passports who are fighting in the Middle East with ISIL forces." (ISIS is sometimes referred to as ISIL and now calls itself the Islamic State).

But the Pentagon soon corrected Hagel's comment, saying the 100 count is the total number of Americans fighting for any of the various groups fighting in Syria, some of which are more militant than others -- and some of which are even allied with the U.S. Indeed, Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center -- the government office tasked with assessing terrorist threats -- also confirmed that 100 is the total count of the various Americans fighting in Syria and not a count of those fighting for ISIS.

Hagel's comment is only the latest inflated claim regarding the number of Americans fighting with ISIS. Last week, the Washington Times cited anonymous official sources who said there are 300 Americans fighting with ISIS, despite the Pentagon estimating the figure to be more like a dozen.

True, a dozen is still too many. But it is important to remember that just because these Americans are fighting with ISIS, it doesn't necessarily translate into a significant threat to the American homeland.

One need only look at the example of Somalia to see why.

The last sizeable group of Americans who went overseas to fight with an al Qaeda-aligned group are the 29 Americans known to have traveled to fight with the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab after the 2006 invasion of Somalia by the Ethiopian army. However, none of those 29 subsequently planned or conducted a terrorist attack inside the United States, according to a survey of more than 240 jihadist terrorism cases since September 11 conducted by the New America Foundation.

Indeed, for more than a third of the American militants who fought with Al-Shabaab, going to Somalia was a one-way ticket. In 2008, a missile strike in Somalia killed Ruben Shumpert, a resident of Seattle. A year later, Burhan Hassan, a 17-year-old from Minneapolis, was killed in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Abdirizak Bihi, Hassan's uncle, reportedly said at the time, "We believe he was killed because he would have been a key person in the investigation into the recruitment (of young Somali men) here in Minneapolis."

Al-Shabaab militants also are said to have killed Alabama native Omar Hammami, who joined the group in 2006 and took a high-profile position in its media operations before his death last year.

At least two Americans fighting for Al-Shabaab died while conducting suicide attacks in Somalia.

Shirwa Ahmed, a 26-year-old from Minnesota, became the first known American to conduct a suicide bombing for an al Qaeda-associated group when he drove a car packed with bombs into a government compound on October 28, 2008.

In 2011, meanwhile, the FBI confirmed that Farah Mohamed Beledi, a 27-year-old Minnesota man who was born in Somalia and moved to the United States at age 12, was killed while attempting to detonate a suicide bomb in Somalia.

In addition to the American militants who died in Somalia, six were arrested, four when they returned to the West and two in East Africa. Kamal Said Hassan, a 28-year-old Minneapolis man who traveled to Somalia and attended an Al-Shabaab training camp before returning to the United States, was arrested and in 2009 pleaded guilty to supporting Al-Shabaab.

In another case, Mahamud Said Omar, an American resident who helped organize Al-Shabaab's recruitment pipeline and visited a training camp, was arrestedin the Netherlands in 2009. Omar was extradited to the United States and in 2012 was convicted on terrorism charges.

Of course, the fact that 13 of the 29 American militants who fought in Somalia remain at large is a reminder that the CIA and FBI also need to pay attention to the potential threat posed by American foreign fighters in Syria. But this is no reason for U.S. officials to overhype the threat posed by ISIS to the United States.

Yes, Americans should always be mindful of the threats posed by extremists. But as the case of U.S. citizens in Somalia suggests, Syria could very well end up being a graveyard for Americans fighting there rather than a launch pad for attacks on the United States. 

Today's thoughts on ISIS

Just like our President, I don't yet have a strategy with regard to ISIS. I'm not even sure whether they're worth defeating. 

The fact that President Obama has refused to be rushed by the media into taking action is refreshing; then again, it's typical Obama restraint that at other times is so frustrating. When our troops' lives and billions of dollars are on the line, his restraint is atypical of balls-to-the-wall Presidents trying to look tough, and who pay for it with the nation's credit card and somebody else's children.

Pop quiz: How many fighters does ISIS have?  You probably don't know. If you nevertheless feel we must defeat ISIS, little facts like this one are important.

Spot check: If there were no YouTube videos or reports of ISIS carving off Westerners' heads, would you feel the same way about them?  The answer is probably no. So is emotion -- or revulsion, as the case may be -- a proper basis for going to war?

My impression is that many Americans -- driven by FOX and talk radio -- have an ill-informed, fear-based, apocalyptic view of ISIS. Maybe ISIS is indeed worth our trouble to "take out," but let's be real: an Islamic state they are not. Al Qaeda they are not.

Because as I've said so many times before: conflict and religious extremism are encouraged by failed states, not vice-versa. ISIS is the orphan of Syria to the west and Iraq to the east, who got a huge, unexpected inheritance from its rich Uncle Sam with lots of guns who lives across the ocean.

Today I was listening to talk radio. First, Rush Limbaugh. He was slamming Obama's "no strategy yet" statement, naturally, but also Obama's caveat that we cannot "perpetually" destroy ISIS: as soon as we would leave, they would reconstitute. "Can you imagine FDR telling the American public that we couldn't perpetually defeat Nazi Germany?" Rush asked, incredulous, in perpetual outrage mode.

Bam.  Rush hit one of my pet peeves: comparing everything with Nazis and WWII.  Hell, Russia's president Putin is doing it right now, comparing Ukraine's army's actions against terrorists in its own country to the actions of Nazis in the siege of Leningrad.  Crazy, right?  Well it's crazy here, too. 

Because ISIS is not a state. They may have pretensions or plans to statehood, but a state they are not. There is no infrastructure of theirs to blow up -- they'd probably blow it up first, just for the hits on YouTube.  They have no political apparatus -- they are strictly a paramilitary organization.  And ISIS has none of the other trappings of a state with which we'd go to war and eventually have to make peace with.  

Incidentally, Obama is right: ISIS can be hurt or even crippled by the U.S., but with failing states and the ensuing anarchy in Syria and Iraq, not to mention volunteers from all over the world, and donations from our "allies" the Saudis, ISIS surely would come back. Indeed, they are not Nazi Germany. They don't intend to rebuild anything or hold any borders. All ISIS needs to do is re-arm. 

So we should be careful about declaring war on groups of irregular soldiers with tons of outside support, some of it from our "allies." The U.S. is the most powerful and richest country on Earth; when we bend down to crush an ant, suddenly that ant gains status. 

Do we really want to grant ISIS such "enemy" status? Methinks that is exactly what ISIS wants, that's why they're executing our citizens after demanding ridiculous ransoms they know that nobody will pay.  ISIS wants the U.S. to get involved.  Hey, there's no better recruiting and donations tool than the Great Satan as your adversary.

I mean, think for a second without emotion. Let's say the U.S. declares war on ISIS.  Then we wipe them off the battlefield, winning every fight along the way.Then we go home, or leave yet another small training and security force in Iraq. And then... two months later ISIS is back.  It doesn't matter in what guise. Nevertheless they're back on YouTube, back to taking hostages, back to seizing unprotected villages in the desert, whatever. Suddenly -- and this is important -- ISIS can say that it "defeated" the United States. It wasn't destroyed. All ISIS has to do to win is live, in whatever form, to fight another day.   

Understanding that, if you were POTUS, would you want to commit yourself to total victory over ISIS in Rush Limbaugh's terms? Or would you hedge? Or would you even consider doing nothing at all? What's the upside?  Does ISIS really represent a clear and present danger to the U.S.?  No.  To our allies?  Well, yes (Iraq), no (Syria) and maybe (Saudi Arabia, et al). Meanwhile, those allies do not have armies capable of defending themselves -- they rely on the U.S. 

Even worse, meanwhile, some of those allies -- cough, Saudi Arabi! cough! cough! -- spend billions exporting Wahhabist and jihadist religion all over the world that bites themselves and us in the ass. 

And meanwhile, sadly, as our small attention span is captured by masked men with dull knives in the desert, a European country is being invaded for the first time since WWII by an honest-to-God scary military power. THAT'S where the WWII analogies should be drawn. THAT'S where America's attention should be.

Alas, our media loves sensation and so do we.  Folks, let's be smarter and shrewder, eh? 

Begala: Cheney can't seem to lie enough on national TV

It's scary to think that Cheney, who is obviously a deeply disturbed and narcissistic liar, was practically running the country for eight years.

Begala's list of Cheney's lies and the proof of them is must-read stuff, for the historical record, but also because Cheney is out on every TV show now as some kind of voice for a conservative U.S. foreign policy. It's insane.

Does Dick Cheney believe his lies?

By Paul Begala

July 18, 2014 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/opinion/begala-dick-cheney-lies/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

VIDEO: Russians interrogate female pilot captured INSIDE UKRAINE (subtitles)

The Russian regime's gall knows no limits!  They captured a female Ukrainian soldier Nadiya Savchenko on Ukrainian territory, and now they want to try her in Russian court.

Here is video of one interrogation in Russia (turn on the English subtitles):

http://amara.org/ru/videos/P2mmLM0sRKcf/info/dopros-plennoi-nadezhdy-savchenko-boitsa-batalona-aidar/

Article from the Kyiv Post: "Russian revenge: Ukrainian female officer faces court in Voronezh amid Ukrainian military's success in Donbas:"

Russia is not doing a very good job lately in hiding its connections with separatists in the Donbas. Nadiya Savchenko, female officer of Ukrainian army's Aydar unit who was captured in Luhansk Oblast on June 17, was transferred to prison in Voronezh, a Russian city not far from the border with Ukraine, reported television news program TSN.

Savchenko is being suspected in the murder of Russian journalists while participating in Ukraine’s antiterrorist operation, though local prosecutors have not come up with an official accusation yet, the senior lieutenant’s Russian lawyer said. However, her younger sister Vira said that the Voronezh court is going to have a first hearing within this case on July 9.

Incidentally, Ms. Savchenko is a veteran pilot who fought for U.S. coalition forces in Iraq. Pretty tough lady!

Beinart: Cheney openly disparages 'Bush Doctrine'

Here's recent revisionist history, revised by the guy who recently made history, Dick Cheney! Peter Beinart explains [emphasis mine]:

It’s worth recognizing how directly Cheney is repudiating Bush’s vision. Bush’s core point—repeated by a thousand supportive pundits—was that when Middle Eastern dictators don’t allow democratic dissent, jihadist terrorism becomes the prime avenue for resistance. Egypt today is a textbook example. The Muslim Brotherhood won a free vote. In power, it ruled in illiberal ways. But Egypt was still due for additional elections in which people could do just what Bush had urged them to: express their grievances democratically. Instead, the military seized on popular discontent to overthrow the government, massively repress freedom of speech, and engineer a sham election. And just as Bush predicted, Egypt’s Islamists are responding by moving toward violence and jihadist militancy.

But it’s Cheney’s view, not Bush’s, that is ascendant on today’s right.  It’s now common to hear hawkish pundits declare that Brotherhood parties should be barred from running anywhere in the Middle East, which represents a full embrace of the authoritarian-stability argument that Bush devoted his second inaugural to arguing against.

Because Obama’s rhetoric about freedom and democracy is less soaring than Bush’s, the media often calls him a realist.  But as Obama’s Egypt policy shows, he’s actually proved far more willing to risk relationships with dictatorial American clients than most of his conservative critics would like.

Obama’s foreign policy is only “realist” in comparison to the vision Bush laid out in 2005—a vision now being trashed widely in his own party.  If there remains any significant faction in today’s Republican Party willing to risk America’s relationships with friendly Arab tyrants in the name of democracy, it is headquartered in Dallas, where a former president seems content to express himself merely through art.

Real historians will be studying Dick Cheney for decades. They'll eventually decide, I predict, that he was a malicious influence in the White House who parroted his President's foreign policy line when he couldn't get his way, while seeking to undermine it in practice. Now Cheney is repudiating Dubya out in the open. 

I for one agree that democratization is the only future for the Middle East, but that means Saudi Arabia, firstly, and then Egypt, Iran, Israel and Turkey. The rest will follow suit. But democracy can't be established at the point of a U.S. gun -- especially when it must be preceded by national liberation. Recent experience has asserted, once again, that national liberation is primarily the job of those who would be liberated. (And we're talking about countries that were drawn up by outside Western powers; the people inside those borders might not agree with those lines).  The U.S. can assist only at the fringes.

Dick Cheney Just Buried the Bush Doctrine

By Peter Beinart

June 27, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/dick-cheney-just-buried-the-bush-doctrine/373621/

War Nerd: ISIS conquering empty desert; and bless the Kurds

You gotta love Gary for writing stuff that only he would write, such as this:

Actually, topography has everything to do with what’s gone well or badly for I.S.I.S. in this latest push. If you know the ethnic makeup of the turf they’ve taken, their “shocking gains” don’t seem so shocking, or impressive. After all, we’re talking about a mobile force–mounted on the beloved Toyota Hilux pickup truck, favorite vehicle of every male in the Middle East—advancing over totally flat, dry ground in pursuit of a totally demoralized opponent. In that situation, any force could take a lot of country very quickly. It’s just a matter of putting your foot on the accelerator, moving unopposed on the long stretches of flat desert, then dismounting at the next crossroads town for a small, quick firefight against a few defenders who didn’t get the memo to flee. Once they’re dead, you floor it again until the next little desert town.

So this isn’t the second coming of Erwin Rommel by any means. Everything has conspired to push the Sunni advance, from the lousy opponent they’re up against to the terrain, which is a light mechanized commander’s dream.

Gary has a long-time soft spot for the Kurds, the strongest fighting force in Iraq and a soon-to-be state (one of three) formed from the crucible of Old Iraq:

Something wonderful came out of the horrors of 20th century Iraq, among the Kurds of the Northern hills. They became the only non-sectarian population in Iraq, and perhaps the only such group between Lebanon and India.

[...] Of all the hill tribes, the Sunni Kurds are doing best in this chaos. It’s allowed them to take Kirkuk, which they always needed and wanted, and it also just so happens to put the one and only “supergiant” oilfield in the North (5 billion gallons) totally inside Kurdish territory.

I’m happy as Hell for the Kurds. I love them anyway, and miss Suli a lot—but more than that, it’s simple justice that they get a break for once. The Kurds have paid their dues. Saddam’s murderers in uniform killed nearly 200,000 Kurds, and the man from Tikrit was supposedly very disappointed he hadn’t been able to wipe them out completely.

At the moment, I.S.I.S isn’t even trying to pick a fight with the Pesh Merga—a fight they would lose very quickly if it ever did happen. But then Sunni jihadis have always liked softer targets, the softer the better.

Upshot: Gary's little article should serve to calm some of those Nervous Nellies in Congress, the White House and the U.S. foreign policy establishment about "ISIS overrunning Iraq."  Yeah, they might overrun fellow Sunni areas of Iraq, but that's about it.  The Kurds and Iran (Shiites) will step in and stop them cold elsewhere... but wait, that's what a lot of U.S. fear is really about: letting Iran get even more influence in Iraq, and solving this ISIS problem without our help, making them look strong and us, well, the opposite of strong.  

Beyond that, I still think the real enemy is the Saudis, who prop up all these jihadists all over the world with money, crazy clerics, weapons and asylum. Yet the House of Saud plays nice with Texas oil billionaires and Israel, so we Americans for some reason can't love 'em enough!....

UPDATE (22.07.2014): Here's a continuation at Pando of Gary's coverage of the lame ISIS "invasion" of Iraq: "I.S.I.S. and the Western media: Groping each other in public like a Kardashian Thanksgiving." 

The War Nerd: Like it or not, what’s happening in Iraq right now is part of a rational process

By Gary Brecher

June 23, 2014 | Pando Daily

URL: http://pando.com/2014/06/23/the-war-nerd-like-it-or-not-whats-happening-in-iraq-right-now-is-part-of-a-rational-process/