[SNN] OBAMA'S NON-STRATEGY, by S. Trifkovic

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https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/obamas-non-strategy 


Obama’s Non-Strategy


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By:Srdja Trifkovic | September 08, 2014

 

President Barack Obama announced on September 7 that he will make public a plan 
for fighting the Islamic State (IS) militants on September 10. “I’m preparing 
the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from ISIL,” he said. 
(“ISIL” – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – is the old and by now 
obsolete acronym for the IS. The Administration still insists on using it, 
however, for political reasons.)

In an interview 
<http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/president-barack-obamas-full-interview-nbcs-chuck-todd-n197616>
  that aired on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press” Obama tried to sound confident:  
“Keep in mind that this is something that we know how to do. We’ve been dealing 
with terrorist threats for quite some time.” The claim is unsettling. As it 
happens, “they” don’t know how to do it. “They” have been dealing with 
terrorist threats, hesitantly and with disastrous results. The rise of the IS 
in itself provides conclusive evidence of “their” overall ineptitude, and in 
particular “their” inability to collect reliable intelligence, anticipate 
events, and develop coherent strategies to protect American security interests 
in a volatile region.

“I want people to understand, though, is that over the course of months, we are 
going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of ISIL. We are going to 
systematically degrade their capabilities. We’re going to shrink the territory 
that they control. And ultimately we’re going to defeat ‘em,” Obama went on. 
There will be no American troops on the ground, but “because of American 
leadership, we have, I believe, a broad-based coalition internationally and 
regionally to be able to deal with the problem.”
Obama was alluding to a “coalition” that is strictly regional: his attempts at 
the recent NATO summit in Wales to obtain backing for a more “internationally 
based” coalition were an abject failure. Even Britain proved squeamish. He is 
now left with a would-be “coalition” of Sunni Muslim countries – Saudi Arabia, 
Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates – which have been aiding and 
abetting ISIS for years, and which have neither the will nor the resources to 
fight it. Obama will announce on Wednesday that he will rely on those countries 
to work together – with American air support and ill-defined overall 
“leadership” – in fighting the IS.

Those countries’ military forces are unable to confront an enemy which consists 
of highly motivated light infantry, knows the terrain, enjoys considerable 
popular support, and operates in small motorized formations. On the basis of 
its poor showing in Yemen it is clear that the Saudis in particular are no 
better than the Iraqi army which performed so miserably last June. Even when 
united in their overall strategic objectives, Arab armies are notoriously 
unable to develop integrated command and control systems – as was manifested in 
1947-48, in the Seven-Day War of 1967, and in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Their 
junior officers are discouraged from making independent tactical decisions by 
their inept superiors who hate delegating authority. Both are, inevitably, 
products of a culture steeped in strictly hierarchical modes of thought and 
action. Furthermore, their expensive hardware integrated into hard to maneuver 
brigade-sized units is likely to be useless against an elusive enemy who will 
avoid pitched battles.

The Shia-dominated Iraqi army is not to be counted upon, as attested by its 
flight from Mosul, and it will be loath to cooperate with the armed forces of 
the overtly anti-Shia regimes. The Kurdish pershmerga will be equally reluctant 
to treat Saudis or Qataris as brothers-in-arms. Its fighters are interested in 
an independent Kurdistan, not in defeating the IS – and by implication helping 
put Iraq together again. Even if they were capable of major operations, both of 
them would be perceived by the Sunni Arab majority in northwestern Iraq as an 
occupying force with the predictable result that the “caliphate” could count on 
thousands of fresh volunteers.

Obama’s “regional allies,” whom he expects to form an Arab “coalition of the 
willing,” could end up helping their Sunni coreligionists fight the Shia 
“apostates.” Many royal kleptocrats in Riyadh and around the Gulf still regard 
the IS in western Iraq and northeastern Syria as a welcome buffer against the 
putative Shia crescent extending from Iran to the Lebanese coast. In any event, 
as Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the London Independent notes 
in his book on the rise of ISIS, the “war on terror” has failed because it did 
not target the jihadi movement as a whole and, above all, was not aimed at 
Saudi Arabia which fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement.

Obama has no “coalition.” He still counts on the non-existent “moderate rebels” 
in Syria to come on board. He still refuses to talk to Bashar al-Assad, whose 
army is the only viable force capable of confronting the IS now and for many 
years to come. He has no plan to systematically degrade the IS capabilities, no 
means to shrink the territory that they control, and certainly no strategy to 
defeat them.