Big Picture on ISIS 1 MAR 15

While I was originally hopeful about the Arab Spring, I was quickly disillusioned when Egypt's election brought the Muslim Brotherhood program of one man, one vote, one time. At this point, I'm not sure any of these places, besides Tunisia and Iraqi Kurdistan. can be governed in a democratic fashion. I know for sure that US voters will not support the time and expense it takes to build a democratic nation out of these places. What we can do is eliminate the really bad actors, like ISIS and Bashar al Assad. We can try to have better governance instead. These countries have borders drawn 100 years ago, without regard to the ethnic, religious and tribal makeup of the people who live there.

Expecting such countries to retain their borders while becoming multi ethnic nonsectarian republics is absurd. We should accept that Sunnis want a Sunni country and help them set one up in the parts of Iraq and Syria where they live. We should do the same for the Kurds. We should give up on trying to build a nonsectarian Iraqi army. It's an impossible task. It didn't work before under American occupation and it's unlikely to succeed now with a few American advisers. We should arm organizations who show they are willing to fight without committing atrocities. This means dealing directly with the Kurds and Sunni tribal groups whether Baghdad likes it or not.

The US doesn't seem to have many friends in the region. Iran owns Baghdad. The Turks have to be seriously pressured to do anything even minimally useful. The Kurds are pro American, pro-Israeli and relatively religiously tolerant. They fight ISIS with whatever they have. The risk that Kurdish equipment will fall into ISIS hands in useable condition is very low. There's no reason not to arm them to the teeth. Giving training and weapons to the Iraqi Army is not just a waste of time, it's a weapons transfer to ISIS.

The way this looks right now, the Shi'ite militias are going to be the only other power in Iraq besides the Kurds. If the Kurds, Yazidis, Christians and other minority groups can't defend themselves independently, stopping ISIS will not stop the genocide. It will just change who is doing the killing from Sunni jihadists to Shi'ite jihadists

Unfortunately, most of the Sons of Iraq, Sunnis who helped us get rid of Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, are probably dead by now. They were sacrificed so our Dear Leader could please his base by totally withdrawing from Iraq. Once we left, Al Maliki's Shi'ite government cut off their money and equipment. ISIS probably killed most of them. Who would trust us now, given the way we abandoned them last time?  We have to offer a much better deal this time.  We have to offer a Sunni Regional Government similar to the Kurdish Regional Government.  And we also have to guarantee funding for the government, because Baghdad will cut them off again as soon as the US loses interest.  Possibly the funding can come from the Gulf Oil States.  Maybe then we can start to form Sunni Arab units who will be motivated to fight ISIS.

We were not able to train an effective Iraqi Army when we occupied Iraq. Why do we think we can do better now under worse conditions? If we train 5,000 to 10,000 Kurds, Yazidis and Christians we will get an effective fighting force. If we train 20,000 Iraqi Army soldiers, we will get a better armed ISIS, just like last time. However, as far as I can tell, the Kurds and their allies are still short of equipment and ammunition. The Wall Street Journal had a recent story about a Christian militia in Kurdistan training with borrowed guns and almost no ammunition. All of the good stuff is going to Baghdad. It seems that anything given to the Kurds, has to be inspected and approved in Baghdad before it’s shipped to the Kurds. Barry the Brilliant seems to think he can get a great nuclear arms control deal if he appeases the Iranians enough.

As far as I can tell, the best way to take Mosul is from Iraqi Kurdistan. Google Maps only shows one town, Bartella, between Peshmerga held Kalak and Mosul. Bartella used to be the largest Christian town in Iraq, so I’m sure the Kurds are sheltering a lot of people from there who could help take the place.

Mosul is the second biggest city in Iraq.  It is a city divided by the Tigris River. The population was a mixture of Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrian Christians and a lot of other ethnic and religious groups.  The east side was predominantly Kurdish.  The west side was predominantly Sunni Arab.  The ISIS garrison in Mosul is estimated to be about 6,ooo armed men.

City fighting is very costly in terms of casualties.  While the remaining Kurds will help in the eastern side, the Sunni Arbs in the west side have no motivation to do so.  Without help from inside, any attacking force is going to take a large number of casualties.  Given how unmotivated Iraqi Army troops have proved in the past, I don’t believe they will ever be willing to take massive casualties fighting for Mosul.  They will refuse any order to attack.

My first thought was this.  If the Sunni side of Mosul is going to be destroyed anyway, why not just drop thousands of leaflets warning the civilians it's going to be flattened? Then give the civilians a week to leave. At that point, carpet bomb the place with B-52s and big fuel air explosives. Make sure that nothing much can live through the bombing.

The problem with just bombing the place is that ISIS has prevented the civilian population of Mosul from leaving.  ISIS has a “guarantee” system.  Anyone leaving Mosul has to designate 3 hostages in Mosul who will be punished if the departing person fails to return to Mosul.  So most of the civilian population is still in Mosul and can’t get out.

There may be as many as 100,000 military aged civilian men in Mosul.  The majority of them are Sunni Arabs.  Many of them probably have hidden AK-47 assault rifles.  At the moment, they have no motivation to resist ISIS.  If they expel ISIS, the Shi’ite Baghdad government returns to power or the Kurdistan Regional Government takes over.  Either way, they get nothing.

To me, the solution seems to be guaranteeing a Sunni Regional Government similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government.  The administration’s position is that Iraq is a unitary state.  Our position in the Ukraine is that the Ukraine is not a unitary state. (snarky comment)  As long as we hold the position that the Sunni Arabs have to live with the Iranian backed Shi’ite government in Baghdad without a regional government of their own, I don’t see how we can expel ISIS from Mosul with troops from Iraq. 

Article on the Mosul Offensive Announcement and Feasibility:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414334/obamas-hasty-mosul-offensive-bing-west

Article on Stopping ISIS

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2015/02/20/can_we_stop_the_army_of_terror_110986.html

Article on Iraqi Christian Militia (Requires Subscription)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/iraqs-christians-take-up-arms-to-fight-islamic-state-1423017266?KEYWORDS=iraqi+christian+militia

Interview With Kurdistan High Representative to the US

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/26/obama-lacks-islamic-state-plan-should-increase-arm/?page=all

Article on ISIS Occupation of Mosul

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/27/how-to-retake-mosul-from-the-islamic-state/?utm_source=Sailthru

Why Does US Still Favor Baghdad over the Kurds?

The article linked below is an interview with the Kurdistan Regional Government's High Representative to the US. In it she reveals that all military shipments to Iraqi Kurdistan are first landed in Baghdad for inspection and only after inspection are the given to the Kurds. This is ridiculous. The Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq and the Kurdish YPG in Syria have proven their combat effectiveness in every battle they've fought as long as their ammunition held out. Even in retreat, they never abandon any weapons for ISIS to capture.  The Iraqi Army, on the other hand, was one of the main sources of arms for ISIS. They abandoned all of their US supplied equipment and ran away before ISIS could even get to them. Iran is supplying the Shi'ite militias around Baghdad with all of the weapons they need. Why aren't we doing the same for the Kurds? 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/26/obama-lacks-islamic-state-plan-should-increase-arm/?page=all

Ranting About Rudy, A Double Standard

The liberal press game of gottcha is getting ridiculous for hypocrisy.  Both George W Bush and Scot Walker have been called Hitler. Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) confirmed in the link below that the Democratic campaign message for the midterms was Republicans are worse than Ebola and ISIS. Dick Cheney was accused of starting the Iraq war to make money for Halliburton. There are no limits when it comes to liberal Democrats attacking Republicans. The Pravda Press should not be allowed to enforce this blatant double standard. Nobody claimed these attacks on Republicans were unacceptable. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is at the front of the pack denouncing Giuliani's remarks. She should be slammed for being the hypocrite that she is. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/10/26/wasserman_schultz_republicans_are_scarier_than_ebola_isis.html

Article I was reacting to:

http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon0222fs.html

My Personal Exposure to Paleoclimatology and Global Warming

My problem with the whole argument for man-made global warming is the narrowness of the time frame of observations being used.  My reservations are based on my personal experience.  I grew up in Missoula, Montana.  It was a prehistoric lake.  I was painfully aware of this as a kid, because anytime anybody tried to dig a hole to plant something there was about an inch of topsoil, an inch of gravel and then a seemingly infinite layer of big smooth boulders, most much bigger than the original size of the hole, that had to be removed.  It turns out that Lake Missoula got filled repeatedly as the result of ice dams on the Clark's Fork River 15,000 to 13,000 years ago.  Periodically the dams would break up suddenly and flood everything downstream with the contents of the Lake Missoula.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods

This personal experience and subsequent exposure to paleoclimatology led me to understand that climate varies quite widely over geologic time based on natural processes.  I believe that the state of our understanding of these natural processes is exceedingly incomplete.  We have had the computational power to study these processes for less than 30 years.  This is really not enough time to build all of the relevant factors into the models and then run them enough to understand the bugs and fix them.  If we are going to take action that requires drastic expensive changes to our economy, the burden of proof is on the people calling for the drastic expensive changes.  We should be sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the changes are necessary.  It is not enough to find warming.  It has to be shown that the warming is caused by increased CO2 emissions or other alterations to the ecosystem that are the result of human activity. At this point, I think even showing the warming is a stretch.  It is definitely not proven that human activity is causing any warming observed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology

I think the 135 year time span of the primary detailed observations leaves a lot of room for reasonable doubt, particularly since the satellite record for the last 36 years shows no change.  The obvious political motivations of the people behind the global warming movement, who seek unchecked absolute power through the control of all energy use, makes me believe they have the motive and opportunity for falsifying the data.  The fact that Michael Mann's famous hockey stick did not show the Medieval Warming Period at all should make everyone think that something is fishy.  When the Climate Research Unit refused to share the raw data and fought off a Freedom of Information Request by saying they accidentally erased the data, I really became suspicious.  Science is supposed to be open and reproducible.  Accidentally erasing the data is the scientific equivalent of "the dog ate my homework."  I have provided a link for the erased data incident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents

Personally, today I am dealing with 10 degree F weather in Chicago.  I have found global warming to date extremely disappointing.  Last year there was a 35 foot high pile of snow extending 100 feet along the edge of the parking lot where I work. When I posted a picture of it on my Facebook page, one of my friends wanted to know if it was Montana or Illinois.  I know some legitimate scientists take this very seriously.  But I believe that the planet is a very big place with a huge amount of water that is going to buffer whatever man does in the short run.  I think AGW is a political movement disguised as science.  I don't think AGW has met its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.