Let's Do the Time Warp Again

President Obama has started describing his new strategy to confront the Islamic State, and despite it being a mishmash of wishful thinking and perpetual militarism, the focus of the Washington elites in the press and elsewhere has been almost entirely on the optics: Is he overcoming the perception that he wasn’t doing enough? What will the political reaction be?

The question we should be asking, as I noted on Friday, is: Why the hell does he think it has any chance of working?

[...]

[He] is apparently planning on re-upping the country for another 3-year hitch in the endless war he used to talk about wrapping up.

His plan calls for stepped-up airstrikes, inevitably leading to civilian casualties; for the kind of Middle-Eastern diplomatic needle-threading that has consistently eluded him in the past; for a political miracle in Iraq; and, despite all the precedent to the contrary, for American-trained indigenous military forces that actually fight.

  Dan Froomkin

Keep digging.

The U.S.-led international strategy to combat the Islamic State that President Barack Obama sketched out Friday is likely to require years of thorny diplomacy and deeper U.S. military involvement in conflicts that he’s struggled to avoid.

[...]

Even limited success for this new effort, analysts say, hinges on an unenviable to-do list for the Obama administration: foster cozier relations with Iran, gamble on the so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels, strong-arm Iraq’s Shiite Muslim leaders into power-sharing with the Sunni Muslim minority, and persuade Sunni-ruled nations in the Persian Gulf region not to undermine the whole effort by striking out on their own.

[...]

“We are going to have to find effective partners on the ground to push back against ISIL,” Obama said, using the government’s acronym for the Islamic State and referring specifically to its sanctuary in Syria. “The moderate coalition there is one that we can work with. We have experience working with many of them. They have been, to some degree, outgunned and outmanned, and that’s why it’s important for us to work with our friends and allies to support them more effectively.”

  McClatchy

Yeah. These moderate rebels?

Slain American journalist Steven Sotloff was sold to Islamic State militants before they eventually beheaded him, a spokesperson for the man’s family now claims.

Barak Barfi, a research fellow at the New America Foundation and a representative for the Sotloffs, told CNN on Monday that militants from the group formerly known as ISIS paid supposedly moderate rebels in Syria for the freelance journalist after he disappeared there last year.

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"We believe that these so-called moderate rebels that people want our administration to support, one of them sold him probably for something between $25,000 and $50,000 to ISIS, and that was the reason he was captured," Barfi told Cooper.

are   RT

I think a pretty good case could be made for charging the U.S. with aiding and abetting.  But, really, when you think about the hand we have in spreading around weapons and money to people who "want to hurt us," the only rational conclusion is that we are being manipulated and ruled by "defense" corporations.

Is Obama’s new plan something he genuinely believes in? Or does he recognize it’s stupid, and is just doing it for the optics?

There’s a dismal precedent for the latter option: His decision to extend what he knew was a dead-end war in Afghanistan for two years because of the bellicose promises he’d made in order to look tough during his first political campaign. That time, he traded about 1,300 American lives for optics.

Who knows what the trade might be this time?

  Dan Froomkin

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.