Mission Accomplished

The Islamic State jihadist organization has recruited more than 6,000 new fighters since America began targeting the group with air strikes last month, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

At least 1,300 of the new recruits are said to be foreigners, who have joined IS from outside the swathes of Syria and Iraq that it controls.

  Haaretz

By opting to support the “moderate” Syrian opposition and running the risk of an open confrontation with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the West appears to be primarily appeasing Arab Persian Gulf allies that have turned the overthrow of Mr. Assad into a policy fetish that runs against any rational calculation of how to defeat Islamist terrorism.

The persistent belief in Western policy circles that there is a “moderate opposition” in Syria — reiterated at the close of a NATO summit meeting in Wales on Sept. 5 — warrants serious scrutiny. The very notion of a “vetted” opposition has an absurd ring to it. It assumes that moderation is an identifiable, fixed element that can be sorted out from other, tainted characteristics.

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The most effective forces on the ground today — and for the foreseeable future — are decidedly nonmoderate.

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Sunni jihadists have been successful precisely because of their insidious appeal to deep-rooted societal and religious instincts and their ability to evoke symbols that elicit a genuine response across the Sunni world, despite their brutality. Anti-Shiite sectarian sentiment adds to their appeal; they have a substantive ideological overlap with Al Qaeda (which disavowed ISIS in February) and with other Syrian rebel groups, like the Saudi-backed Islamic Front, the gulf-financed Ahrar al-Sham and the Qaeda-associated Nusra Front.

  NYT

May I just say that disavowing ISIS was a brilliant move on the part of al Qaeda if they have been anticipating US action. We backed them once before, why not again?

Ultimately, this is the same bed that the West made — and in which it slept — in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

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The truth is that there are no “armed moderates” (or “moderate terrorists”) in the Arab world — and precious few beyond. The genuine “moderates” won’t take up arms, and those who do are not truly moderates.

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Supporting the Syrian “moderates” would make some military sense only if it would make any difference on the ground. But in the absence of any large-scale Western or regional commitment to deploy troops, the only real “boots on the ground” capable of destroying ISIS are the Syrian Army and its local allies, including Hezbollah.

Despite its oppressive and brutal history, Mr. Assad’s regime not only poses no discernible threat to the West or its interests, but is ready and willing to act on the basis of common objectives. It would seem to be the height of strategic folly to initiate a military campaign on Syrian soil that is bound to result in a serious confrontation with Mr. Assad’s forces, and possibly Iran and Russia as well, at a time when the most effective course of action would be to act in concert with him to confront a grave common threat.

Only if that were the real objective.