There’s an interesting interview at the French language Lebanese daily L’Orient Le Jour with the French Air Force Chief General Denis Mercier:
En Libye, on est allé chercher les centres de gravité de Kadhafi (centres de commandement, points de regroupement…). C’est en attaquant ces centres qu’on a fait basculer Kadhafi, pas en allant tirer 150 pick-up par jour. Là , on y serait encore”, a-t-il dit lors d’une rencontre avec la presse. “C’est exactement le même problème en Irak aujourd’hui. On tire beaucoup sur la ligne de front mais derrière il faudrait qu’on se concentre plus sur les centres de gravité. Le problème c’est qu’ils ne sont pas forcément en Irak” mais en Syrie, a-t-il ajouté. En Syrie, où la France n’intervient pas, la coalition internationale emmenée par les Etats-Unis fait face à une situation délicate, les opérations contre l’EI risquant de renforcer le régime de Bachar al-Assad. En Irak, les autorités de Bagdad ont en outre demandé qu’on ne frappe pas ces centres de gravité, a-t-il concédé.
For non-French speakers the gist of his remark is that the U. S. has conflicting objectives in its campaign against DAESH. We can’t go after DAESH’s command and control centers because they’re in Syria and we don’t want to strengthen Assad’s position. We can’t go after their centers in Iraq because the Iraqi government is afraid of reprisals in Baghdad or in the Shi’ite south. So we’re stuck making bombing runs against pick-up trucks.
It’s what an old friend of mine used to call “having too many oars in the water” or the paradox of Buridan’s ass, which starves to death between two bales of hay, unable to decide between them.
Hat tip: Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Suggests to me we do have a policy: We want DAESH to stay alive, we just don’t want it to get much bigger. It’s a nice Sunni state in a way, admirably placed to annoy Assad and Iran, and its continued existence is a barrier to coordination between Shiities in Iran and southern Iraq, making it difficult for them to combine in the future against our Saudi buddies. Also, DAESH puts limits on the possible future expansion of the Kurds, which will probably be a great relief in Turkey, As for DAESH’s destruction of historic relics, mass executions, and gang banging of captives — well, those are just Moslems doing things to Moslems, helping establish once again the moral superiority of the Christian West — so it’ll go down well with Americans of all political persuasions.
I think getting bigger is an idea kind of baked into DAESH, so I’m not going to say the US has a workingpolicy, but aside from that, it’s wonderful just how many neo-conservative objectives it manages to satisfy. Whoever wins the Presidency in 2016 (other than Bernie Sanders or Rand Paul) will probably continue it.
You might want to amend that to “most political persuasions”. It doesn’t go down well with me, for example.
I seem to be very atypical. My overwhelming reaction to the attacks on 9/11, for example, was neither fear nor anger, the responses that most seem to have felt, but sorrow. I was saddened by the prospect of those had died and those who undoubtedly would die from our inevitable responses to the attacks.
@mike shupp
Neo-conservatives are ex-Democrats. They are liberal interventionists, and when the McGovern wing of the Democratic party gained power, they left. Most of them are tentative social conservatives, and they will usually have little to say on them because they are often squishy at best. The neo-cons and the R2P’ers are on the same side of interventions.
At one time, national security/defense hawks inhabited both parties. Cold Warriors were a separate classification, but there was a lot of overlap with the hawks. Today, there are delusional hawks. These are hawks who want to carry on as if the US still had the resources it had during the Cold War, but they are too cheap to pay for them. (Hence, invasions without enough men and equipment.) They want to speak loudly and wave around a twig.
What you describe is a realpolitik solution except in realpolitik nobody gets emotional. If the two sides are going to fight, it is best to let one side win. If you have a side, you help them, but if not you help both sides. Help means selling them weapons and ammo.
Neo-cons, R2P’ers, and liberal interventionists are concerned about pain and suffering. They want to “build a better society” and all that crap. They are the ones looking for the “good rebels”. Those of us into realpolitik are looking for whomever can get the job done with as little blowback as possible.
“We can’t go after DAESH’s command and control centers because they’re in Syria and we don’t want to strengthen Assad’s position. We can’t go after their centers in Iraq because the Iraqi government is afraid of reprisals in Baghdad or in the Shi’ite south. So we’re stuck making bombing runs against pick-up trucks.”
That’s the author’s opinion/interpretation at Pat Lang’s place, but I think it’s wrong:
– Libya is not the same kind of air campaign as ISIS. In Libya we helped various rebel groups defeat an established government – in Iraq/Syria we are (half-assedly) doing the opposite. The “centers of gravity” are completely different as is the context of the conflict. The idea that we would not attack ISIS centers of gravity for the reasons given is nonsense – the reality is that, unlike a long-standing established government, ISIS centers of gravity are either not easily discernable or are not easily interdicted by air or both.
– Additionally, we are limited in Syria for one of two reasons (or maybe both): Either we’ve made a deal with Assad delineating where we can conduct airstrikes (ie. Kobani and northern and eastern Syria), or we know where Syrian air defense assets are and aren’t (ie. they aren’t in Kobani and northern and eastern Syria). So if we want to attack ISIS strongholds in Syria that aren’t in Kobani or northern and eastern Syria then we either have to coordinate with the Syrian government to ensure our aircraft don’t get shot down, or we have to limit ourselves to northern and eastern Syria.
– The whole “fear of reprisals” thing is nonsense. There are attacks in Baghdad every week (as recently as three days ago) – they just don’t make it into the western news. ISIS would like nothing more than to conquer Baghdad and conduct attacks there at least weekly – the idea that American airstrikes will somehow cause reprisals in Baghdad is ludicrous as ISIS is already doing all it can to destabilize the city and the Iraqi government.
It’s my rough, colloquial translation of what Gen. Mercier is quoted as saying. I have no idea of whether it’s reasonable or not.