Last night’s PBS Newshour had an informative but depressing segment on Middle East policy (“What should we be doing to defeat the Islamic State?“).
The segment featured two guests.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey served in the infantry, and he is now a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute (The Washington Institute for Near East Policy). And John Mearsheimer, a West Point graduate and former Air Force officer, he writes extensively on strategic issues and is a political science professor at the University of Chicago.
Surprisingly, it was the West Point grad and former officer who spoke most about the need for diplomacy, while the diplomat advocated an expanded war involving U.S. ground troops. That made it kind of a strangely disturbing dialog.
Jeffrey, the former ambassador, laid out his position early.
In terms of taking down ISIS as a state and as an army, we have to go on the offensive. That requires ground troops.
We have tried for 15 months to create a set of ground troops from the units and entities and forces on the ground that we have. It isn’t working all that well. We don’t have the time to keep trying to do this. Some insertion of U.S. forces, both as advisers, special forces and some ground maneuver units are absolutely necessary to move this forward.
While Mearsheimer, the West Point grad, saw this as folly.
And the principal reason is you would have to put a lot of ground troops in to defeat ISIS. And there is no question that if you put 100,000, 150,000 troops in there, you could defeat ISIS, but then you run into the what-next question. What are we going to do, stay in there and occupy the place? And the end result will be dealing with insurgents, won’t know how to get out and will just make a bad situation worse.
So it’s quite clear to me that there is no way we can defeat ISIS from the air or with ground forces. And, therefore, we have to find some sort of diplomatic solution.
Speaking as a former military officer, his position was clear. There is no military solution available to us, he argued.
There is no simple military solution. There is nothing the Americans or the Russians can do militarily to win this, because we’re not willing to commit ground forces, for good reasons.
He advocated a diplomatic approach involving the U.S. as well as Russia and Iran, along with other regional states and interests.
It all goes to show the complexities of the situation which are wholly absent from the war talk so easily leaving the lips of presidential candidates on both sides of the party divide. We’ve done the full scale military thing in Iraq, and look how well that turned out (sorry for the sarcasm there). And the counterinsurgency approach in Afghanistan hasn’t worked out for us either.
Are we capable of learning?
Anyway, using the link at the top of this post, you can read the Newshour transcript, watch the segment, or listen to the audio.
And while I’m at it, I’ll refer you over to Larry Geller’s Disappeared News for the brief essay by well-known peace researcher, Johan Galling (“Violence In and By Paris: Any Way Out?“)
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 7. -Text of a White House announcement detailing the attack on the Hawaiian islands is: “The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor from the air and all naval and military activities on the island of Oahu, principal American base is the Hawaiian islands.”
Oahu was attacked at 7:55 this morning by Japanese planes.
The Rising Sun, emblem of Japan, was seen on plane wing tips.
Wave after wave of bombers streamed through the clouded morning sky from the southwest and flung their missiles on a city resting in peaceful Sabbath calm.
According to an unconfirmed report received at the governor’s office, the Japanese force that attacked Oahu reached island waters aboard two small airplane carriers.
It was also reported that of the governor’s office either an attempt had been made to bomb the USS Lexington, or that it had been bombed.
excellent images here:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/slideshow/A-Day-of-Infamy-Dec-7-1941-75616/photo-5565126.php
I found it distressing as well. But that’s not a new feeling after some of the recent world events. It simply makes me more curious and determined to learn more. There has to be a way.
PARIS — The attacks by militants tied to the Islamic State less than two weeks ago in Paris have awakened a patriotic fervor in France not seen in decades.
Thousands of people have been flocking to sign up with the military. Those seeking to enlist in the French Army have quintupled to around 1,500 a day. Local and national police offices are flooded with applications. Even sales of the French flag, which the French rarely display, have skyrocketed since the attacks, which left 130 dead.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Col. Eric de Lapresle, a spokesman for the French Army’s recruiting service. “People are coming in and contacting us in droves through social media, using words like liberty, defense and the fight against terror.”
In the days after the Paris attacks, the terrace outside of La Belle Équipe became a shrine, blanketed with flowers, candles, photos of the victims and handwritten messages.
After Paris Attacks, Ties That Bind Patrons at a Cafe Also BurnNOV. 25, 2015
A patrol Tuesday in La Défense, a business district west of Paris where two of the men killed in a raid last week were said to be planning to blow themselves up.
The surge in France, which no longer has conscription, mirrors what happened in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks. In the two years after those terrorist assaults, the number of American active-duty personnel rose more than 38,000 to 1.4 million. The reasons many of those young Americans offered for volunteering to serve are echoed by some of their French counterparts today.
— New York Times 11/26/2015