PDA

View Full Version : Mission creep in Syria



Peter1469
03-12-2017, 01:40 PM
Mission creep in Syria (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445686/isis-syria-us-military-may-soon-defeat-isis-what-comes-next)

The article begins by talking about the end game for ISIL- in Mosul and Raqqa. It then highlights the problem: mission creep--


But that won’t be the end. Recent events suggest that the military defeat of ISIS is just the beginning of a renewed American involvement in Iraq and Syria. And whether the American public and president are prepared for or willing to accept the probable costs of such involvement is unknown.

That is reason for concern. To glimpse the future, look at the city of Manbij in northeast Syria. Humvees and Strykers flying the American flag have appeared there in recent days. The mission? Not to defeat ISIS. Our proxies kicked them out last year. What we are doing in Manbij is something altogether different from a military assault: a “deterrence and reassurance” operation meant to dissuade rival factions from massacring one another.

If you can’t remember when President Obama or President Trump called for such an operation, that’s because they never did. And there’s a twist. One of the factions we are trying to intimidate is none other than the army of Turkey, a NATO member and purported ally. Turkey moved in on Manbij not because of ISIS but because of the Kurds. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish autocrat, opposes one of our Kurdish proxies. He says the YPG is the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, which has conducted an insurgency against his government for decades.

Yet the YPG is also the most effective indigenous anti-ISIS force on the ground. We need it to take Raqqa. Things get even more complicated. Also in Manbij are the Russians, who are helping units of the Syrian army police a group of villages. The Kurds invited them, too, presumably as a separate hedge against Turkey. To keep score: The Americans, the Russians, the Turks, the Kurds, and the Syrians are all converging on an impoverished city in the middle of nowhere that has no strategic importance to the United States. One needn’t have read The Guns of August to fret about the risks of miscalculation and misinterpretation.

Which is why, on Tuesday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford, met with his Russian and Turkish counterparts. “One American official described the situation around Manbij as a potential tinderbox,” reports the New York Times. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445686/isis-syria-us-military-may-soon-defeat-isis-what-comes-next

Read the article at the link.

[Note, the formatting was messed up and I added paragraphs to make it easier to read. See the link for the original formatting.]

Ethereal
03-13-2017, 01:59 PM
The military-industrial complex loves them some mission creep. It means more money. Meanwhile, Americans are basically asleep at the wheel, putting their blind faith in the government. The perverse incentives combined with the civic complacency are the hallmarks of declining empires. American SOCIETY will yet survive, but the systemic context in which it exists will not. The only question becomes: When?

Peter1469
03-13-2017, 04:07 PM
The military-industrial complex loves them some mission creep. It means more money. Meanwhile, Americans are basically asleep at the wheel, putting their blind faith in the government. The perverse incentives combined with the civic complacency are the hallmarks of declining empires. American SOCIETY will yet survive, but the systemic context in which it exists will not. The only question becomes: When?

Probably once the USD is no longer the world reserve currency.