Is ISIS an excuse to topple al-Assad?

[Alien]

Well, I could find a thread on this aspect on DFI, so creating one.

I understand that, ISIS controls some oil wells in Iraq and Syria, they sell crude oil and rob from everyone around thus, make money.

Almost all the countries wherein ISIS has presence, oppose them and fighting against them!

I am sure, neither ISIS have arms and ammunition manufacturing factories nor do they have brains to setup one.

Now, who is supplying weapons to ISIS?

 

[Mikesingh]

Check this out.....

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-06-...raq-getting-their-weapons-answer-surprised-us

 

[Alien]

Check this out.....

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-06-...raq-getting-their-weapons-answer-surprised-us

Thanks.

I am wondering, why Amreeka is not stopping Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Barbaria?

 

[Mikesingh]

Thanks.

I am wondering, why Amreeka is not stopping Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Barbaria?

Saudi is where the oil is. Turkey is in NATO and the US is vying for the $112 billion contracts pie in Qatar for government medium-term infrastructure projects.

 

[no smoking]

Thanks.

I am wondering, why Amreeka is not stopping Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Barbaria?

America is pulling out of Middle East while Chinese, European and Russian are moving in. Why don't American s to leave behind a chaos to these competitors?

And you need check
Who these ISIS are fighting against: Syria and Iraq.
What is the difference between them: ISIS is Sunni while both Syria and Iraq are controlled by Shia.
Who is No.1 Shia country---Iran.

 

[apple]

Thanks.

I am wondering, why Amreeka is not stopping Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Barbaria?

Because they are all allies of the West. Not particularly good allies, but allies none the less.

 

[pmaitra]

How US Made and Grew ISIS

• The Bush-Obama tag team actively if unintentionally created the conditions for the rise of ISIS in Syria, Iraq and Libya
• It has been too much, rather than too little, intervention and violence by the US that has led to ISIS

Doug Bandow | (The National Interest) | Russia Insider


The wonder duo

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.

Originally appeared in The National Interest

The George W. Bush administration created many of today’s worst geopolitical problems. ISIS is one of them.

Chaos is spreading from the Middle East outward as hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees pour into Europe. Over the last decade millions of Iraqis and Syrians have fled their homes. Western governments are proving far better at assigning blame than finding solutions.

The Republican meme is that every problem, including in the Middle East, is Barack Obama’s fault. Although emphasizing independence and self-reliance for America, they deny responsibility and accountability for their party. According to the GOP, George W. Bush left America and the world secure. The feckless Obama administration allowed the collapse of Iraq and rise of the Islamic State.

For instance, Jeb Bush defended his brother’s policies. He cited the “brilliant, heroic, and costly” success of the Iraqi troop surge, asking “why was the success of the surge followed by a withdrawal from Iraq, leaving not even the residual force that commanders and the joint chiefs knew was necessary?” He complained that “now we have the creation of ISIS.” In contrast, he contended, “had we kept the 10,000 troop commitment that was there for the President to negotiate and to agree with, we probably wouldn’t have ISIS right now.” Bush declared that “The one thing about my brother: he kept us safe.”

Bobby Jindal declared that today’s problems were not “because of President Bush’s strength, but rather have come about because of President Obama’s weakness.” Rick Santorum announced: “ISIS came about because they hate everything that we believe in and we stand for.” The group “is not something that America had anything to do with.”

These claims are self-serving, even deluded, a political fantasy. The George W. Bush administration created many of today’s worst geopolitical problems.

First, President Bush used a terrorist attack conducted by Saudi citizens trained in Afghanistan as an excuse to invade Iraq, a long-time objective of neoconservatives as part of their plan to reorder the Middle East. Administration officials justified preventive war based on the claims of a dishonest informant provided by a crooked émigré hoping to rule Iraq. War advocates planned to establish a liberal government aligned with the West, governed by an American puppet, friendly to Israel, and home to bases for U.S. military operations against its neighbors. These deluded plans all came to naught. More than a decade later the invasion is viewed by most foreign policy analysts as a historic mistake, American’s worst foreign policy blunder in decades.

Second, after ousting the Sunni dictator whose authoritarian rule held the nation together, the administration mishandled the occupation at every turn. The U.S. failed to exert control, allowing widespread looting, and disbanded the military, creating a large pool of angry and unemployed young men. Then Washington attempted to remake Iraqi society, pushing an American-made constitution and deploying U.S. political appointees even to draft Baghdad traffic regulations.

But the administration established a sectarian regime in Iraq as conflict flared and Iraq disintegrated: perhaps 200,000 Iraqis died, hundreds of thousands of Christians fled their country, and millions of Iraqis were displaced. In the midst of a virulent insurgency and civil strife the administration underwrote the “Sunni Awakening,” through which Sunni tribes turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq. However, Washington failed to achieve its underlying, essential objective of sectarian reconciliation.

Bush continued to support the Maliki government even as it ruthlessly targeted Sunnis, setting the stage for Iraq’s effective break-up. In 2007 U.S. military adviser Emma Sky wrote of the U.S. military’s frustration “by what they viewed as the schemes of Maliki and his inner circle to actively sabotage our efforts to draw Sunnis out of the insurgency.” Al-Qaeda in Iraq survived, mutating into the Islamic State. The Bush administration then became one of the Islamic State’s chief armorers when Iraqi soldiers fled before ISIS forces, abandoning their expensive, high-tech weapons which U.S. aircraft had to destroy last year.

Third, President Bush failed to win Iraqi approval of a continuing U.S. military presence and governing Status of Forces Agreement. With Americans ready to leave and Iraqis determined to move on, Bush planned an American exit. Retired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno explained: “us leaving at the end of 2011 was negotiated in 2008 by the Bush administration. And that was always the plan, we had promised them that we would respect their sovereignty.

Indeed, while Republican candidates now treat this departure as a failure—Jeb Bush proclaimed “that premature withdrawal was the fatal error”—attempting to stay would have been much worse. Washington would have had leverage only by threatening to withdraw its garrison, which the Maliki government desired. U.S. troops would have had little impact on Iraqi political developments, unless augmented and deployed in anti-insurgency operations, which Americans did not support. And a continuing military occupation would have provided radicals from every sectarian viewpoint with a target.

In short, but for the Bush administration’s decision to blow up Iraq there would have been no Islamic State rampaging through a chaotic Mesopotamia. The invasion was the critical mistake. The botched occupation compounded that initial error. Even by the GOP presidential contenders’ own flawed standard—failing to maintain an Iraqi troop presence—President Bush is most responsible for the ISIS deluge.

The Obama administration has played a malign, but secondary, role. Like its predecessor it also intervened too much rather than too little. For instance, President Obama continued to back Iraq’s Maliki government despite the latter’s sectarian excesses. That commitment left Washington with little leverage to press ruling Shia politicians to make concessions to disaffected Sunnis. Keeping a few troops on station against the Iraqis’ would have changed little—after all, the Bush administration failed to transform the Baghdad government when tens of thousands of American soldiers that were fighting on its behalf in Iraq.

In Syria Washington inadvertently discouraged a negotiated compromise between Basharal-Assad and the peaceful opposition by insisting on the former’s departure. That convinced some regime opponents that the U.S. would force Assad’s ouster, precluding need for compromise which might have ended or at least limited the conflict early.

Then the administration apparently rejected a Russian initiative to ease Assad out of power. The Guardian recently reported that former Finnish president Martti Ahtisarri held talks in February 2012 with representatives of the UN Security Council’s permanent members, during which Moscow proposed Assad’s departure as part of peace talks. However, Washington, along with France and Great Britain, believed Assad was destined to fall and rejected Moscow’s initiative. At the time an estimated 7500 Syrians had died in the conflict, compared to the current death toll approaching a quarter million. Said Ahtisaari, “It was an opportunity lost.”

The Obama administration turned Libya into another fulcrum of conflict, following Europe’s lead in promoting low-cost regime change in the name of rescuing the Libyan people. That policy generated chaos, highlighted by competing governments and proliferating armed bands. More recently murderous Islamic State acolytes filled the void.

President Obama also put U.S. credibility on the line by making ISIS’s sectarian war in Iraq and Syria America’s own, without committing sufficient forces to do much more than contain the Islamic State. The Obama administration became a source of weapons for the Islamic State after “moderate” insurgents backed by Washington repeatedly surrendered both personnel and arms to more radical forces. Ironically, one of the most effective Islamic state commanders, Abu Omar al-Shishani, had been trained by the U.S. as a member of the Georgian special forces. Two years ago he joined ISIS and has played a leading role in organizing attacks on the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army.

Unfortunately, inadvertently promoting war rather than peace did not begin with the George W. Bush administration. In March 1992 Britain’s Lord Peter Carrington and Portugal’s European Commission mediator Jose Cutileiro helped forge a compromise promising extensive regional autonomy among Bosnian ethnic leaders Croat Mate Boban, Muslim AlijaIzetbegovic, and Serb Radovan Karadzic. However, after U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmerman met Izetbegovic the latter abandoned what became known as the Lisbon Agreement. Zimmerman denied offering U.S. support for Bosnia’s independence, but no one believes that he encouraged compromise. Cutileiro later complained that “President Izetbegovic and his aides were encouraged to scupper that deal and to fight for a unitary Bosnian state by well-meaning outsiders who thought they knew better.” Had the agreement been implemented, the worst of the Yugoslav civil war might have been avoided and tens of thousands of people might have lived.

It is impossible to ignore the tragedy now overwhelming the Middle East. Washington bears substantial responsibility for the catastrophic conflict. Although President Barack Obama shares the blame, George W. Bush made the most important decisions leading to the destruction of Iraq and rise of ISIL. No candidate unable or unwilling to learn from their disastrous mistakes is qualified to sit in the Oval Office.

 

[pmaitra]

"You Americans created the Islamic state group!" says French MP Jacques Myard on #F24Debate

@Gabriel, @Rowdy, @Mad Indian, do you guys believe this French MP?

Sorry @SajeevJino and @Zebra, I couldn't help but follow instructions from the Kremlin and post this. I had to earn my daily 5 kopeks.

 

[Mad Indian]

Sorry @SajeevJino and @Zebra, I couldn't help but follow instructions from the Kremlin and post this. I had to earn my daily 5 kopeks.

busted


Obviously people who don't buy the American crock are Russian agents onleee

 

[pmaitra]

busted


Obviously people who don't buy the American crock are Russian agents onleee

Just saving them the trouble of posting what they were most likely going to post anyway.

 

[Zebra]

"You Americans created the Islamic state group!" says French MP Jacques Myard on #F24Debate
@Gabriel, @Rowdy, @Mad Indian, do you guys believe this French MP?
Sorry @SajeevJino and @[SIZE=6]Zebra[/SIZE], I couldn't help but follow instructions from the Kremlin and post this. I had to earn my daily 5 kopeks.

Nothing new in it.

Even I already posted in one of the Afghanistan thread, many days back.

 

[Sakal Gharelu Ustad]

Many europeans have started to blame US for the mess in Syria now.

What is super funny when Germans complains about US policy of no boots on the ground in Syria. A country which hardly ever provides any troops for any US mission, now wants their troops in Syria!

 

[LETHALFORCE]

If Russia gets rid of ISIS (all rebels good and bad) will NATO be satisfied?
Or was the main goal a Democracy similar to Iraq, Afghanistan,Libya or Yemen the ultimate goal?

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Many europeans have started to blame US for the mess in Syria now.

What is super funny when Germans complains about US policy of no boots on the ground in Syria. A country which hardly ever provides any troops for any US mission, now wants their troops in Syria!

They are taking the collateral damage ( 1 million refugees )

 

[apple]

If Russia gets rid of ISIS (all rebels good and bad) will NATO be satisfied?
Or was the main goal a Democracy similar to Iraq, Afghanistan,Libya or Yemen the ultimate goal?

NATO isn't a unified political body, neither is America, nor any other NATO state a tyranny. Is difficult to talk about an ultimate goal

No more ISIS is the main goal, toppling Assad is a secondary objective which many of the West's regional allies are very interested in.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

NATO isn't a unified political body, neither is America, nor any other NATO state a tyranny. Is difficult to talk about an ultimate goal

No more ISIS is the main goal, toppling Assad is a secondary objective which many of the West's regional allies are very interested in.

Many claim ISIS was created to topple Assad? How is toppling an elected government recognised in the UN a good thing?

 

[apple]

Many claim ISIS was created to topple Assad? How is toppling an elected government recognised in the UN a good thing?

I never said it was a good thing. I would say that Assad's a bit of a penis though.

The Gulf States, Turkey and a, no longer vocal, minority of elements of the western press are the only people really that concerned about him though.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

I never said it was a good thing. I would say that Assad's a bit of a penis though.

The Gulf States, Turkey and a, no longer vocal, minority of elements of the western press are the only people really that concerned about him though.

This is a war nato is fighting for saudis and Israel.

 

[prohumanity]

Assad is a modern, secular, broadminded elected President of Syria. His only fault is that he does not bend to the western powers. So, US Jewrocracy is painting him black and demonizing him. Anyone with some backbone is hated by regime changers.

 

[Kshatriya87]

Yes sir, it is. Check out this article and let us know what you think

http://oil-price.net/en/articles/crude-oil-syrian-conflict.php

Noticed something whirring overhead? Must be the smell of drama. It seems that the Arab countries are willing to fund the entire operation of any U.S. military adventure in Syria. Says, Secretary of State John Kerry, "That's how dedicated they (Arab Gulf states) are at this. That's not in the cards, and nobody's talking about it, but they're talking in serious ways about getting this done".

But why would the Arab Gulf states want to pay for the marauding invasion of Syria?

Oil and gas, of course
Arguably, Syria isn't a major producer of oil and gas. Depletion of oil reserves is a vital problem facing the energy sector of the country. The oil production has decreased over the years. Syria had 2,500,000,000 barrels (400,000,000 m3) of petroleum reserves as of January 2010. So, the whole hullaballoo about Syria is definitely not about oil in the Syrian territory. What then?

Because of its strategic location vis-à-vis energy transit routes. As it turns out, many key energy transit routes to Europe run through Syria.

We'll explain:
The story begins with Qatar. Well, Qatar has spent billions of dollars supporting the rebel factions in Syria. Not without reasons, though. True, instability props up the oil price, but more importantly Qatar has the world's largest gas field (The South Pars/ North Dome field, shared with Iran) and is the largest exporter of Liquid Natural gas in the world. As a result of these facts, Qatar wanted to build an underground natural gas pipeline from the country's North Field to Turkey, traversing Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria to Mediterranean and then to Europe. Turkey too was in favor of this 'Islamic Pipeline', as it would have made the country a key player in the transit, not to mention profits. However, the Assad regime wasn't interested as the proposed pipeline would have negated Russia off the equation. Instead, in the year 2010, along with Iran and Iraq, Syria proposed to build a 3,450 mile pipeline costing $10 billion to transport oil to Europe directly from the South Pars gas field traversing Syria. This Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, set to open in 2016 has an estimated capacity to pump 3.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, which would benefit Iran, as you may have guessed. So, Iran's gain left Qatar and Turkey licking their fingers. Bear in mind that we are talking in terms of billions of dollars in revenue. And, do not forget that Turkey and Qatar are allies of the US. Yes, more than a square, it's a circle with all points leading back to the US.

Also, there's the Nabucco natural gas pipeline expected to connect Austria to Eastern Turkey with gas received from feeder pipelines of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq and Egypt. Yet, the project has been dragging for more than a decade now. So, if the Assad government falls, Turkey could re-route the Nabucco pipeline to traverse through Syria. Well, why wouldn't Qatar and Turkey want Assad out the door?

What about Saudi Arabia? After all, it too has been a vocal supporter of the rebels ? Hegemony of Saudi Arabia over oil again. Into this scene comes in Russia, alongside. Saudi Arabia has been pressing Russia to discard the Syrian President in favor of a lucrative arms deal worth more than $15 billion and further investments in the country to boot. Also, Saudi Arabia is said to have assured Russia that it would not sign any agreement that would jeopardize Russian gas exports.

Not a bad deal, eh? But, to add in some perspective, Russia and Syria enjoy a rosy friendship. In 2005, Russia played a crucial role in springing up the Syrian economy writing-off about seventy percent of Syria's debt. Russia also has substantial investment in different sectors of the Syrian economy. There's also Tartus, a Syrian port in the Mediterranean which helps Russia as an official base for its ships and also as a point of delivery for weapons to the Syrian Government. In spite of claims and counter claims that Russia had evacuated all of its military personnel (sixteen- ship Naval task force) from the naval base, the reality remains that Russia Naval base is still functioning as ever. Of course, the official version of 'civil personnel only' as maintained by the Russian is debatable. Yet, the US entry in Syria would mean Russia losing its only military installation in the Middle-East, (not to mention the only Russian naval base outside the former soviet Union- history has changed, indeed)

In addition, Russia is the biggest extractor of natural gas in the world. As a result, it is also a major gas exporter. The Assad regime assists Russia by blocking Natural gas from flowing into Europe through the Persian gulf, helping Russian company Gazprom enjoy salacious profits. Unsurprisingly, almost a quarter of the natural gas consumed in Europe comes from Russia. Which is why, enjoying a vast market in Europe, Russia has the comfort to use this to blackmail Europe as in 2009 when it shut off supplies for days. From then on, Europe has been trying to find other markets for natural gas. (Still, it's estimated that Russia would continue to be EU's biggest natural gas supplier even after a decade). One hope has been the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, which would have helped Iran. Of course, US wouldn't want Iran to benefit in anyway, would it? Also US involvement in Syria would also mean direct loss for Russia. And would any government want events contrary to this?

Elsewhere, Iran's support has been crucial for the Assad regime. Historically, the two countries have shared a symbiotic relationship for long against: Saddam Hussein, the US and Israel. If Syria falls, Iran would lose one of its strongest allies, a Shiite Muslim nation at that. Recently, France has softened its stance on Iran to even a possible inclusion in Syrian peace talks. So has the US.

Replacing al-Assad's secular government with an Islamic state rules by groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda would lead to serious repercussions the world over, but the Western powers are so blindfolded that they are willing to write off peace.

Again, here energy and crude oil interests, albeit shy from the public eye, prevail and they're dictating the rules of engagement. The bottom line is that western powers are interested to intervene in Syria solely for energy-related geopolitical reasons that have nothing to do with chemical weapons or democracy.

vhttp://oil-price.net/en/articles/oil-prices-and-syria-civil-war-php[URL]http://oil-price.net/en/articles/oil-prices-and-syria-civil-war-php[/URL]