Gray Lady Reporter Finally Asks the Obvious, "Why No Action Against ISIS?"

As the Islamic State offensive wreaks havoc in Christian communities west of Mosul, sending refugees fleeing to the Kurdistan border and proving once again that the pesh merga have fallen short of their well-crafted reputation for martial prowess, the story to turn to is Somini Sengupta's,
"Islamic Militants in Iraq Are Widely Loathed, Yet Action to Curb Them Is Elusive."

Sengupta is the Gray Lady's United Nations reporter. She is a reliable parrot of whatever the company line is at the moment. But recently she has written some interesting stories, like last week's piece devoted to Israel's war on the UN. Today Sengupta takes on the question, albeit obliquely, that has been demanding an answer since ISIS rose to prominence last year: Why is there no coordinated action, no coalition of the willing, to roll back a terror group more fearsome than Al Qaeda ever was? Good question.

Never mind the decapitations, the crucifixions, the shrine demolitions, the vicious attacks on religious minorities, the oil and gas field seizures, the international recruitment of jihadis from seemingly every nation on the globe. What about the Global War on Terror (GWOT) according to which the West has reconfigured itself in the last 15 years? Aren't the trillions spent on national defense meant to prevent a movement like that represented by Islamic State from doing exactly what it is doing?

The answer that Sengupta comes up with? Basically, it is a version of, "It's complicated":

“With Iran and Saudi Arabia locked in a proxy war in Syria, Saudi Arabia competing with Qatar and Turkey for influence throughout the region, and Kurds — themselves hardly united — leaning ever further toward independence, it is not realistic to expect a coherent strategy for confronting ISIS to emerge from the region,” said Noah Bonsey, the Syria expert at the International Crisis Group. “The U.S. has the clout and capacity to build partnerships capable of reversing ISIS gains, but seems to lack the necessary vision and will.” [Note how the U.S. doesn't lack the "necessary vision and will" to foster a coup in the Ukraine, effectively paving the way for a new Cold War. Yet the U.S. cannot seem to find a way to confront its latest existential enemy, "Islamofascism."]

ISIS threatens not just Iraq and Syria. It has drawn fighters from countries as far-flung as India and China, Belgium and Britain. United Nations experts said fighters from rival jihadist groups, including the Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, have steadily defected to ISIS, because it has more money and guns. Military analysts say that it is exceedingly difficult to neutralize a group that now finances itself — it controls several oil fields in Iraq and Syria— and is heavily armed with weapons seized from both Iraqi and Syrian military bases.

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The United States has plenty of reason to worry, said Julia McQuaid, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Va., and not just because Western recruits to ISIS can come home and wreak havoc. 

ISIS propounds the idea of a Sunni “caliphate,” which by definition threatens the borders of nation-states. “While there should be little concern for any current jihadist movement successfully establishing a global caliphate under its banner,” Ms. McQuaid wrote in a blog post, the Islamic State’s model “may have profound implications on the security environment in other countries.”

No kidding.

The obvious answer as to why there has been no response from the greatest military power on the planet as the ISIS juggernaut gobbles up vital territory is that ISIS is a creation of U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia, and Washington and the House of Saud are using Islamic State to achieve strategic goals that could not otherwise be conventionally achieved, namely, partitioning Iraq, fracturing Syria, and pressuring Iran and Hezbollah. Where it will end we do not know. ISIS's clashing with Kurdistan represents a shift in the script since back in June when Mosul fell to the jihadi blitz, the Kurds, in what had to be a coordinated move, took Kirkuk. The pesh merga and Salafis assiduously avoided one another. Now they are fighting one another. And what provides proof that the U.S., so far at least, is firmly in the Saudi/ISIS camp is that Washington has not done much of anything to aid Erbil.

Yes, where the caliphate will stop nobody knows. We know that Afghanistan will soon return to the Taliban, and that the Taliban have same sponsor, the Saudis, as ISIS. We know that China is dealing with a shadowy Islamic insurrection in its western province of Xinjiang, not to mention pirate hijackings of tankers in the South China Sea that may have an origin in ISIS recruiting efforts in Malaysia. Then there is the case of the middle-class Indian Muslim men who disappeared to go fight with ISIS in Iraq. Islamic State apparently already has a toehold in the second-most-populated Muslim nation on the planet; the potential for mayhem -- think 2008 Mumbai Thanksgiving massacre -- is immense.

No, the main warfare state, the United States, is aligned here with Saudi Arabia, and its proxy, Islamic State, to make sure the planet has a "rosy future of war."