Bait and Switch: This is What Perpetual War Looks Like

Eating a bean burrito in front of my laptop last night, watching the CSPAN video of Obama's declaration of war against Islamic State, what jumped out at me was Obama's other declaration of war, the one against the sovereign state of Syria. The relevant paragraph from the president's speech is:

Across the border, in Syria, we have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition. Tonight, I again call on Congress to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters. In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people; a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria's crisis once and for all.

This is a very clear statement that a major part of the U.S. plan to destroy ISIS includes the destruction of the Syrian government,

To that end, Secretary of State John Kerry is in Jidda conferring with the Saudis about hosting the training bases for the new non-ISIS Syrian fighting force that U.S. taxpayers will fund to the tune of half-a-billion dollars. The story to read is by Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt, "Saudi Arabia Will Grant U.S. Request for Anti-ISIS Training Program":

Plans for training and arming moderate Syrian rebels so they can confront ISIS and the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus are also expected to be discussed in Jidda. 

“We are in a position, I think, to be pretty specific with the Saudis about what we’d like,” a senior State Department official said, referring to the training and arming effort. “We’re fairly confident they will be forward leaning on this.” 

The White House said in a statement that President Obama called King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and that the two leaders “had agreed on the need for increased training and equipping of the moderate Syrian opposition.” 

The Saudis, who have grave concerns that ISIS may present a threat to the stability of the kingdom, are emerging as a key member of the anti-ISIS coalition the Obama administration is trying to form because of their financial resources and Islamic regional credentials. 

The replacement of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as Iraq’s prime minister has made it easier for the Saudis to cooperate with Iraq. King Abdullah had complained that Mr. Maliki was untrustworthy and too much under the influence of Iran in a 2009 conversation with John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director who was then serving as Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, according to a cable made public by WikiLeaks. 

Yet the more forcible approach Mr. Obama has recently adopted on intervention in Syria has also made it easier for the two sides to cooperate. 

To the dismay of the Saudis, Mr. Obama had refrained from carrying out airstrikes last year after forces loyal to Mr. Assad used chemical weapons. And in 2012, Mr. Obama overruled most of his principal national security officials when they proposed arming and training moderate rebels in Syria.

But now Mr. Obama appears to have opened the door to airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and is asking Congress to approve hundreds of millions of dollars in funds so the Pentagon can train and arm Syrian rebels.

In Baghdad Kerry was successful in securing guarantees from the Abadi government to proceed with the scheme to create a national guard system anchored in provinces. Given the dominant sectarianism in Iraq following the U.S. invasion and occupation, what the U.S. is demanding is a fractured state ruled by myriad warlords.

In Saudi Arabia Kerry is going to the key sponsor of Islamic State (see Patrick Cockburn's London Review of Books article, "Isis Consolidates") to ask for help in sponsoring a counter-force to fight Islamic State as well as take out the Baathists in Damascus.

If it seems like we have been here before, we have. It is Afghanistan all over again, where jihadi warlords give way to the Taliban who give way to the newly-labeled U.S.-sponsored jihadi warlords in an never-ending cycle.

It is enough to make even the Gray Lady frontpage "think piece" provided by Peter Baker sound sour and cynical. In "New Military Campaign Extends a Legacy of War" Baker casts doubt on Obama's speech from top to bottom: from the comparison of this war on ISIS to long-running campaigns in Somalia and Yemen, to the absence of any exit strategy:

In his speech, Mr. Obama tried to equate the emerging strategy to the way he has pursued terrorist cells in Yemen and Somalia. Aides said that by working with local forces on the ground and targeting leaders from the air, the United States had been able to damage extremist groups without occupying territory or engaging in costly nation building, although some former officials . . . noted that terrorist groups remained in both countries. 

But what Mr. Obama has in mind for Iraq and Syria goes beyond that approach. By some counts, the United States under Mr. Obama has conducted a dozen or so lethal strikes in Somalia in recent years and about 100 in Yemen. Even at the height of the drone war in Pakistan, Americans conducted fewer than 120 strikes in a single year, 2010, and were down to seven so far this year, according to the Long War Journal.

By contrast, the air campaign against ISIS that Mr. Obama ordered in Iraq has involved 154 strikes in the course of a month — far fewer than necessary in the view of some hawks, but far more than the occasional attacks on satellite terror groups in Africa and Arabia. And that was before Mr. Obama officially expanded the mission to destroying ISIS and effectively erased the border with Syria to send warplanes there as well. 

In addition, this war involves a more sprawling and complicated geopolitical landscape than that of Somalia and Yemen, encompassing a broad array of groups, multiple countries, and the broken relationship between the United States and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whom Mr. Obama has called on to give up power. 

For all that, the campaign Mr. Obama outlined Wednesday night is likely to continue past his departure from office. Much as he was inaugurated with the challenge of finishing Mr. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the next president will be heir to Mr. Obama’s war in Syria and Iraq. 

Mr. Obama’s aides said they hoped to use the next two years to reduce the threat of ISIS enough so that the president’s successor would have an easier time — much as Mr. Bush’s aides strived to get Iraq under control with a troop surge and strategy change before turning it over to Mr. Obama. 

“We will do as much of that work as we can with the time that is available to the president,” said a senior administration official who briefed reporters under ground rules that did not allow him to be identified. 

And then it will be someone else’s turn.

Perpetual war, that is what Baker outlines. The CIA has a covert program to train and arm the "moderate" Syrian opposition already. And nowhere this morning have I read any assessment of U.S. efforts to date to work with this "moderate" Syrian opposition, the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Because if an honest assessment was conducted, even one based solely on the reporting available in "the newspaper of record," one would conclude that the FSA works openly with the jihadis -- ISIS and Nusra. Just at the beginning of this week, David Kirkpatrick had an excellent story, "Qatar’s Support of Islamists Alienates Allies Near and Far," about how fundraisers for the jihadis purchase weapons supplied by the West to the "moderate" opposition:

“All the gulf intelligence agencies are competing in Syria and everyone is trying to get the lion’s share of the Syrian revolution,” Sheikh Shafi al-Ajmi, also recently identified by the United States as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, said in an interview on the Saudi-owned Rotana television network last summer. 

He openly acknowledged his role buying weapons from the Western-backed military councils, who sometimes received arms from Qatar. “When the military councils sell the weapons they receive, guess who buys them? It’s me,” he said.

This is how it works, and there is zero reason to believe anything will change. Did peace come to Afghanistan and Iraq after the U.S. invasions?

Now the U.S. is not only "doubling down" on the Global War on Terror (GWOT); it is simultaneously engaging Russia in a new Cold War in Ukraine. In other words, Obama, the Peace Prize POTUS, is fighting a Cold War at the same time he is waging a GWOT (which was designed to replace the Cold War as an excuse to maintain U.S. full-spectrum dominance after the Soviet Union collapsed).

What struck me watching Obama last night was how tired and routine his performance was. Here he was announcing a national commitment to perpetual war and he seemed like nothing more than an animatronic puppet.