ISIS fighters took to Twitter with glee over the weekend to celebrate the Obama Administration’s decision to join the war against them in Iraq, seeing it as both a big morale booster and a potentially huge recruitment tool.
“The crisis will become a gift,” noted one, saying that the US was ISIS biggest enemy, and that US involvement would quicken their takeover of the Persian Gulf.
Many of the Twitter posts expressed eagerness to target US warplanes now involved in the war, as well as hopes to attack other US allies across the region.
New English-language ISIS videos are emerging urging Westerners to join ISIS as soon as possible. Some of those in the videos identify themselves as Americans and Britons.
ISIS already had a bumper crop of Westerners join the war in Syria over the past couple of years, with large numbers of fighters coming from EU member nations. The early signs are that the US involvement will only help bolster those numbers further.
That may be particularly true of Americans, as a comparatively small number of US fighters have actually joined ISIS, as opposed to the influx of fighters from nations like France and Germany. ISIS leaders seem to understand much better than the Obama Administration that the US involvement in the war is a game-changer on the ground, and not the good kind like you’d want.
ISIS got its first start as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and its early growth was almost entirely a function of the US occupation of Iraq. The group began shrinking after the US pullout, and only started regrowing when they transitioned into Syria.
With the Syria War still giving ISIS a huge amount of recruitment potential and the takeover of broad swathes of both Iraq and Syria giving them unrivaled credibility, the return of the US military is throwing yet more gasoline on the already raging fire.
I'm not the sort to sit with popcorn, and watch the carnage, but the U.S. military industrial complex has created enemies for decades to come. I have more sympathy for the situation in Gaza, as it has a clear cut history, but since the U.S. is currently a total amateur when it comes to peacemaking, I will be more comfortable rooting for the Palestinians, and any other good humans who are suffering as a result of this warmongering addiction.
They don’t have much choice but to deal with IS now though it’s their own bastard child. It illustrates the naked contradictions of American foreign policy such as supporting and funding IS in Syria but then having to fight them in Iraq. Contradictory policies such as this are the consequence of a primary policy of chaos and destructive weakening of powerful states directed at Mideast for the last 30 years at least. But then they can’t control all the Islamic fascists they tried to nurture in the first place just like the mujaheddin in Afghanistan that morphed into the AQ types some years later.
Islamic State is a far greater enemy than the US has faced before.
Beating Sadam Hussein's Iraq will turn out to be a "piece of cake" compared to the long drawn out escapade they are now being drawn into by IS. This is an enemy that has learned much from Iraq, Libya and Syria and will not be the pushover that the US seems to assume.
ALL US bases and allies are now in the firing line of IS which has proved it can fight and furthermore has sophisticated weaponry captured by them in Libya and Iraq including surface to air missiles. Very soon we will hear of US aircraft being shot down by this weaponry. Probably much sooner than anyone can imagine.
Your prediction is only valid if the US or allies foolishly continue to get involved with ISIS. This is a rebel group in a remote foreign nation in which the US has spent many billions trying to subdue and rule via "trained" surrogates. Hundreds of millions if not billions were wasted on supposed military training. I guess Iraqi soldiers were taught to retreat in an orderly fashion.
So what if ISIS takes over remote regions of Iraq and Syria? Yes, too bad for those ISIS dislikes, but that is always the case for anti human rights type dictatorial governments, including those sponsored by the US. Let all the AQ wanna bees congregate in their little desert and watch what happens.
The US and West in general were happy to see South Sudan and East Timor become independent. No big deal. So let ISIS have its new caliphinate. The new "caliph" will find that his wolves will devour their own. Running roadblocks and looting do not a stable government make (looting needs systematic process to endure). Better to have crazy jihadists gather in one place than to foment trouble elsewhere. This will be the Cuba/N Korea of radical Islam. "Back to the 7th Century" is not a winning program.
The stupidty of the US and its allies ARE getting involved with IS.
The rebel group "in the remote foreign nation" is armed to the teeth with sophisticated weaponry courtesy of the US (CIA) with Hillary Clinton screaming for more lethal aid to be provided to them via the Syrian Rebels.
Please note that your question "so what if ISIS takes over remote regions of Iraq and Syria?"
OIL man ! That is why the Americans invaded Iraq in the first place .
Millions of Muslims exists all over the world, not just in the Middle East. When will they finally be fed up with all their Muslim brothers being killed by US/Israel and rise up in unison against the Empire. The US does not have enough bombs to kill all these irate Muslims. Plus there's that fine little mess that the USG got us Americans into in Ukraine.
ISIS is a creation of US, Israeli, NATO and Saudi intelligence agencies. You'll notice hardly a peep of alarm or concern about ISIS from Israel? One would think the Palistinians and ISIS would be natural allies? One would think. We are arming the 'Islamic rebels' in Syria and bombing them on the other side of the border in Iraq. These are the SAME PEOPLE! Now that does not appear to make any sense now, does it? Milaki Is Shite Iran is Shite, ISIS is Sunni, Saudi Arabia is Sunni. ISIS can only serve to drive Iraq away from Iran's sphere of influence. Syria and Iran have close relations. Who benefits from ISIS? Israel, Saudia Arabia, Qutar, Kuwait, the of course the US and NATO, that's who! Do you really seriously believe that ISIS can succeed without a very active role of Saudi intelligence? If you pull Iraq away from Iran and topple Assad as a result of a Sunni advance, then Iran is totally isolated. Who would want to see just that situation occur and why would you not suspect they to be pulling the strings?
If you want to understand what these people are up to, you need to read what they wrote, …the Neo-cons have long been advocating breaking up the muslim countries along sectarian lines into smaller less powerful statelets and then covertly fomenting unrest between them so they fight with each other. Divide and conquer. The oldest trick in the book. How is it not screaming obvious?
Who ARE these ISIS people? Where did they get the sophisticated training to rout the Iraqi and Syrian armies and even the Kurds? I suspect Israel has something to do with it – a recent article in FP reported on an Israeli hospital caring for wounded ISIS fighters in the Golan Heights.
Dan Carlin of "Hardcore History" podcast fame described the Mongol invasions of Europe as being analogous to a sports team "coming down from a higher league". The Mongols spend twenty years fighting China, and then hit Europe, and the tactics that they'd developed for the Chinese simply annihilated European armies.
ISIS is similar. They've spent three years fighting the Syrian army, an army that had thousands of tanks, a decent air force, competent leadership, and a well-motivated core of Allawites. They also have the benefit of a couple of billion dollars in arms provided by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The US prevented them from getting some weapons, but only the most risky: very high performance antiaircraft weapons. They were supplied with everything else, including those long lines of brand-new Toyota pickups that they use to race around the desert so effectively.
When this small but experienced army encounters a hopelessly inept Iraqi army, and a very modestly equipped Kurdish army, both with poor mobility, the result is very similar to the story of the Mongols v Europe. They sweep away all resistance seemingly effortlessly.
However, their basis tactic- concentration of highly mobile forces at selected points- is extremely vulnerable to air attack, particularly if the air can simply observe their movements from space, something the degraded Syrian Air Force certainly can't do. ISIS is likely to suffer spectacular "mother of all targeting opportunity"-style losses if they attempt to move and concentrate their forces they way they have so far, in the presence of carrier air operating from the Gulf.
It's likely that ISIS will very quickly revise it's tactics and go to ground, and hang on to what it has now, instead of attempting to continue to advance, at least until the United States loses interest and moves on to some other world crisis.
What if those guys instead of going after each other, and waiting for Americans to show up, went after the real problem in the region…America's little ally.
Peter von Buren has a recent article on Obama's intervention in Iraq, specifically explaining that US interference will encourage support for ISIS by sunnis worldwide. Luckily the USA loves wars, no matter how unsuccessful they continueto be except for the arms trade.
Ever since the end of WWII – the last major formal (i.e. inter-nation) conflict, nation-states' forces and their offshoots such as NATO have faced the problem of nominally holding themselves out as defending the entities (nation-states, corporations etc) and institutions (democracy, rule of law etc) they rely on for their legitimacy while, at the same time, having to descend to the mayhem and chaotic approach of non-state actors to engage in effective warfare.
I'm sure this is what ISIS is celebrating; dragging the shining city off the hill and into the real and blatantly sordid and lawless world of 21st century warfare – baring the hypocrisy for all to see.
Hence the schizophrenia of Western leaders.
An old American Indian saying- attributed to many sources- goes something like, "A warrior's greatness is not measured by his victories, but by the strength of his enemies". If this is the case, we have created some mighty warriors indeed. With all our technology and treasure to spend on war, we have not defeated a single lesser-capable foe in decades.
go get the zio-state boys