After years of denying that they were allowing any movement of ISIS forces through their country, Turkey is finally shifting their policy, constructing a new concrete wall south of Gaziantep to try to seal off one of the most important crossings for ISIS between Turkey and their territory in northern Syria.
The shift from tacit support for the influx of Islamist fighters to blanket denials to actually trying to get a handle on the crossing was a long, winding road, with a growing number of ISIS attacks in Turkey eventually forcing the Erdogan government’s hand.
With reports that the latest attack, against the Istanbul Airport, included attackers who were in the ISIS capital of Raqqa, and authorities seeking suspects along the border area, there is no longer any claiming that the cross-border traffic isn’t having a negative impact on Turkey.
Whether the wall were work is another matter. Though estimates put between 25% and 40% of ISIS traffic in the area along the Gaziantep border, the whole Syria-Turkey border is 566 miles, and ISIS controls no small fraction of it. The wall may ultimately just shift traffic to other crossings, or convince ISIS that it needs to take more border territory to control yet more potential entry-points.
Let’s hope this is for real. The cheapest and most humane way to defeat Da’esh is to cut off the supply of weapons and recruits.
And to stop funding the manufacture of weapons, unfortunately I’ve noticed that the MIC has been increasing production.
Unfortunately, weapons design and manufacture has become a much larger portion of the US manufacturing and technological base since NAFTA was approved. Engineering and manufacturing even of dual use products are affected by ITAR (International Trade in Arms Regulations), and ITAR requires that workers on any items or technology to be exported from the US must be “US persons.” So those jobs are not off-shored, while NAFTA has encouraged the off-shoring of other engineering and manufacturing work.
I was just thinking earlier today about how much more difficult this makes the task of those who want to turn this around and work toward peace. Green or Libertarian officeholders who might want to reduce military spending will cause the loss of US jobs. They’ll be blamed for any such job losses, so they’ll have to walk a tightrope. They should probably focus on increasing employment in non-ITAR related areas before they attempt to reduce military spending. That means blocking TPP/TTIP, withdrawing from NAFTA and revoking Most Favored Nation status for China might have to be the highest priorities. But unraveling all that without tanking the world economy will also be difficult.
One would like to believe we could simply re-direct what the military does toward fixing environmental problems. Unfortunately, the current Corps of Engineers often creates more environmental problems than it cleans up, the recent toxic algae bloom in Florida being a prime example, though that may have been forced on them by big sugar.
Just like we need renewable energies to replace fossil fuels, the world desperately needs an alternative to ”empire building”
The world at large needs a new economic model, one that isn’t dedicated to fallacious and unattainable pursuit of permanent economic growth for the privileged investment class.
We could use Eco-Socialism as a role model.
Defense spending is out of control like a drunken teenager with their parents credit card.
The MIC and associated securities industries are funded by resources which would be better invested on improving social infrastructure projects, no matter where that might be.
Put under the microscope, Free Trade Agreements are nothing but legalized extortion.
The MIC is under contract to supply and could sue via ISDS provisions in case their export earnings are effected by a reduction in turnover –real or imagined —
In order for things to get better for the ”civilian class of people” as opposed to the ”investment class”, the FTA’s will simply have to go.
The UK is lucky that they are now in a situation where they can re-negotiate their free trade agreements, and if they’re smart they must insist on leaving out those isds/iias provisions.
I think I know you well enough to conclude that, none of the above will be news to you, what matters is how can this be turned around, and perhaps this can be done but the public needs to be willing to hold politicians accountable to their political oaths, which appear to be for display purposes only.
The US public might consider holding their own war-criminals accountable, I would not be opposed to a new and full investigation into nine eleven.
The Chilcot report is interesting, Blair might have to face charges after all.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/chilcot-report-crushing-verdict-tony-blair-iraq-war
Exactly right, Bill. And I find it highly suspicious — or should I say suggestive — that nowhere in all the commentary about “what to do about,… how can we defeat ISIS?” — is this rather straightforward strangulation/starvation strategy mentioned. The conclusion to be drawn is that the removal of Assad — ye olde regime change, some way some how — remains the fond yet now clearly infeasible hope of the various parties who started the Syrian “civil”(not!) war five-and-a-half years ago: US, UK, Turkey, KSA, and Qattar,… with Oded Yinon “behind the curtain”.
The Syrian regime change was supposed to happen quick and “clean” — like in Libya — with no fingerprints of the real authors, and then everything quickly down the memory hole. Instead, the world gets yet another Neocon — “Shhh,… z-i-o-n-i-s-t” — blood-drenched clusterf**k.