How Obama Should Counter the Islamic State

[flamingdem]

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-obama-should-counter-the-islamic-state-11162

-- snip

At the risk of being called naïve, inexperienced to the intricacies of Arab politics, or an armchair strategizer bloviating from the safety of his own coach, here are a few bullet points that the Obama administration, the U.S. military, the U.S. Foreign Service, and the Treasury Department should at the very least consider during their deliberations. I assume that officials across the U.S. Government are already contemplating some—if not all—of these policy proposals, and would in no way be surprised to learn that the administration is already in the middle of rolling them out to the public. But in any case, here they are:

1. More Arms to U.S Allies: To date, the Pentagon has transferred stockpiles of small arms and ammunition to the peshmerga forces currently defending Irbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, and the strategically important Mosul Dam. Washington has been assisted in this task by its European allies, with France, Great Britain, Albania, Italy, and several more working alongside the U.S. military in the arming effort. “[W]e are providing a tremendous amount of military assistance to the Peshmerga through the Iraqi security forces,” Hagel said in his August 21 news conference. “[A]s a matter of fact, all year long, we have been accelerated—all the requests made by the Iraqi government for lethal assistance and equipment and we continue to do that.”

Yet, from the view of my living room sofa and based exclusively on the press reports and news releases available to everyone who has a television or computer, the weapons delivered to the Kurds so far have been limited to a very specific military objective: keep the Kurdish capital safe from an ISIL advance, and keep ISIL away from the Mosul Dam. While both of these objectives are certainly worthy ones for the administration to support, they do absolutely nothing to address the sizable portion of territory that ISIL militants hold in other parts of Iraq. Boosting contacts with the Sunni tribes in Anbar, Salahaddin, Ninewa, and Diyala provinces could help address this shortfall.

The primary reasons why the 2007-2008 Sunni Awakening movement succeeded in destroying much of Al-Qaeda’s infrastructure in Iraq at the time was because the United States was willing to take some risks in thinking outside-the-box, recognize that Anbar’s tribes had a common interest with the Americans in degrading Al-Qaeda, and work to separate reconcilable elements from the irreconcilable. Some of the very same tribes in Anbar province that were so instrumental in the counterinsurgency campaign six years ago are now asking for similar assistance from the U.S. It may be an optimal time for the administration and the Defense Department to resurrect Awakening, 2.0.

more at link

[msongs]

1. send a bunch of our own home grown police warriors, they think they are military now nt