American forces took advantage of the airstrikes against the Islamic State extremist group in Syria to try to simultaneously wipe out the leadership of an unrelated cell of veterans of Al Qaeda that the White House said Tuesday was plotting an ‘imminent’ attack against the United States or Europe.
The barrage of bombs and missiles launched into Syria early Tuesday was aimed primarily at crippling the Islamic State, the formidable Sunni organization that has seized a large piece of territory to form its own radical enclave. But the blitz also targeted a little-known network called Khorasan, in hopes of paralyzing it before it could carry out what American officials feared would be a terrorist attack in the West.
(New York Times, September 23, 2014)
Given all of the hype and self-glorification that attended these strikes, you’d never know that American forces spent the past 13 years bombing terrorists to no apparent avail; except, that is, to stir up a veritable hornets nest of other terrorists. In other words, the greatest military the world has ever known now seems engaged in a deadly and costly game of whack-a-mole.
Again, I’m all for bombing specific targets based on actionable intelligence about plots to attack the homeland or American interests abroad. But this Iraq 2.0 mission smacks of a scattershot overreaction to the beheading of two American journalists. It speaks volumes (and should be instructive) that, as the Times reports, the vast majority of these strikes were aimed not at ISIS terrorists, but at those of some heretofore unheard of al-Qaeda spawn called Khorasan.
Meanwhile, after years of vowing not to arm the ragtag band of rebels trying to topple Syrian President Assad, Obama has secured a $500 million congressional appropriation to do just that. Except that this seems the height of folly in light of the notorious way U.S.-trained Iraqi troops abandoned the billions in arms the United States provided them when confronted by ISIS terrorists. This is why Obama is involved in the self-immolating spectacle of ordering U.S. airstrikes to destroy U.S. military equipment ISIS terrorists commandeered from U.S.-trained Iraqi troops. And chances are very good that, in due course, he (or his successor) will be ordering the same with respect to these U.S.-trained and equipped Syrian rebels.
On the other (invisible) hand, it seems America’s war on terrorism has become as much about the metastasizing military industrial complex justifying itself as it is about fighting terrorists. Indeed, the way the Pentagon is raving about the performance of its new F-22 Raptor Stealth Fighter and GPS-guided munitions one could be forgiven for thinking that these airstrikes are little more than a real-life testing exercise.
Not to mention perpetuating crack-like demand for more military hardware — not just for all 40-plus members of the U.S. coalition, but for all police forces throughout the United States. (Remember the shock and awe the police force evoked when it deployed to quell Michael-Brown protests in Ferguson, Missouri looking like an invading army?)
Of course, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned it would be thus in his final address to the nation on January 17, 1961:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist…
But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.”
(NPR, January 17, 2011)
NOTE: According to the French government, Daesh is actually an acronym for Al Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham, which refers to terrorists who ruthlessly impose their will on others. The French are right, instead of ISIS/ISIL, Daesh is the only appropriate name for this al-Qaeda spawn and its sham Islamic ideology.
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