Ping Pong

Most of our problems in the Middle East have to do with our inserting ourselves in the middle of the centuries-long conflict between the Shia and Sunni Muslims. Our overturning of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, made the Iraqi Shia believe we were on their side ... and Obama’s sucking up to Iran (Shia) reinforced this notion.

But Trump’s dumping of the Iran nuclear deal seemed to indicate we favored the Sunnis. However, the ISIS caliphate was Sunni-based ... and Hillary, with Obama’s permission, seemed to favor these butchers.Then Trump destroyed this caliphate ... with some help from Iran.

And the Shia-Sunni blood feud is also being replicated elsewhere throughout the Middle East ... Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Oman, Turkey, Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Gaza ... all but Pakistan predominately Sunni ... where America has difficult problems ... making things even more complex.

And so it goes, back and forth between these Muslim sects (and other offspring sub-sects) like a ping pong match on an Islam table covered in blood. Unfortunately, our troops represent the ping pong ball ... batted back and forth at the cost of U.S. soldiers’ lives and limbs.

Enigma

Just when I thought I could tell the opposing Muslim teams without a scorecard, I am thrown a curve ball. Saudi Arabia has just captured 400 ISIS militants who had already attacked and were planning further targets inside Saudi Arabia ... see: AP News Story? Now, as I understand it, Saudi Arabia is predominantly composed of Sunni Arabs ... as is ISIS ... so why would they be at each others' throats?

Sunni ISIS has generally been attacking the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government and Bashar al-Assad's Shi'ite government in Syria ... both Iran funded. Even though Iran is not an Arab state, it, as Persian, has been the prominent Shi'ite force and has, for over a thousand years, been a deadly foe of Sunni Arabs ... yet ISIS is now strangely acting as its proxy against Saudi Arabia ... while at the same time attacking the Syrian government. Weird!.

I guess I will never fully decipher the Middle East enigma (or, for that matter, our Shi'ite-tropic president and his Svengali adviser, Valarie Jarrett.)

Scrambled Eggs

The United States' policy in the Middle East is a plate of scrambled eggs. We have been launching air strikes against the ISIS powers (partly Sunni Muslims) in Tikrit, Iraq along side the Iranian-backed Shia Muslim militias ... which were not gaining an edge and are now pulling back ... see: Powerline Blog Comments. In Yemen we are encouraging the Saudis (Sunnis) to attack the Iranian-backed Houthi Shia rebels with both air power and soon possibly with ground troops ... see: Al Jazeera Story. So we are helping Iran with one hand while slapping it down with the other.

The situation is somewhat duplicated in Libya where Egypt (Sunni) is bombing the ISIS forces there ... see: BBC Story. Simultaneously, we are grabbing our ankles in order to close the nuclear deal with Shia Iran. What a mishmash!

And all the while, President Obama (a Shia sympathiser IMHO) is playing golf in Florida ... see: Washington Times Story.

A Coalition of Ten?

In a well-researched article, the New York Times traces the problems that President Obama has bought upon himself in his decision to initiate his non-war on ISIS. In particular, during his televised statement on 9/10/14, he stated that he was forming a large coalition in this effort. Already Great Britain and Germany have publicly declined to participate and this article also details his dearth of support in the Arab world … maybe not Egypt, maybe not Jordan, maybe not Lebanon, not Turkey, not Syria, maybe Saudi Arabia, and Iran is probably excluded from consideration. Yes, I suspect that a few of smaller emirates might be bribed into signing up (among Qatar, Kuwait, Dubai, Oman, UAE, and Bahrain) and maybe even the Vatican City, Liechtenstein, and Monaco, but real coalition partners might be difficult to corral. 

Poor lonely John Kerry … traveling the world in search of real coalition partners. (I realize that this is pretty petty criticism of Obama, but then this is the same type of pooh-poohing that George W. Bush suffered when he put together 46 nations into the Coalition of the Willing in Operation Iraqi Freedom.)

This article also briefly tries to decode the complex animosities between the Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam and how this rift complicates the problem of America’s dealing with this dire ISIS threat. It is too easy for America to appear to favor one or another of these sects. (I personally believe that Obama’s heart is with the Shiites … and this is why he abandoned Iraq to President Maliki and his thugs … giving rise to the current ISIS problem.) And lastly this article takes an oblique swipe at Obama’s empty claim in his TV address ... with a revealing graph which shows the ten-year trend of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia relative to Pakistan. Clearly President Obama was then guilty of a bit of rhetoric bluster.

Anyhow, read the article for yourself. It is the kind of pure journalism of which the New York Times used to be famous … see: NY Times Article .

Afterthought: For more analysis on this problem see: CS Monitor Story.