Steve, I Don't Know How to Tell You This. Bombing Isn't Working.

That didn't take long.  Iraqi Kurds report that ISIS has changed tactics to blunt the impact of allied air strikes.  Who, aside from just about anybody, could have foreseen that turn of events?

Air strikes against Isis targets in northern Syria have failed to stop the militants from advancing towards the centre of the city of Kobani, Kurds have said, in the latest indication that aerial power alone may not defeat the jihadists.

Fighting between the Islamist militants and Syrian Kurds continued unabated despite another volley of coalition air strikes in and around the Kobani enclave, Idris Nassan, Kobani’s “foreign affairs minister”, told the Guardian.

“Air strikes alone are really not enough to defeat Isis in Kobani,” he stressed. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every Isis fighter on the ground.”

He said Isis had adapted their tactics to military strikes from the air. “Each time a jet approaches they leave their open positions, they scatter and hide. What we really need is ground support. We need heavy weapons and ammunition in order to fend them off and defeat them.”

INTERMISSION - Act 2 - "Mission Creep"

Already the American hawks, such as the delightful Ms. Lindsay Graham, are calling for a Western ground war.

“The strategy of aerial bombardment is not going to work to destroy Isil [Isis],” the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham told CNN. “At the end of the day, you cannot destroy Isil without a ground component.” He argued that training the inexperienced fighters of the Free Syrian Army in Saudi Arabia was “militarily unsound” and “will lead to their slaughter”.

His words were echoed in London by the former chief of the defence staff general Sir David Richards. “Air power alone will not win a campaign like this,” he told the Andrew Marr Show. “It isn’t actually a counter-terrorist operation. This is a conventional enemy in that it has armour, tanks, artillery, it is quite wealthy, it holds ground and it is going fight. So therefore you have to view it as a conventional military campaign.”

GEORGE MONBIOT - "Flatten the Middle East"

Trust George to beat us over the head with our own hypocrisy.  In his latest commentary, George shows how our casus belli, our justification for war against ISIS, would serve equally to justify flattening all or at least most of the Middle East to save the lives of its people.

The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East and west Asia. By this means you could end all human suffering, liberating the people of these regions from the vale of tears in which they live.

Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely Muslim countries, in each case citing a moral imperative. The result, as you can see in Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Yemen, Somalia and Syria, has been the eradication of jihadi groups, of conflict, chaos, murder, oppression and torture. Evil has been driven from the face of the Earth by the destroying angels of the west.

Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises and threatens. As Obama says, it is a “network of death”. But it’s one of many networks of death. Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what Isis wants.

Already Obama’s bombings have brought Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, a rival militia affiliated to al-Qaida, together. More than 6,000 fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began. They dangled the heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes. And our governments were stupid enough to take it.

And if the bombing succeeds? If – and it’s a big if – it manages to tilt the balance against Isis, what then? Then we’ll start hearing once more about Shia death squads and the moral imperative to destroy them too – and any civilians who happen to get in the way. The targets change; the policy doesn’t. Never mind the question, the answer is bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our governments wage perpetual war.
Sigh.

Paying the Price for Playing Both Sides

It all looked so clear when Bush/Cheney invaded Iraq. It was all about toppling Saddam and cleaning out the Sunni's Baathist regime.

That went pretty well except that Washington found itself with a bunch Iraq's great unwashed, its Shiites, demanding democracy of all things - neatly put, a transfer of the political reins from Sunni to Shia control. Ouch! Shiites in control, just 'cause they're the majority?

In one blistering moment of clarity amidst a thick fog of idiocy, the White House realized it had just made Shiite controlled Iran, the dominant power in the region. Its options were rapidly being foreclosed.

Oh dear. Then followed the kiss and make up moment with Iraq's Sunni leadership. The Americans even gave the "former" insurgents (ha, ha, ha) weapons and equipment so they could fight al-Qaeda terrorists. Now the Shiite government in Baghdad saw the US lavishing arms on he very group they know they're going to have to fight once the Yanks leave. Grrrrrreat!

Not to worry. Roughly a billion dollars worth of arms and equipment has somehow vanished from the Abu Ghraib compound. The stuff has vanished alright, that is if you don't bother following the tire tracks to the Shiite militias.

Isn't that great. Iraq's enormous weapons shortage has now been relieved!

But there were always the Kurds in the north to remain America's trusted and grateful allies. Not so much as you might think. First there was the poison pill of the Kurdish Autonomous Region's constitution that managed to get infiltrated, er incorporated into the Iraq constitution. This is the deal that will likely lead to the Arab-Kurd war over Kirkuk.

And then there's the Turks and their own Kurdish rebels. Now the Kurdish rebels, or freedom fighters, or terrorists, have been using northern Iraq as a safe haven from which to raid targets in Turkey. In response the Turks sent about 100,000 forces to the Iraq border.

The Americans have tried to get Turkey to back off but Ankara is in virtually the same moral position as Israel was when it invaded Lebanon last year to go after Hezbollah - with complete American support. So, Turkey's now saying "me too, me too" and has launched air strikes and even a small ground raid into the Kurdish Autonomous Region.

Then word leaked out that the Americans are helping the Turks target Kurdish sites inside Iraq. The Iraqi Kurds are livid. So is the Baghdad government even though it's Arab dominated.

What to do, what to do? The Sunni don't trust them and the Shiite don't trust them and, now, the Kurds don't trust them. Best send Condi to Iraq to soothe hurt feelings.

I think even the Bushies are realizing you can only play this game so many times before it gets old. That message got delivered to Condi today when the head of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, President Massoud Barzani, refused to meet with her. From BBC:

Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said: "It was decided that Massoud Barzani would go to Baghdad to take part in a meeting with Condoleezza Rice and other officials, but he will not go now as a sign of protest against the American position on the bombings by Turkey.

"It is unacceptable that the United States, in charge of monitoring our airspace, authorised Turkey to bomb our villages," he said.