Islamic State has taken the Kurd HQ in Kobane and is close to sealing off the last escape route. There will be a bloodbath. Turkey is doing nothing to help because it views Kurds as terrorists. U.S. “strategy”, if it can even be called that, is demonstrably making things worse throughout the Middle East and invites blowback here at home. Everyone knows the air atrikes can not win wars without troops on the ground. Yet the US persists in its delusion that this time will be different.
Why is this our fight? The US clearly does not understand the underlying dynamics, like Shia vs Sunni, choosing instead to blunder away, alienating almost everyone by bombing whatever it can. Our foreign policy and military adventurism in the Middle East is a shamble. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan. and Libya have suffered severely from our interventions and instead of building democracy, we’ve created yet more enemies.
The administration strategy of targeting the Islamic State while giving Mr. Assad a pass has actually worsened the conditions for his victims in towns held by moderate rebels who, in theory, enjoy U.S. backing. As the New York Times reported Wednesday, the Assad regime, freed of the need to go after the Islamic State, has returned “with new intensity to its longstanding and systematic attacks on rebellious towns and neighborhoods.”
And the strategy is incoherent as well as morally questionable.