Author: Andrew Sullivan

Is Russia Withdrawing From Ukraine?

All eyes are on the impending ISIS war today, but things are still happening in Ukraine as well. Five days after the announcement of a ceasefire, Kiev now claims that most of the Russian forces that had invaded the country have left, while Poroshenko is making some concessions to separatist sentiments in the east:

President Petro Poroshenko told a televised cabinet meeting Ukraine would remain a sovereign, united country under the terms of a peace roadmap approved last Friday, but said parts of the east under rebel control would get special status. “According to the latest information I have received from our intelligence, 70 percent of Russian troops have been moved back across the border,” he said. “This further strengthens our hope that the peace initiatives have good prospects.” However, Poroshenko said the ceasefire was not proving easy to maintain because “terrorists” were constantly trying to provoke Kiev’s forces. Ukraine’s military recorded at least six violations of the ceasefire overnight but said there were no casualties. Five servicemen have been killed during the ceasefire, Ukraine says. A civilian was also killed at the weekend during shelling of the eastern port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov in eastern Ukraine.

But Morrissey is skeptical of this supposed Russian retreat:

The “terrorists” may be rebels attempting to keep Russia from retreating. Moscow may not need much of a provocation, either. Yesterday, Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of building up forces for an attack on Donetsk, and multiple reports of artillery fire put the truce into serious question … Hopefully, the retreat of Russia from Ukraine is real and will continue. With Lavrov looking for an excuse to return and the rebels perhaps desperate to provide it, I wouldn’t count on it.

Alec Luhn remarks on the chaotic battlefield, noting that neither Moscow nor Kiev has enough control over its fighters to enforce an airtight ceasefire:

Both the rebel and government forces are comprised of a potpourri of fighting units, most of which center around an individual leader. This has led to a chaotic command structure that makes such truces difficult to enforce on the ground, according to Vladimir Ruban, a former lieutenant general in the Ukrainian Army who has been negotiating prisoner exchanges on behalf of Kiev and persuaded the rebels to participate in peace talks. “Some people aren’t interested in a cease-fire … on both sides,” Ruban said, suggesting rogue actors may keep fighting, despite their leadership’s intentions. Slovo i Delo, an NGO that monitors Ukrainian politicians, recently compiled a list of 37 volunteer battalions fighting on the side of Kiev, many of which include radical fighters who say they don’t trust the military leadership. Members of the Azov Battalion, which is defending the coastal city of Mariupol, griped last week about the cease-fire that was then being negotiated, with one calling it a “political game.”

Alina Polyakova is pessimistic about the effectiveness of the West’s response:

As a long-term strategy, sanctions could eventually constrain Russian action. But the Ukrainian crisis requires short- and medium-term solutions, which the West has been reluctant to explore. NATO’s plan to deploy a 4,000-strong rapid reaction force to the Baltic States is a step in the right direction, but it may come too late to influence Russian policy in Ukraine. Western leaders squandered a key opportunity to take a strong stance against Russia after the Crimean annexation in March. If the NATO force was deployed six months ago, Putin may have thought twice about invading Ukraine. Putin has exploited this tactical mistake masterfully. As Russia continues to set the agenda on Ukraine and the West continues to implement the same ineffective strategy, Ukrainians feel increasing abandoned. The crisis has reached a point of no return, and Poroshenko is left with no options.

Marc Champion scrutinizes the purpose of the EU’s sanctions on Russia:

Putin is claiming the right to determine the foreign and trade policies of his neighbors. He has claimed the right to intervene militarily in any country where Russian-speakers live. He has said as a matter of policy that Russia is the heart of a separate civilization, defining it against the values of Europe, and leaving open the question of where that civilization begins and ends. This is frightening stuff when carried out by a nuclear power that is re-militarizing. So the sanctions policy shouldn’t be seen as an attempt to secure victory for Ukraine (it will have to cut a deal). Nor should it be seen as an attempt to make Putin unpopular at home, or to get his inner circle to revolt (a ludicrous hope), as sometimes suggested. The sanctions should demonstrate what behavior Europe is unwilling to accept in a partner and what rules it will stand up for — even at the cost lost business and a bad relationship with Russia.

But at the same time, the West is also squeezing that partner. Josh Cohen warns that the IMF is doing the same thing to Ukraine today that it did to Russia in the ’90s:

Ukraine’s government is in the middle of implementing a set of stringent economic reforms agreed to in April with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for a $17 billion bailout. Although Kiev has been commended by the IMF for a “bold economic program,” the loan’s terms, combined with Ukraine’s political and economic crisis, are a recipe for disaster. We have seen this story before. During the 1990s, when I worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the office charged with managing economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union, I observed that the type of austerity now being required of Ukraine was the standard prescription for countries in economic crisis. The leading Washington financial institutions, such as the IMF, World Bank, and U.S. Treasury Department, were passing out this one-size-fits-all solution. And it almost never worked.

Meanwhile, Poland is reporting a mysterious 25 percent drop-off in its gas supplies from Gazprom, and Putin is beefing up Russia’s military defense capabilities and testing ICBMs:

Putin also took greater control of a commission that oversees the defense industry and made a new call for Russia to become less reliant on imported Western equipment. He said NATO was using rhetoric over the Ukraine crisis to “resuscitate itself” and noted that Russia had warned repeatedly that it would have to respond to such moves. Shortly before he spoke, Russia successfully tested its new submarine-launched Bulava intercontinental missile, a 12-metre- long weapon that can deliver a nuclear strike with up to 100 times the force of the atomic blast that devastated Hiroshima in 1945.

Larison sighs:

At each stage in the Ukraine crisis and for many years before that, Russia hawks in the West have urged the U.S. and its allies to goad and provoke Russia on the assumption that Russia won’t respond. Then each time that Russia responds more aggressively than they thought possible, the same people insist on more goading and provoking in order to “stop” Russia from what it is doing, which of course just leads to another harsh Russian response. It doesn’t occur to them that Russia will most likely keep matching any action that the U.S. takes by taking even more aggressive measures of its own. The country that stands to lose the most from continuing this back-and-forth is Ukraine.

Abuse In The Public Eye, Ctd

A reader is worried:

My first thought on hearing that the Ravens finally cut Ray Rice was that his wife is now in even greater danger.  How long before he works himself up into a rage over his lost career and blames her?  And what will he do to her then?  If the Ravens and the NFL had acted immediately, and if strings hadn’t been pulled to allow Rice to avoid jail time, maybe Janay Palmer would have gotten the counseling she needs and found the courage to leave her abuser while he was at least temporarily unable to inflict more pain on her.  As it stands now, as the Ravens and the NFL concentrate on “moving on” and the media eventually segues to the next Big Story, Palmer is in worse jeopardy than before – a lot worse.

Another ties in a related thread:

I think that #whyistayed and #whyileft are really powerful and valuable ways of helping people understand the victims’ perspectives. I wonder if a #whyiabused or #howistopped conversation would also be possible. (Certainly, anonymity would be required, as admitted abusers would be vilified.) I don’t want to suggest that the two paradigms are equal, but I think that a critical part to ending the cycle of abuse is to get the abusers to understand where their rage comes from and how to deal with it.

Another zooms out:

The Ray Rice video not only highlights the horror of domestic violence, it also shows the sanitizing effect of words alone.

We should have been able to deduce what had happened in the elevator, but many chose not to. The reasons are many and varied but the results were the same, denial of the intensity of the attack. The video eliminated that ability.

The same thing was true of the Abu Ghraib photos. The sanitizing slogan of “enhanced interrogations” could no longer hide the horrors that were going on. Seeing what stress positions actually meant was shocking.

Our ability to dismiss actions as not as bad as they sound, seems also to be effected by how much we support the perpetrators. Look at how many supported Ray Rice or his version of events until this video came out. Fans, teammates, coaches, all offered support until now. Look at how many still support George Bush and Dick Cheney. Let’s use the latest Ray Rice video not just to discuss domestic violence, but apply its lessons to broader aspects of public life.

Another is roughly on the same page:

I appreciate the mimetic appeal of sports as warfare, but must the NFL leadership – namely Commissioner Roger Goodell – do their best Donald Rumsfeld impressions as well? To me anyway, the parallels are uncanny. When chronic prisoner abuse and torture turned up in pictures from Abu Ghraib, Rummy and the Bush administration expressed shock and outrage. They claimed to have no idea about the violent misbehavior of “rogue individuals” but promised to get to the bottom of it with promises of harsh justice and zero tolerance. Of course, only the small fry unlucky enough to find themselves caught in the picture frame were punished. Execute a “find and replace” search of “Rumsfeld” for “Goodell” and “Lynndie England” for “Ray Rice” and voila, you hardly have to rewrite the story.

Then, of course, there is the deplorable way both institutions serve the needs of ex-soldiers and ex-players with traumatic brain injuries. In February, 41 senators voted against a $24 billion dollar VA funding bill to create 27 new facilities (in particular, satellite centers to deal with TBI). And now,only two days ago, NFL lawyers filed a motion to narrow the class of petitioners eligible for the league’s $765 million dollar TBI/Concussion settlement (see ya, NFL Europe players). They also moved to lower by 75% payouts to those who also suffer strokes. In years past, the NFL illegally administered Toradol, an anti-inflammatory, to its players. Toradol has been linked to strokes (it would not surprise me in the least if they sprayed Agent Orange on the gridiron to kill weeds).

I can’t think of a better way to end this two-step than to fire Goodell and hire Robert Gates to clean house. Without a Congress to gum up the works, Gate’s moral decency and competence might just save the NFL from itself.

The reader follows up:

I did a Google search to see if anyone else had noticed the similarities in style between Goodell and Rumsfeld. I didn’t find anything, but I did discover that Goodell’s father, Senator Charles Goodell, was good friends with Donald Rumsfeld. They along with Gerald Ford and others staged the Young Turks rebellion against the Republican House leadership in the early 1960s. Goodell, Sr. was a good Rockefeller Republican, an anti-Vietnam enemy of Nixon, who lost his seat to James Buckley. Rumsfeld survived by learning to keep his own counsel and evolve; seems Roger learned that lesson as well. (THIS aspect was covered in a Grantland article.)

Making Sense Of The Midterms

Sargent dwells on the finding that “62 percent of Republicans — and 67 percent of conservative Republicans — say a reason for their vote is to ‘express opposition to Obama'”:

[T]he high percentages of Republicans who flatly state that their vote is about Obama are pretty stark, and help explain GOP midterm strategy. The key to winning is all about getting out the base, even as core Dem voter groups like minorities, younger voters and single women drop off, helping ensure that the electorate is older and whiter than in presidential years. And one key to that — in a year that seems to fall somewhat short of the seismic levels of rage we saw in 2010 — is keeping Republicans and conservatives worked up about Obama.

Cillizza highlights how Obama’s numbers are dragging the Senate Democrats down:

In short: Alison Lundergan Grimes could win — not would win but could win — if President Obama’s approval ratings in Kentucky were at, say 38 percent. At 28 percent, it’s almost impossible to see how she ends up on top. The hardest thing about that reality for Senate Democrats is that there isn’t much they can do about it; they simply need to wait and hope that Obama’s numbers in 57 days time don’t look like they do today. If his numbers stay the same or erode even further, Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate disappear.

But the GOP’s own unpopularity isn’t holding it back:

[I]t’s always important to note that the GOP brand is worse than the Democratic brand in large part because of members of their own party. While 63 percent of Democrats approve of their party’s congressional members, just 34 percent of Republicans say the same. Among independents and members of the opposite party, it’s almost exactly even. And those other Republicans, we’ll bet you, will still vote GOP in 2014. So, again, the practical effect of the GOP’s poorer brand is probably more negligible than people think.

Stu Rothenberg expects Republicans to do very well:

After looking at recent national, state and congressional survey data and comparing this election cycle to previous ones, I am currently expecting a sizable Republican Senate wave. The combination of an unpopular president and a midterm election (indeed, a second midterm) can produce disastrous results for the president’s party. President Barack Obama’s numbers could rally, of course, and that would change my expectations in the blink of an eye. But as long as his approval sits in the 40-percent range (the August NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll), the signs are ominous for Democrats.

538’s forecast also favors Republicans:

The GOP’s odds of winning the Senate ticked down a bit on the Democrats’ strong poll in Michigan, but FiveThirtyEight still has Republicans with a 62.2 percent chance of taking control of the chamber.

But Sam Wang continues to argue that Democrats have a good shot a keeping the Senate. He currently calculates a 70 percent chance of a Democrat-controlled Senate:

Fundamentals can be useful when there are no polls to reference. But polls, when they are available, capture public opinion much better than a model does. In 2012, on Election Eve, for example, the Princeton Election Consortium relied on polls alone to predict every single Senate race correctly, while Silver, who used a polls-plus-fundamentals approach, called two races incorrectly, missing Heidi Heitkamp’s victory, in North Dakota, and Jon Tester’s, in Montana.

The Princeton Election Consortium generates a poll-based snapshot in which the win/lose probabilities in all races are combined to generate a distribution of all possible outcomes. The average of all outcomes, based on today’s polls, is 50.5 Democratic and Independent seats (two Independents, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, currently caucus with the Democrats).

No other major forecast is as favorable to the Democrats. Andrew Prokop explains why the different election models diverge. One significant caveat from the end of his piece:

[E]ven though models like these have performed well in recent years, they’re still all vulnerable to the possibility of a broad-based polling failure. “The volume of polling is way lower than it was 2 and 4 years ago, and the quality of polling is problematic,” Silver says. “The response rates get lower and lower every year. Pollsters have still been managing to get decent results, but sooner or later, something’s gonna break.” One particular problem Silver mentions is that “pollsters tend to herd, or copy off each other. Then, instead of having random variation around some mean, you can get weird patterns where you can be right for several elections in a row, and then you might have fat-tailed errors.”

“That does make me really nervous,” Silver adds. “Maybe it won’t be this year, but sooner or later you’re going to have a year when things were way off.”

Hathos Alert

Dick Cheney gets a faltering but ultimately decisive standing ovation at the American Enterprise Institute, the key think-tank behind the Iraq War. For them, every war is a reason for another war. But the two and a half decade war in Iraq is their real achievement. And they just managed to extend US involvement there … indefinitely. No wonder they’re ecstatic.

Ross On Child Sex Abuse

I have to say I was blown away by his sensitive, subtle and unflinching examination of the horrors of the Rotherham case – almost a model of conservative doubt and insight. And his defense against those who might be arguing that he is somehow covering for the Catholic hierarchy was just as subtle and deep. Money quote:

[A]ny wisdom drawn from the Catholic experience won’t take the form of some easy checklist for avoiding predation and abuse elsewhere in Six Easy Steps or Less. But what the complexity of the Catholic experience, the sheer mystery of the iniquity that unfolded within the church, can teach the wider world is twofold: First, the importance of vigilance no matter what kind of institution or environment you inhabit, and second, the necessity of being unsurprised.

The difficulty here is seeing child abuse as something far broader and more dangerous in society than merely in the Catholic church, while not dismissing or rationalizing or in any way looking away from the Catholic experience in this. I can’t imagine two better columns that manage to do just that.

A Libertopia?

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A reader writes:

Grover Norquist’s story from Burning Man is great, and while it seems silly to have a political argument, I do feel compelled to take one teaching moment regarding Denver Nicks’ argument that Burning Man isn’t libertarian:

And the government is everywhere at Burning Man, since the whole time you’re dancing or body painting or riding an enormous flame-spitting octopus or whatever in a landscape protected from spoilage by the Bureau of Land Management. And Black Rock City actually has lots of really important rules, like not dumping water on the ground and not driving. There aren’t persnickety rent-a-cops running around staking out potential litter bugs, but rules are enforced by Burning Man Rangers and more directly by the community itself through feelings like shame, withholding participation in taco night at camp or giving you a terrible “playa name” like Moophole or something.

The landscape is protected by the Bureau of Land Management, but it could just as easily be private property, like, say, Woodstock. But the main point is the fact that it has “rules” does not make it unlibertarian – libertarian does not equal anarchy.  This is what gets me when people make lazy characterizations of libertarianism.

The truth is, a libertarian utopia and a communal utopia would actually look pretty similar. Indeed, some of the most libertarian societies you can imagine are not things like Somalia (gangs of armed thugs trying to rob everyone of life, liberty and property), which is the liberals favorite gotchya, but rather things like the Amish, the Internet, and hippy co-ops.

It’s not the existence of rules that separates out libertarian from non-libertarian, it’s when there are agents of enforcement with a monopoly of force pointing a gun at your head demanding you adhere to the rules whether you agreed to them or not. That’s the great thing about Burning Man, and that’s what makes it libertarian.  Precisely as Nicks says, there are not rent-a-cops enforcing community standards – rather, there is the community.  And if you don’t like it, or are appropriately shamed, you can always GTFO.

Libertarianism, despite the popular misconception, does not mean anybody anywhere is free to be an asshole without consequence.  It’s the nature of the consequences that separate it.  A person who runs afoul of community standards finds themselves a pariah. If you act like an asshole, people won’t want to hang out with you, and so they won’t.  A product that is bad doesn’t make money.  A company operating practices that offend sensibilities loses customers and goes broke.  Speech that is unpopular is not sanctioned, but not banned; it’s just unpopular.  A governing body that doesn’t represent its constituents gets voted out of office.  A group of people can set up their own festival and tell whomever they like to take a damn hike for whatever reason they like (and those people can then go set up their own festival).  You can associate with, or not associate with, whomever you chose, and as long as you aren’t hurting anybody can do whatever you like – albeit paying whatever societal consequences are in play in that situation (i.e. talking loud in a movie theater gets you kicked out, being jerky at a dinner party gets you disinvited from other ones, carrying a gun to a place that doesn’t allow it bars you entry, throwing shit around Burning Man gets you run off).

A Burner shares his experience:

I just read your short account about Burning Man and I was actually touched by it, and by the paragraph before last I had tears in my eyes, as Burning Man caused big changes in me.

There were many incredible moments. One in particular is still very fresh in my mind. I visited the Temple of Grace several times. One time I went by myself and I was caught in this amazing and a bit scary white out sandstorm. As I trudged through the storm on my bike, I reached the temple and went inside into this calm and relaxing safe haven. There were many people solemnly and quietly seating and/or standing around. I went around observing and admiring the temple and I reflected on what I wanted to do at the temple. I left several messages on the walls and nooks and crannies of the edifice.

When I walked in the temple I noticed this beautiful woman kneeling near the center of the temple. She was clearly reflecting on a painful aspect or person in her life, as she seemed to meditate and would quietly cry and draw on a pad. After almost an hour that felt like 5 minutes, this lady started singing a very soul wrenching song. She had the sweetest voice and so much feeling and sentiment pouring out with the words and melody. Everyone else was quiet and all you could hear was this angelic voice. When she finished the song she got up and left the temple, she was done and you could see the peace on her face. I felt renewed.

Black Rock City and the Playa definitely felt like home. It did change me profoundly and thoroughly. I will definitely go back. I am a Burner now.

Welcome back to the default world. As I understand it from my veteran Burner friends, it will take some time for full decompression.

(Photo by BLM Nevada)

Sponsored Content Watch

A reader says “it’s getting worse” and points to new evidence:

“Good Morning America” interviewed model Gisele Bundchen and Olympic athlete Lindsey Vonn this week about their new Under Armour campaign, but not necessarily for the pure news or entertainment value of it all. At the end of a segment on Friday morning, a voiceover told viewers that “This segment was brought to you by Under Armour.”

In a pair of dual interviews, one that aired Thursday and the other Friday, the women discussed partnering with Under Armour, the power of women, their workout regimens and their own careers. “GMA” has also posted the videos online without mention of any Under Armour support, although Friday’s video has the straightforward headline “Lindsey Vonn and Gisele Bundchen Promote the ‘I Will What I Want’ Campaign.”

An ABC spokeswoman said segments brought to you by marketers are not unusual for “Good Morning America,” but could not point to other examples.

Watch the “segment” for yourself here. Another reader:

I’ve been following the gossip blog, Lainey Gossip, for a while. And they do this thing with sponsored content where they talk about it openly and freely. And they make it fun. But that’s sort of part of the problem with sponsored content. On the other hand, the way they do it feels much more honest and open. And I continue to trust the blog because of their transparency. Here’s the latest example:

Butt season continues! As I mentioned last week Cottonelle approached us to highlight their bum-pampering products by highlighting the best celebrity butts in Hollywood.

This job doesn’t suck. Jacek was quite happy to do extensive research on the subject and eagerly forwarded several recommendations. JLO was our first. Next? Let’s make it fair and celebrate on the men’s side…

Channing Tatum.

Obviously.

And you know, just like JLO, who’s making videos about her “Booty”, I really don’t think Channing Tatum would mind. After all, he gave us an entire movie – over two hours! – to appreciate this body part. He worked hard on this body part. He trained it. He molded it. He danced with it. He TOOK YOUR MONEY WITH IT.

When it’s that valuable, you have to protect it. Even the bums that might not be as perfect as Channing Tatum’s. Cottonelle takes bum service very seriously with their industry-leading products. This is premium bum care, the gold standard of bum appreciation and indulgence.

Then there was HuffPo’s gleeful but very carefully parsed defense of the same practices. I took solace only in the reader comments. Two faves:

Oh, I get it. This is an advertisement for advertisements masquerading as news articles, which is itself masquerading as a news article- about advertisements masquerading as news articles. Very meta. Also kind of nauseating.

And:

I like that the only comment positive about this piece is from the Head of Operations for the site…

Read all of our coverage on the scourge of sponsored content here.

Obama’s Open-Ended, Reckless, ISIS Gamble

President Obama Delivers Statement On Situation In Iraq

Ahead of the president’s major address tonight, word has leaked that Obama is considering airstrikes in Syria as part of the military operation against ISIS:

President Obama is prepared to use U.S. military airstrikes in Syria as part of an expanded campaign to defeat the Islamic State and does not believe he needs formal congressional approval to take that action, according to people who have spoken with the president in recent days.  Obama discussed his plans at a dinner with a bipartisan group of foreign policy experts this week at the White House and made clear his belief that he has the authority to attack the militant Islamist group on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border to protect U.S national security, multiple people who participated in the discussion said. The move to attack in Syria would represent a remarkable escalation in strategy for Obama, who has sought during his presidency to reduce the U.S. military engagement in the Middle East.

I guess entering one failed state’s civil war wasn’t challenging enough! Let’s enter two while we’re at it. Exit strategy? Pshaw. That’ll be up to Obama’s successor. In a more granular must-read analysis of this clusterfuck, Marc Lynch stresses that while a strategy of airstrikes and supporting local ground forces may be able to help restore stability and sovereignty to Iraq, in Syria these options “offer no plausible path to political or strategic success”:

A strategy predicated on the existence of an effective moderate Syrian rebel force is doomed to fail. Instead, the focus should be on shaping the environment in ways which will encourage the emergence of a politically legitimate and more effectively unified opposition. The destructive and radicalizing effects of uncoordinated flows of aid to competing rebel groups from outside states and private actors have long been obvious. The emerging regional strategy offers perhaps the first opportunity to unify these efforts to build rather than divide the Syrian opposition. The new coalition should expand on efforts to shut off funding and support not only for ISIS but also for the other powerful Islamist trends within the Syrian rebellion.

This will take time. The immediate goal in Syria should be the securing of a strategic pause between the rebel forces and the regime in order to focus military efforts on ISIS.  Crucially, this strategic pause does not mean cooperation or alignment with Asad, or a retreat from the Geneva Accord principles of a political transition. It should be understood instead as buying the time to shape an environment in which such a transition could become plausible. … The longer-term goal should be to translate this anti-ISIS tacit accord into an effective agreement by the external backers of both Asad and the rebels on a de-escalation of the conflict.  Rather than a military drive on Damascus, the international community should support the delivery of serious humanitarian relief, security and governance to rebel controlled areas and refugees.

I simply do not believe we are capable of pulling anything like this off. Robert Hunter also complicates the question of whether getting rid of Assad should be among our objectives there:

We continue to talk about “arming moderates,” but no US leader has ever articulated what would come after Assad. There is a basic assumption that, when Assad is gone, all will be rosy. The opposite is more likely true. Added to the ongoing carnage would be the slaughter of the minority Alawites. The risks of a spreading Sunni-Shia civil war would increase dramatically, even more than now. The irony is that many who now worry about ISIS argue that it would not have progressed this far if we had only “armed the moderates” in Syria. But given what would have likely happened if they had succeeded, this argument is nonsense. Yet even now the administration, along with academic and congressional critics, fails to address the consequences of its own rhetoric about getting rid of Assad; that statement has become a mantra, disconnected from any serious process of thought or analysis.

Juan Cole lays out some of the inherent risks in a US military campaign against ISIS:

Obama appears to envisage arming and training the “moderates” of the Free Syrian Army, who have consistently been pushed to the margins by al-Qaeda offshoots and affiliates. Private billionaires in the Gulf will continue to support ISIL or its rival, Jabhat al-Nusra (the Succor Front, which has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda). Strengthening yet another guerrilla group will, again, likely prolong the fighting. Moreover, in the past two years, Free Syrian Army moderate groups have gone radical and joined Nusrah or ISIL at an alarming rate. Defectors or defeated groups from the FSA will take their skills and arms with them into the al-Qaeda offshoots.

In Iraq, while giving the Kurds and the Iraqi army close air support against ISIL has already borne fruit when the local forces were defending their ethnic enclaves, it hasn’t helped either largely Kurdish forces or the (largely Shiite) Iraqi army take Sunni Arab territory. Several campaigns against Tikrit have failed. The only thing worse than this failure might be success. Success would mean smart phone video making its way to YouTube showing US bombing urban residential buildings full of Sunni Arab families in support for a motley crew of Kurdish (non-Arab) fighters and Shiite troops and militiamen. Helping such forces take Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, would make for a very bad image in the Sunni world.

But we never learn, do we? Robin Wright’s comparison of the best- and worst-case scenarios illustrates how tremendous those risks are:

For the United States, the best possible outcome would be for the militants to withdraw from their illusory state in Iraq to bases in Syria, where they might wither in the face of strengthened Syrian rebels; ideally, the rebels would also bring an end to the Assad regime in Damascus. Iraq and Syria, with their multicultural societies, would then have breathing room to incubate inclusive governments. That’s the goal, anyway. The worst outcome would be another open-ended, treasury-sapping, coffin-producing, and increasingly unpopular war that fails to erase ISIS or resurrect Iraq. It might even, in time, become a symbolic graveyard of American greatness—as it was for the French and the British. The Middle East has a proven record of sucking us in and spitting us out.

Maybe it will take another humiliating, devastating defeat in an unwinnable war to finally get Americans to understand the limits of their military power – and the increasing toxicity of the American brand.

Jack Goldstone pens an explainer on ISIS, including some suggestions for how it might be defeated. He argues that while US or NATO military reprisals may be necessary to “blunt its success and undermine the feeling of invincibility it has given to its converts”, there are much more daunting challenges beyond that:

Second, the civil institutions that provide a power-base for moderate political organizations and their leaders must be rebuilt and given credibility. In Syria, this cannot happen until the Assad regime falls; in Iraq this cannot happen until a post-Maliki government establishes its credibility and effectiveness. … Third, the ongoing Sunni-Shia conflict in the Middle East is fueling every sort of violent group: Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIS, and others. At some point, the global community will have to lean on Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to cease their proxy wars and come to an agreement similar to that of 1648 in Europe, which ended the Thirty Years War that capped over a century of religious conflicts: every country can control its religious policy within its own borders, but agrees to stop meddling in religious conflicts in other countries and to respect other countries’ full sovereignty. This may be a distant goal (it took nearly a century in Europe) but is vital if the region is ever to know stable peace.

Shane Harris wants Obama to get straight whether he plans to “degrade”, “defeat”, or “destroy” ISIS, the last of which Harris considers an impossible goal:

Even if a combined military-political campaign were successful against the Islamic State, history shows that destroying fundamentalist organizations and terrorist networks is exceptionally difficult. Although Obama claims that the United States has “systematically dismantled” al Qaeda in the tribal regions of Pakistan, counterterrorism experts debate whether that’s true, pointing to the fact that Zawahiri is still alive and giving direction to fighters, as well as forming new al Qaeda affiliates, most recently in India. And nearly 13 years after the 9/11 attacks, a sustained military campaign against the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan has failed to destroy the organization. Israel, for its part, has been unable to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah despite the country’s physical proximity to the decades-old militant groups and its ability to deploy one of the most formidable military and intelligence forces on the planet to the fight. The lesson is clear: Terrorist networks are persistent, and they return to their favored targets again and again.

Remarking on the internal illogic of the case for war, Justin Logan doesn’t see how even a successful military operation will solve any of the underlying problems:

The very same political forces that led to a Sunni insurgency during the aughts have contributed to the rise of ISIS. If those politics don’t change—and I see little reason to believe we can make that happen—then you may make gains against ISIS, but the underlying political disease that’s causing the problem remains untreated, and possibly untreatable. In other words, even if the Islamic State is destroyed, there will be an array of other spoilers endangering a thriving Kurdish minority and a stable, successful Iraqi government that integrates the country’s Sunni minority. In fact, these other problems preexisted and helped lead to the successes of the Islamic State. Are we just supposed to cross that bridge when we get to it?

Michael Brendan Dougherty serves up some sharp criticism, lamenting America’s inability to say “no” to lengthy, expensive experiments at fixing other countries’ security problems:

A three-year commitment is merely a hope that drones and bombs plus time equals a stability that is peaceful enough and liberal enough to make our quarter-century of involvement not look like a total waste. But it dumps all the responsibility for solving Iraq on the United States, and makes us yet again a convenient scapegoat for the whole region’s failure. …

This is all part of a broader pattern of the U.S. making too many promises. We’ve promised Japan and the entirety of Southeast Asia to manage China’s rise peacefully. Even as our NATO allies halved their share of military spending since the end of the Cold War, we’ve extended a security guarantee that a Russian advance on Estonia will be treated no differently from a land invasion of the United States. It’s a promise so risible it practically dares a Russian challenge. In fighting ISIS and propping up Iraq, the president is promising to finally make good on America’s constant failure to manage a millennia of hatreds and radical schools of thought, the politics of about six regional powers, and centuries of imperial hubris.

Lastly, George Packer compares Obama’s current situation to that of Gerald Ford after the fall of Saigon:

[Tonight] is a speech that Obama, even more than Ford, never wanted to give. He ran for reëlection, in part, on having fulfilled a promise to end the war in Iraq—always the previous Administration’s war. His eagerness to be rid of the albatross of Iraq played no small part in clearing the way for ISIS to take a third of the country, including Mosul, and to threaten Baghdad and Erbil.

All the more reason to give the President credit (though his political enemies never will) for his willingness, however reluctant, to turn around and face the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq and Syria. Wednesday’s speech will no doubt nod toward staying out (no boots on the ground, no new “American war”), even as it makes the case for going back in (air strikes, international coalitions, the moral and strategic imperative to defeat ISIS). This is the sort of balancing act that Obama speeches specialize in. But he also needs to tell the country bluntly that there will almost certainly be more American casualties, and that the struggle against ISIS—against radical Islam generally, but especially in this case—will be difficult, with no quick military solution and no end in sight. Otherwise, he’ll have brought the public and Congress on board without levelling with them, a pattern set in Vietnam and repeated in Iraq, with unhappy consequences.

The only way to air this debate properly is a full and robust vote in the Senate, preceding a formal declaration of war. That’s what the Constitution demands. And given the emotional rush to war in the country and Washington, you begin to see the wisdom of the Founders’ judgment.

(Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about Iraq in the Brady Briefing room of the White House on June 19, 2014 in Washington, DC. Obama spoke about the deteriorating situation as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants move toward Baghdad after taking control over northern Iraqi cities. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Jubilation Of The Hegemonists

They’re back in charge in Washington, they will always despise Obama, and they will demand, in the end, ground troops. Wieseltier takes a victory lap:

New varieties of half-heartedness would be disastrous. Shall we not do stupid stuff? Fine, then. Not bombing ISIS in Syria would be stupid stuff. (Where is the border between Syria and Iraq?) Not transforming the Free Syrian Army into a powerful fighting force would be stupid stuff. Not arming—and in every other way standing behind—the Kurds would be stupid stuff. And—here comes the apostasy!—not considering the sagacious use of American troops would be stupid stuff.

The obsolescence of the American army is not a conclusion warranted by the war in Iraq. In our determination not to fight the last war, we must not pretend that it was the last war. If the president’s ends in his campaign against ISIS are justified, then he must not deny himself the means. The new government in Baghdad may work out or it may not. Our allies may agree to share the toughest burdens of the campaign or they may not. The outcome of this multilateral effort will depend on the United States. It still comes down to us. Why are we so uneasy with our own moral and historical prominence?

No more half-heartedness! Just go to war in the Middle East again – actually attempt to reconstruct two now-imaginary countries, Iraq and Syria – but with one proviso: we’re all in. No ground troops should be ruled out – which means their involvement becomes inevitable. The multi-sectarian, complex forces and counter-forces in the civil wars of what was once Iraq and what was once Syria can all be mastered by American military power – just like the last Iraq war, remember?

Note this line:

In our determination not to fight the last war, we must not pretend that it was the last war.

But we are going to war in the same place we just left! And we are doing so for the very same reason we were the last time around – because a Sunni insurgency does not trust the Shiite-dominated government that we installed and still support. We have no new capabilities that make all our previous mistakes avoidable again. We are once again trying to control the uncontrollable and manage the unknowable in places we know far less about than our enemies, just as we once did – and without any clear, tangible threat to the US. This “last war” began in 1991, it was extended in 2003, it is now being extended again, after the briefest of lulls, for the indefinite future. America is becoming nothing but a war machine, forever fixing the conflicts we create, supported by a Beltway elite with no accountability for anything they have ever said or written in the past.

For some, a forever war against evil everywhere on earth is what gets them up in the morning. I understand how this is genuine, even admirable in its compassion and care. But it is not prudent; it has been proven a failure already; it has cost us a trillion dollars and countless lives and limbs. To believe it will be different this time is the definition of insanity.

Update from a reader:

You wrote:

For some, a forever war against evil everywhere on earth is what gets them up in the morning. I understand how this is genuine, even admirable in its compassion and care. But it is not prudent; it has been proven a failure already; it has cost us a trillion dollars and countless lives and limbs. To believe it will be different this time is the definition of insanity.

I understand trying to ascribe non-malevolent motive here, but I want to make a point that I am somewhat loathe to make, given how the term is often abused: this is chicken-hawking at its most extreme.  The group of neocons and establishment Washington pols (with the media right behind them) that perpetually agitate for war and “boots on the ground” give up NOTHING by their clockwork bellicosity.  They won’t spend years of their lives living in a tent in the desert, their families won’t feel the stress of multiple deployments, their children won’t be blown up by an IED.  Someone else’s will, and they’ll go on agitating for endless military engagement all around the world, forever.

It is inappropriate to cry “chicken-hawk!” every time America decides it needs to use force.  That would be illegitimate – a country can’t function that way.  But at what point do we need to look perpetual-war agitators in the eye and say, “If you really think evil is taking over the world, if you want America to fight constantly, then it is your turn.  Go enlist.  Bring your son and your daughter with you.  Then come back and tell me if you think we need to fight over there.”

I won’t hold my breath.