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Topic: Syria
Hitting ISIS Everywhere But Where it Matters
The Pentagon today announced another set of airstrikes against the Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq:
The Pentagon today announced another set of airstrikes against the Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq:
In Syria, one strike south of Al Hasakah destroyed an ISIL garrison, while one strike southeast of Dayr Az Zawr destroyed two ISIL tanks. Two strikes north of Ar Raqqah struck two modular oil refineries and an ISIL training camp, while another strike northeast of Aleppo struck an ISIL occupied building. One strike against an ISIL artillery piece west of Ar Raqqah was not successful.
What's curious is what was not targeted. Over the past couple weeks; the Islamic State has been on the offensive against the Kurdish-held town of Kobane ('Ain al-Arab). The Islamic State has been as brutal as it was in Sinjar, and recently even beheaded a group of captured Kurds, including women. Kurds may govern Kobane but the Kurdish administration has given shelter and protection to tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs and Christians. As the Islamic State advances, more than 100,000 refugees have flooded into Turkey. In the Pentagon, one strategic briefer tactlessly called the massacres and mass flight of population as "a tactical withdrawal."
And yet, despite the heat of the battle around Kobane the United States and its Gulf allies did nothing to strike at Islamic State forces besieging the Kurds. It would be as if Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared that the United States would enter the war against Japan, and then proceeded to bomb Argentina. Given that President Obama has insisted that he approve every strike inside Syria, the only logical conclusion is that Obama does not want to protect Kobane, perhaps out of deference to Turkey, which is suspicious of any Kurdish entity.
This is shortsighted: Syrian Kurds may not be perfect, but they are largely secular, moderate, and tolerant. And despite their links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which once waged an insurgency inside Turkey, those days are over: The Turks and PKK have been in peace talks and have abided by a ceasefire for over 18 months.
As the Islamic State advanced on the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil, Obama scrambled to utilize airpower to stop the terrorist advance. That he will not do so in an analogous case inside Syria shows the complete lack of strategic coherence to U.S. actions. If military action is going to be effective, it should occur where the fighting is: not dozens of miles away.
Turkish Vote Less than Meets the Eye
CNN is reporting that the Turkish parliament has approved military action against the Islamic State (ISIS). This may be the headline that Turkey wants, but it is not actually what the Turkish parliament has done. The Turkish parliament has instead voted to authorize its army to operate in Iraq and Syria. This extends a mandate that was approved two years ago but was about to expire. Hence, had Turkey previously wanted to operate against ISIS, it could have. More importantly, the Turkish motion did not specify a target. This means that the Turkish authorization could just as readily allow operation against Syrian Kurds who are fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked groups, or against the Bashar al-Assad regime.
CNN is reporting that the Turkish parliament has approved military action against the Islamic State (ISIS). This may be the headline that Turkey wants, but it is not actually what the Turkish parliament has done. The Turkish parliament has instead voted to authorize its army to operate in Iraq and Syria. This extends a mandate that was approved two years ago but was about to expire. Hence, had Turkey previously wanted to operate against ISIS, it could have. More importantly, the Turkish motion did not specify a target. This means that the Turkish authorization could just as readily allow operation against Syrian Kurds who are fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked groups, or against the Bashar al-Assad regime.
The Turkish vote means that Ankara could be helpful should it so choose, but it might simply stop at the appearance of being helpful, especially if American reporters and news organizations like CNN transpose their own goals onto a Turkish government which too often in recent years has operated against Western interests rather than in their favor.
Only the coming days will tell. But let us hope that neither the Pentagon nor the State Department let Turkey off the hook or accept pretend partnership rather than substantive cooperation.
The Debate We're Not Having About Syria
There is a stunning gap in the public conversation about the war that President Obama is now waging on ISIS. We have paid some attention to the political future of Iraq, on the correct assumption that a longterm victory against ISIS in that country requires having a state in Baghdad capable of winning support from all of Iraq's sectarian communities. Hence the administration's successful push to replace Nouri al-Maliki with Haidar al-Abadi. Whether Abadi lives up to his billing as a more inclusive leader remains to be seen, but what is stunning to me is that we are not even having this conversation about Syria. What kind of political settlement would we like to see in Syria and how to achieve it?
There is a stunning gap in the public conversation about the war that President Obama is now waging on ISIS. We have paid some attention to the political future of Iraq, on the correct assumption that a longterm victory against ISIS in that country requires having a state in Baghdad capable of winning support from all of Iraq's sectarian communities. Hence the administration's successful push to replace Nouri al-Maliki with Haidar al-Abadi. Whether Abadi lives up to his billing as a more inclusive leader remains to be seen, but what is stunning to me is that we are not even having this conversation about Syria. What kind of political settlement would we like to see in Syria and how to achieve it?
At the moment we are bombing ISIS a little bit in Syria as well as Iraq, while also planning to train on a very small scale elements of the Free Syrian Army–about 5,000 fighters are expected to be trained next year. How can anyone expect 5,000 fighters to defeat the 20,000-30,000 men under arms for ISIS? And if the Free Syrian Army doesn't step forward, isn't there a real danger of the Assad regime regaining lost ground because of the U.S. campaign against ISIS? Those are questions the administration has refused to answer, at least publicly.
Perhaps the Obama administration has reconciled itself to Assad staying in power indefinitely as the lesser evil, but the record of the past three years shows that Assad is incapable of ending the Syrian civil war. As long as he sticks around, the war will rage on with all of the catastrophic human cost that implies. It will also mean that there will be room for Salafist extremists to operate in ungoverned parts of the country where the government's control does not extend. (In the parts of Syria under government control, a different set of extremists–the Shiite fanatics of Hezbollah and the Quds Forces–run wild.) As Frederic Hof, Obama's former special representative for Syria, just wrote: "Blowing up Islamic State-related targets in Syria has intrinsic merit. Yet so long as the Assad regime exists, Syria will be fertile ground for jihadists and other criminals sporting political agendas. "
The only way to rescue Syria from its nightmare is to overthrow Assad and install a government capable of keeping order and winning the assent of the country's various constituent parts. As Hof writes, "The vacuum of state failure filled by the Islamic State will not be plugged until an inclusive national government in Syria replaces an Iranian- and Russian-abetted family business." By this point, after three years of war fed by three years of American inaction, this admittedly seems a fantastic prospect. But just because we have trouble grappling with the enormity of the challenge doesn't mean that it ceases to exist.
I commend Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institution for at least starting to think about the unthinkable in this essay entitled "We need to Begin Nation-Building in Syria Right Now." Pollack points out that even if Assad doesn't fall anytime soon, now is the time to make plans for a post-Assad Syria–the kind of plans we failed to make in Iraq and Libya. Pollack rightly suggests that the U.S. should lead an international effort under UN auspices. "If all of this is addressed in a determined fashion," he suggests, "the U.S. should provide most of the muscle, the Gulf states most of the money, and the international community most of the know-how." There is much room for discussion about how such a plan could be implemented, but that's a discussion we need to have–and we're not having it.
Why Panetta's Lament Is Newsworthy
At the beginning of this year, when former defense secretary Bob Gates released his memoirs, he absorbed a fair amount of condemnation for his timing. In his book he criticized President Obama's lack of commitment to the wars of which he took command as well as key players in the administration who had been poisoning the well against the military from within the White House. But, as I wrote, the criticism of his timing fell flat, since the book came after the 2012 election and therefore was not designed to undermine the president's campaign, and it was too early to interfere in any real way with Hillary Clinton's.
At the beginning of this year, when former defense secretary Bob Gates released his memoirs, he absorbed a fair amount of condemnation for his timing. In his book he criticized President Obama's lack of commitment to the wars of which he took command as well as key players in the administration who had been poisoning the well against the military from within the White House. But, as I wrote, the criticism of his timing fell flat, since the book came after the 2012 election and therefore was not designed to undermine the president's campaign, and it was too early to interfere in any real way with Hillary Clinton's.
Now we have a second voice from the administration to add to the chorus of ex-officials unhappy with the disastrous foreign-policy decisions made by Obama. That chorus includes Hillary Clinton as well as advisors loyal to her like Vali Nasr. And now it includes, significantly, Gates's successor at Defense Leon Panetta. Although Gates served both Democratic and Republican administrations and has always been considered a loyal soldier and a man of sober judgment, the fact that he's a Republican seemed to color some reactions to his criticism of Obama. The same, obviously, cannot be said for Panetta. Opposition to Obama's rash, hasty, and overly ideological decisions is bipartisan.
In Panetta's forthcoming memoir, excerpted and adapted in Time magazine, he writes that, as the deadline for combat operations approached, it was clear "withdrawing all our forces would endanger the fragile stability then barely holding Iraq together." There needed to be some residual force maintained until Iraq was ready to shoulder the full burden of its own security and–crucially–stability. According to Panetta:
We had leverage. We could, for instance, have threatened to withdraw reconstruction aid to Iraq if al-Maliki would not support some sort of continued U.S. military presence. My fear, as I voiced to the President and others, was that if the country split apart or slid back into the violence that we'd seen in the years immediately following the U.S. invasion, it could become a new haven for terrorists to plot attacks against the U.S. Iraq's stability was not only in Iraq's interest but also in ours. I privately and publicly advocated for a residual force that could provide training and security for Iraq's military.
Under Secretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy did her best to press that position, which reflected not just my views but also those of the military commanders in the region and the Joint Chiefs. But the President's team at the White House pushed back, and the differences occasionally became heated. Flournoy argued our case, and those on our side viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests.
The White House, he writes, wouldn't lead the effort because the president was committed to getting out of Iraq, not winning the peace. Panetta does not let Maliki off the hook for the chaos that followed: "Al-Maliki was responsible, as he exacerbated the deep sectarian issues polarizing his country." But it's clear the president was, as always, more interested in hewing to bumper-sticker slogans than getting the policy right. The hyper-partisan, intensely ideological Obama would not be swayed.
Panetta's comments have thus far been met with a more muted response than Gates's, for a few simple reasons. First, as mentioned, Gates was a Republican holdover from the Bush era and Democrats maintain an ever-present suspicion of the motives of anyone to their right on the ideological spectrum. (Witness yesterday's New York Times report on how the paper was thoroughly confused by the suggestion that Republicans want Obama to stay alive. What's in it for them, the left wanted to know.)
Second, Gates's career was far more defense- and security-centric than Panetta's, having served in the CIA during the Cold War for several administrations (ultimately rising to director), serving on the National Security Council, and eventually serving as defense secretary for two consecutive presidents. As such, Gates's views carry a certain amount of authority and gravitas that few possess; he's been on the inside of national-security policy for nearly half a century.
Third, Gates's memoir was published before Panetta's. Whatever the criticism, it's not going to be particularly revelatory for anyone to "me-too" his predecessor. And fourth, thanks to the rise of ISIS it is now undeniable that Iraq is in freefall and the security arrangements left in place when American troops left were insufficient. The fact that Obama has initiated a new war against ISIS (though he calls it an old war) in a new country is an implicit acknowledgement of that. In other words, it's hard to argue with Panetta's conclusion.
But that, paradoxically, ought to be a reason for this to be especially newsworthy. Panetta's lament serves as an "I told you so," not a "you'll be sorry" moment. Even the president's close advisors understand Obama was wrong, and everybody knows it. It's safe now to disavow Obama's Iraq strategy because it's crystal clear it was a mammoth, deadly failure. The idea that Obama was completely, irresponsibly wrong is not controversial, even among dedicated Democrats. Panetta's criticism isn't really news, which is why it should be.
Déjà Vu? Public Opinion on Obama's ISIS Plan Starting to Look Familiar
The Washington Post has some relatively good news for the president–relatively being the key word there. The latest Washington Post/ABC poll finds 50-percent approval for Obama's handling of the threat from ISIS after announcing and commencing air strikes in Syria. Only 44 percent disapprove. Before Syria was involved, only 42 percent approved of his handling of this one issue. But there is reason for any optimism to be tempered with caution.
The Washington Post has some relatively good news for the president–relatively being the key word there. The latest Washington Post/ABC poll finds 50-percent approval for Obama's handling of the threat from ISIS after announcing and commencing air strikes in Syria. Only 44 percent disapprove. Before Syria was involved, only 42 percent approved of his handling of this one issue. But there is reason for any optimism to be tempered with caution.
As Aaron Blake notes, "It has been eight months since Obama last cracked half the American public on any given issue — foreign policy or otherwise — in Washington Post/ABC News polling." That should be encouraging for the president, as it means the numbers are moving in the right direction. But as Ed Morrissey points out, that 50 percent is actually noticeably lower than the percent of the public who had earlier said they would support this particular strategy. Morrissey writes, correctly:
Getting to 50% approval on a plan which 68% of Americans wanted three weeks ago isn't really much of an accomplishment. In fact, it looks a little like — how to say it? – leading from behind.
Additionally, he writes that the boost in support is coming in part from Republicans, who are more likely to support hawkish policies. That's not new, and it's not really expanding Obama's base of support–at least not in a way that could overflow onto other issues. (Republicans are unlikely to approve of Obama's handling of health care or the economy no matter how successful are the anti-ISIS strikes.)
And in fact, we have precedent for warning the president of this effect. Let's turn the clock back a few years to 2009, when we saw a very similar pattern on a very similar issue.
On December 1, 2009, Obama announced a surge for Afghanistan of an additional 30,000 troops. On the eve of that announcement, Gallup found his approval rating on his prosecution of the Afghanistan war was slipping, from 56 percent in July of that year to 49 percent in September and finally 35 percent just before the speech. After the announcement, Gallup found 51 percent approved of the Afghan surge, including a majority of Republicans and Democrats. Quinnipiac found even higher support for the plan, plus this, as Bloomberg explained: "Also, 57 percent said fighting in Afghanistan was the right course of action, up 9 points from a similar survey released Nov. 18."
That latter nugget was arguably more important, because it showed that–as is the case with the president's plan to fight ISIS–Americans approved of the idea behind the strategy. That is, they still wanted to fight, and Obama's plan matched up to those preferences. Bloomberg added that it was an improvement on "Obama's handling of the Afghan war, with 45 percent supporting him and 45 percent opposing him. That was a 7-point gain for the president."
Gallup found Obama's overall job approval got a bit of a bump too, reaching 52 percent after the announcement. But that dropped a few days later to 47 percent, which represented (at the time) a new low for the administration (though the administration was less than a year old).
Signs of trouble appeared even among the good news back then. For example, not even a majority of Americans believed the goals of the Afghanistan policy they supported would be met.
Which brings us back to ISIS. Obama said he "will not commit you and the rest of our Armed Forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq," instead favoring air strikes. But a Wall Street Journal/NBC/Annenberg poll published over the weekend found the public wasn't buying it: "72 percent of Americans believe the United States will still use its ground troops anyway against ISIS, versus just 20 percent who think it won't."
So there's skepticism on the feasibility of Obama's plan from the beginning. That doesn't necessarily doom it in the eyes of the public: according to that same poll, a plurality (45 percent) support using ground troops if military commanders want them, with 37 percent opposed.
You can see what makes this particular issue so dicey for the president. The public seems ahead of him not only on the need to destroy ISIS but also on the possibility of using ground troops. So he could find that while the public isn't exactly clamoring for another land war, they're not enamored of too much restraint either. It looks less like a formula for presidential success and more like a formula to run afoul of virtually everyone's expectations. Such are the perils of leading from behind a fickle public.
Obama's Hypocrisy on Civilian Casualties
A few weeks ago, the State Department's incoherent spokeswoman Marie Harf all but accused Israel of war crimes. As Tablet noted at the time, Harf said that "the suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians." She said a full investigation and accounting of Israel's actions was warranted (as if Israel doesn't already conduct such investigations). Expect her, then, to be asked about the following:
A few weeks ago, the State Department's incoherent spokeswoman Marie Harf all but accused Israel of war crimes. As Tablet noted at the time, Harf said that "the suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians." She said a full investigation and accounting of Israel's actions was warranted (as if Israel doesn't already conduct such investigations). Expect her, then, to be asked about the following:
The White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.
A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria's Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.
The Obama White House appears to have expanded Richard Nixon's famous maxim to international law: when the (American) president does it, it's not illegal. The Obama administration's air war on terror has operated under the standard referred to as "near certainty": that they be all but certain no civilians will be endangered by air strikes. But as the Obama administration continues withdrawing from these battlefields, that gets more difficult to ensure since sources of on-the-ground intelligence dry up.
Such sources weren't there to begin with in Syria, at least not to the extent they were in Iraq and Afghanistan. So it's not as though President Obama suddenly decided he doesn't care about innocent Syrian lives. It's that he's doing his best to prevent civilian casualties within the realm of realistic but effective warfare. The double standard is still glaring, as Jonathan pointed out last week. And it only becomes more so with yesterday's report on the shift in standards. The White House was asked about just how much effort they're putting into their aim after a particularly damaging errant strike:
But at a briefing for members and staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee late last week, Syrian rebel commanders described women and children being hauled from the rubble after an errant cruise missile destroyed a home for displaced civilians. Images of badly injured children also appeared on YouTube, helping to fuel anti-U.S. protests in a number of Syrian villages last week.
"They were carrying bodies out of the rubble. … I saw seven or eight ambulances coming out of there," said Abu Abdo Salabman, a political member of one of the Free Syria Army factions, who attended the briefing for Foreign Affairs Committee members and staff. "We believe this was a big mistake."
Yes, a "big mistake" that mere weeks ago the State Department was calling unjustified–tantamount to a war crime, in other words–when committed by Israel. Now, there will be some leeway of course: it's not as though Obama's a Republican, so the laws of war are of minimal concern to the left. Additionally, everyone knows a double standard is applied to Israel, so no one expected Barack Obama to live up to his own words or follow his own administration's sanctimonious pronouncements.
Nonetheless, even some Obama partisans are wondering if the president is simply making it up as he goes along. The Yahoo story that confirmed the removal of the "near certainty" standard quotes Harold Koh, formerly the Obama State Department's top lawyer, trying mightily to figure out where Obama's legal authority is coming from:
"They seem to be creating this grey zone" for the conflict, said Harold Koh, who served as the State Department's top lawyer during President Obama's first term. "If we're not applying the strict rules [to prevent civilian casualties] to Syria and Iraq, then they are of relatively limited value."
The difference, then, between the way the Obama administration and Israel conduct war boils down to: Israel puts the greatest effort it can into avoiding civilian casualties and then follows up with transparent investigations, while Obama basically just hopes for the best. The press should ask him about that.
Indeed, they should do more: will the New York Times shove down its readers' throats a constant stream of enemy propaganda designed to engender sympathy for genocidal terrorists at the expense of the democratic West? To ask the question is to answer it. If Jews or Republicans can't be blamed, what's the point?
More likely, however, is the possibility that the walking disaster that is Marie Harf will be asked about it, since the diplomatic press pool tend not to find her petty sniping and cheerful ignorance intimidating in the least. Does she still think these acts are war crimes, now that her government is the one conducting them? And does she believe she owes Israel an apology? There's no question she does owe Israel that apology, and so does the Obama administration more broadly. But it would be interesting to see if they could summon the necessary integrity to offer it.
Dem Senate Candidates: Bombs Away!
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. You just need Jeanne Shaheen.
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. You just need Jeanne Shaheen.
As Politico recounts in a story today, Democratic Senate candidates are finding their inner hawks on the campaign trail, but none more noticeably than Shaheen, the New Hampshire incumbent trying to fend off a challenge from Scott Brown. Shaheen, on matters of war and peace, is a walking focus group:
When she ran unsuccessfully for the Senate a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, she said at a debate: "I'll stand with President Bush on national security, the war on terrorism and to disarm Saddam Hussein."
In a 2008 rematch against then-Sen. John Sununu, after the war had gone south, Shaheen vowed to fight to bring the troops home.
"I would vote to authorize military action if the U.S. or any of its treaty partners are attacked militarily, and to prevent an imminent attack," she said on a 2008 questionnaire. But "I oppose the Bush doctrine of preemption because it implies that the United States will use preemption as a first option, rather than a last resort."
Setting aside her obvious ignorance of the Bush doctrine (an ignorance she shares with virtually everyone on the left), we should ask Shaheen: Which way are the winds blowing this time? Answer:
Republican candidate Scott Brown has been hammering Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen for failing to understand "the nature of the threat," as he put it in one commercial that began airing last week.
This has prompted the freshman Democrat to begin quietly running a response ad (her campaign has not released it to the news media), in which she says: "I support those airstrikes. I think it's important for us to take the fight to ISIL."
A narrator accuses Brown of playing politics and says, over patriotic music, that Shaheen "always works to keep America strong."
Even her ads are a study in contradiction. It's apparently "playing politics" for politicians to campaign on the issues, and yet Shaheen takes the bait and claims that she, too, enthusiastically wants to bomb some folks, as the president might say.
But Shaheen is just a product of a Democratic Party that has not had a coherent approach to national security in over a decade. During President Bush's first term, Al Gore maniacally accused him of betraying the country. The Democrats then nominated John Kerry in 2004, to make crystal clear they didn't have the energy to even pretend they cared about national security.
In 2008, Democrats nominated Barack Obama, whose antiwar speech in 2002, lauded by the left, was startlingly unintelligent and Ron Paul-esque in its wild-eyed conspiracy theories. Obama followed the usual fringe leftist critique of blaming Wolfowitz and Perle for manipulating the country into war. He also called them "weekend warriors," showing he doesn't know what "weekend warrior" means. He then accused Karl Rove of manufacturing the war to distract the country from the economy and to protect corporate evildoers from public opprobrium. The speech sounded like a raving fusion of Glenn Greenwald and Alex Jones. So naturally the Democrats chose him to represent their party.
And then when he won, the script had to be flipped. The president was introduced to reality, and he embraced his power to expand America's war in the Middle East and Central Asia. He had genuine successes, like the operation to take out Osama bin Laden, which he then made his campaign slogan to the extent that it was actually surprising his nominating convention speech didn't feature him standing over bin Laden's body while exclaiming to the audience "Are you not entertained?"
Indeed they were entertained. The thousands of Democratic Party voters and activists cheered on targeted assassination. In his foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney, Obama taunted his challenger's lack of appetite for the messy business of spilling bad-guy blood. His secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, then stepped down and immediately spread the word that Obama was insufficiently hawkish for her, and that, as she rocketed to the top of 2016 Democratic polls, she would take the country further into battle. You only think you're entertained now, Clinton's message intimated; you ain't seen nothing yet.
And that was all before Obama abandoned Iraq and watched ISIS rise, march on territory, and then start beheading Americans. The public may have been war weary, but they won't stand for being targeted with impunity. Obama did the right thing and agreed to try and push back ISIS and protect the ethnic and religious minority groups whose existence ISIS was trying to extinguish. He also was informed of credible threats against America and acted accordingly.
And Democratic candidates are following suit. The idea of "antiwar liberals" was always something of a misnomer. They were, mostly, anti-Bush or anti-Republican liberals. What matters most to the left is not who is being bombed but who is ordering the bombing. It's why Jim Webb is probably kidding himself if he believes an antiwar candidate poses a credible challenge to Hillary Clinton. If he wants to know if there's space on the left for a serious antiwar campaign, he's going through entirely too much effort by traveling around the country and talking to prospective supporters. All he really needs to do is ask Jeanne Shaheen.
Our Lying President and His Lying Press Secretary
White House press secretary Josh Earnest has a problem. In a misguided effort to protect his boss, the president, he is continuing to lie.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest has a problem. In a misguided effort to protect his boss, the president, he is continuing to lie.
I use the word lie advisedly but, I believe, correctly. Here's why.
In an exchange yesterday with ABC's Jonathan Karl, Mr. Earnest continues to peddle the fiction that President Obama did not have ISIS/ISIL in mind when he referred to it in an interview in the New Yorker as a "jayvee team." Several weeks ago I showed why that claim is false, and so have many others, including Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker for the Washington Post.
It's simply not plausible to believe the White House press secretary is unwittingly mistaken on this matter. By now he has to know what the truth is. He has to know full well that Mr. Obama had ISIS in mind when he referred to it as a "jayvee team." So, by the way, does Mr. Obama, who is also deceiving Americans about this matter.
I understand why the president and his press secretary would rather not admit to having mocked ISIS now that it is the largest, richest, most well armed, and most formidable terrorist group on the planet. But Mr. Obama did, and being duplicitous about the fact that he did isn't going to help anyone. It will, in fact, further erode the president's credibility.
It is bad enough for this administration to be so inept; it's worse for them to be so obviously dishonest as well.
Obama's Mistakes Come Back to Haunt Him
President Obama sounded much tougher when he spoke at the United Nations last week than he has in a long time. But for anyone expecting the president to become a born-again hawk and repent of his earlier retreatism, the 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday should be chastening.
President Obama sounded much tougher when he spoke at the United Nations last week than he has in a long time. But for anyone expecting the president to become a born-again hawk and repent of his earlier retreatism, the 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday should be chastening.
The headline-grabbing statement was the president blaming the intelligence community for underestimating ISIS and overestimating the capacity of the Iraqi army. And it's true that Jim Clapper, the director of national intelligence, did recently tell David Ignatius, "We underestimated ISIL [the Islamic State] and overestimated the fighting capability of the Iraqi army" although he also said that "his analysts had reported the group's emergence and its 'prowess and capability,' as well as the 'deficiencies' of the Iraqi military." So the president can take refuge in asserting that he was simply claiming Clapper's own self-critique.
But I doubt that will seem very convincing to intelligence community personnel who will feel that the president is throwing them under the bus–hiding policy errors behind a front of supposed intelligence failures. Indeed, the New York Times today quotes one "senior American intelligence official" as saying: "Some of us were pushing the reporting, but the White House just didn't pay attention to it. They were preoccupied with other crises. This just wasn't a big priority."
The reality is that it didn't require any specialized intelligence apparatus to know that the threat from jihadists like ISIS would grow or that the capabilities of the Iraqi army would decline if we left Iraq and Syria alone, as we have largely done since 2011. I and many other analysts were noting at the time that the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq was a "tragedy" that would leave Iraqis ill-prepared to defend themselves and that the U.S. failure to help the moderate Syrian opposition would cede ground to "Sunnis extremists such as al Qaeda." That Obama chose to ignore such warnings was not the fault of his intelligence personnel; it was his own fault for believing what he wanted to believe–namely that the U.S. could retreat from the Middle East without increasing the danger of our enemies gaining ground.
Such a belief was fantastic enough in 2011; it became utterly preposterous when in January of this year Fallujah and Ramadi fell to ISIS. Yet even then Obama did nothing for another nine months. It took the fall of Mosul in June to shake him out of his complacency–although not to get him off the golf course–and at last try to come up with some strategy to stop ISIS. Again, this isn't the intelligence community's fault. It's Obama's fault, and he would enhance his own credibility if he would accept some of the blame for this failure.
Instead he is once again pointing fingers, not only at the intelligence agencies but also at former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "When we left, we had left them a democracy that was intact, a military that was well equipped, and the ability then to chart their own course," Obama said. "And that opportunity was squandered over the course of five years or so because the prime minister, Maliki, was much more interested in consolidating his Shiite base and very suspicious of the Sunnis and the Kurds, who make up the other two-thirds of the country."
True enough, but this analysis ignores the important role of Obama's own administration in helping Maliki to win a second term in 2010 when he actually won fewer parliamentary seats than Ayad Allawi. It is also ignores the fact that those of us who were in favor of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq past 2011 (and that includes senior U.S. military commanders on the ground) believed it was essentially in no small part to allow the U.S. to continue exerting pressure on Maliki to stay non-sectarian. That Maliki would unleash his inner sectarian as soon as we left was also utterly predictable and cannot be blamed on any intelligence failure.
Of course Obama won't accept responsibility for pulling out of Iraq either–he blames that too on the Iraqis for failing to agree to grant U.S. troops legal immunity in a status of forces agreed ratified by their parliament. Yet it turns out this was a bogus issue all along. How do I know? Because Obama has now sent 1,600, and counting, U.S. troops to Iraq without any legal immunity or any Status of Forces Agreement ratified by parliament. If he's doing it now, why couldn't he do it in 2012? Simply because he didn't want to–Iraqi leaders almost certainly would have acceded if Obama had shown the will to remain past 2011.
Rather than accepting blame for his own misjudgments, Obama stubbornly continues to defend his mistakes such as failing to arm moderate Syrian fighters in 2011-2012 as most of his security cabinet was urging him to do. "For us to just go blind on that would have been counterproductive and would not have helped the situation. But we also would have committed us to a much more significant role inside of Syria," Obama said.
Yet Obama's own officials, including Robert Ford, his former ambassador to Damascus, have said that the U.S. has had the information for years that it needs to figure out who's who among the Syrian rebels. It's just that Obama refused to act on that information precisely because he refused to accept a "more significant role inside of Syria" even if such a role could have stopped the growth of ISIS.
If Obama is going to rebuild shattered confidence in his foreign policy, he needs to accept blame for what he did wrong before and act to correct those mistakes now instead of scapegoating others and taking refuge in half-measures such as his current air strikes without boots on the ground, which he characterized on 60 Minutes as a "counterterrorism operation" rather than "the sort of occupying armies that characterized the Iraq and Afghan war."
Obama, the Anti-Truman
There are three ways to read Barack Obama's epic buck-passing from Sunday night's interview on 60 Minutes. There is the literal reading: Obama, in trying to fend off blame for his administration's failure regarding ISIS, said "Jim Clapper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," referring to the intel community.
There are three ways to read Barack Obama's epic buck-passing from Sunday night's interview on 60 Minutes. There is the literal reading: Obama, in trying to fend off blame for his administration's failure regarding ISIS, said "Jim Clapper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," referring to the intel community.
Then there is the classic Obama-is-disappointed-in-America-yet-again framing, which is not flattering to Obama but better than the truth. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post went this route. Here's the Times: "President Obama acknowledged in an interview broadcast on Sunday that the United States had underestimated the rise of the Islamic State militant group." And the Post: "The United States underestimated the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, President Obama said during an interview."
If you've followed the events of the past year, you'll notice that neither of those spin cycles is true and so there must be a third option. There is: the truth, which is that Barack Obama underestimated ISIS despite the intel community trying desperately to explain it to him since day one. And thus, tired of getting thrown under the bus, the intel community has pointed out to Eli Lake at the Daily Beast that what the president said is completely divorced from reality:
Nearly eight months ago, some of President Obama's senior intelligence officials were already warning that ISIS was on the move. In the beginning of 2014, ISIS fighters had defeated Iraqi forces in Fallujah, leading much of the U.S. intelligence community to assess they would try to take more of Iraq. …
Reached by The Daily Beast after Obama's interview aired, one former senior Pentagon official who worked closely on the threat posed by Sunni jihadists in Syria and Iraq was flabbergasted. "Either the president doesn't read the intelligence he's getting or he's bullshitting," the former official said.
Is the president reading his intelligence reports? He must be. The more likely explanation of the two is that Obama knows exactly what happened–he messed up, royally–and is blaming others because it's unpalatable for him to admit that six years into his presidency, he's older but no wiser.
The Times does carefully draw attention to this fact:
In citing Mr. Clapper, Mr. Obama made no mention of any misjudgment he may have made himself. Critics have repeatedly pointed to his comment last winter characterizing groups like the Islamic State as a "JV team" compared with the original Al Qaeda.
Right. Though "any misjudgment he may have made" actually refers to this particular misjudgment, which he's blaming on others, that we know for sure he made.
Just as interesting is why he made that egregious mistake. Part of it, surely, is his utter lack of knowledge of world history and politics. But that's not enough of a reason, especially considering the fact that the U.S. intel community has been trying to remedy that by laying it all out there for him. Knowledge has been accumulated and summarily dismissed by Obama as distinctly unimportant. What matters to him is his cloistered worldview and fealty to ideology.
Later in the interview, Obama said:
Now the good news is that the new [Iraqi] prime minister, Abadi, who I met with this week, so far at least has sent all the right signals. And that's why it goes back to what I said before, Steve, we can't do this for them. We cannot do this for them because it's not just a military problem. It is a political problem. And if we make the mistake of simply sending U.S. troops back in, we can maintain peace for a while. But unless there is a change in how, not just Iraq, but countries like Syria and some of the other countries in the region, think about what political accommodation means. Think about what tolerance means.
One hopes the president isn't holding his breath. Obama returns to this trope time and again: it's a political solution that's needed, not a military solution. But security, as always, must precede any political solution. And that doesn't come about by telling the warring parties to "Think about what tolerance means."
Here, for example, is the lede of the New York Times story on a truly momentous occasion out of Afghanistan: "Ashraf Ghani, the former World Bank technocrat and prominent intellectual, on Monday became the first modern leader of Afghanistan to take office in a peaceful transfer of power."
It was far from inevitable. The election Ghani won produced a bitter accusation of fraud and a threat to plunge the country into what would essentially be a new civil war. What made the difference? As our Max Boot has written, the crucial distinction between Afghanistan and other such conflicts in which the U.S. played a role is the fact that when John Kerry flew in to broker a solution to the crisis, there were tens of thousands of American troops in the country. "That," Max wrote, "gives any American diplomat a lot of leverage should he choose to use it."
President Obama doesn't like to face up to the fact that his obsession with getting out of Iraq played a role in undermining the very "political solution" he hoped for. Now ISIS is collapsing borders and beheading Westerners, and they surely can't be expected to "Think about what tolerance means." The president made policy based on what he wanted to be true, in all likelihood knowing full well it wasn't. He continues to be the anti-Truman, passing blame around when he deserves the lion's share of it.
How Iran Outwits Obama in the Middle East
While Iran's role as a leading sponsor of global terrorism is well known, far less coverage is given to Iranian leaders' strategic acumen. Yet it's clear that a theme has emerged in the Middle East: long engaged in a proxy war against America, Tehran is now, in the age of Obama, simply running circles around Washington.
While Iran's role as a leading sponsor of global terrorism is well known, far less coverage is given to Iranian leaders' strategic acumen. Yet it's clear that a theme has emerged in the Middle East: long engaged in a proxy war against America, Tehran is now, in the age of Obama, simply running circles around Washington.
There are three kinds of Mideast engagements with Iran. In all three, Iran is a step ahead of the Obama administration. The first category is direct military engagement. The United States military is involved in conflict in Iraq and Syria. In both countries, the U.S. has been treated to characterizations that America is more or less acting as Iran's air force: in Iraq, that comparison is made directly; in Syria, it is by acting essentially as Bashar al-Assad's air force–and Assad is an Iranian proxy hanging on to power in large part through Iran's investment.
The second category includes conflicts in which America's allies are up against Iranian proxies. Israel, for example, fought a summer war against Hamas, an Iranian client firing Syrian missiles delivered by Iran. Far from understanding what was taking place, the Obama administration played right into Iran's hands by distancing itself from Sisi's Egypt and not only pressuring Israel to give in to Hamas's terror but even sending Secretary of State John Kerry to Cairo with a ceasefire agreement reflecting the wishes of Hamas's patrons. When Israel objected, President Obama took retribution against Jerusalem, withholding arms transfers while Israel was under fire.
This includes Lebanon as well, where Iranian proxies not only occasionally attack Israel but have a chokehold on a the government. The West has occasionally stepped up in Lebanon, such as when it galvanized outrage at Syria to help force Assad's expulsion from its neighbor. But most of the time, the West has been unwilling or unable to protect Lebanon's sovereignty. And as Jonathan wrote earlier in the week, concern about ISIS terrorism is raising the possibility of legitimizing and mainstreaming Hezbollah.
And then there is the direct American engagement with Iran on its nuclear program. On this, the Iranians saw early on that Obama and Kerry wanted a deal of some sort that would kick the can down the road while enabling the president to claim progress. It's doubtful any such plan was more obviously bush league than begging the Iranians to disconnect some pipe rather than dismantle the program. But the limitless diplomacy, in which deadlines float past with nary a thought, has done its damage as well by giving the Iranians additional leverage–and a powerful bargaining chip–on other issues on which the U.S. would want Iranian cooperation.
Aside from these three, there is evidence of a fourth category in the Middle East: a state like Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Putinesque turn away from democracy, human rights, and the West more generally has been conducted publicly, but even here there appears to be malign Iranian influence. Former Naval War College professor John Schindler has a fascinating post discussing the Turkish government's connections to Iranian intelligence. He writes:
The key player in this plot is a shadowy terrorist group termed Tawhid-Salam that goes back to the mid-1990s and has been blamed for several terrorist incidents, including the 2011 bombing of the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, which wounded several people, as well as a thwarted bombing of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, in early 2012. Tawhid-Salam, which also goes by the revealing name "Jerusalem Army," has long been believed to be a front for Iranian intelligence, particularly its most feared component, the elite Quds (Jerusalem) Force of the Revolutionary Guards Corps (Pasdaran), which handles covert action abroad, including terrorism in many countries. It also is believed to be behind the murders of several anti-Tehran activists in Turkey in the 1990's, using Tawhid-Salam as a cut-out.
Yet nothing has been done to crack down on the group in Turkey. Schindler continues:
This may have something to do with the fact that Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkish intelligence, is apparently on the Pasdaran payroll too, and may have secret ties to Tehran going back almost twenty years. Rumors about Fidan, a member of Erdoğan's inner circle, who has headed the country's powerful National Intelligence Organization (MİT) since 2010, have swirled in counterintelligence services worldwide for years. Israeli intelligence in particular, which once had a close relationship with MİT, has long regarded Fidan as Tehran's man, and has curtailed its intelligence cooperation with Turkey commensurately, believing that all information shared with Fidan was going to Iran.
Privately, U.S. intelligence officials too have worried about Fidan's secret ties, not least because MİT includes Turkey's powerful signals intelligence (SIGINT) service, which has partnered with NATO for decades, including the National Security Agency.
I recommend reading the whole thing, but the Turkish connection serves to fill out the picture of Iranian influence throughout the Middle East. Tehran has continually played Washington, setting fires and then offering to help Obama put them out, for a price. It's a predictable racket, but Obama keeps falling for it.
Has Obama Finally Grown Up?
For most of his six years as president, Barack Obama has behaved as if the U.S. could opt out of the war Islamist terrorists have been waging on it and to pretend that outreach or the magic of his personality could bridge the gap with the Muslim and Arab worlds. But in his speech today to the United Nations General Assembly, the president seem to find a new, tougher, and more realistic voice about this threat. Instead of pious liberal platitudes at times he sounded like the grown up America needs at its helm. While the change is heartening, it remains to be seen if the means he is rallying to meet the threat is equal to the challenge he outlined.
For most of his six years as president, Barack Obama has behaved as if the U.S. could opt out of the war Islamist terrorists have been waging on it and to pretend that outreach or the magic of his personality could bridge the gap with the Muslim and Arab worlds. But in his speech today to the United Nations General Assembly, the president seem to find a new, tougher, and more realistic voice about this threat. Instead of pious liberal platitudes at times he sounded like the grown up America needs at its helm. While the change is heartening, it remains to be seen if the means he is rallying to meet the threat is equal to the challenge he outlined.
The contrast between Obama's speech today and previous statements, such as his June 2009 address to the Arab and Muslim worlds in Cairo, Egypt was stark. Rather than placing the blame for conflicts on the West and, in particular, the United States, Obama seems finally to have woken up to the fact that engagement won't make radical Islam go away. In its place, the president spoke up forcefully in recognition of the fact that there is no alternative to the use of force against radical Islamists such as the al-Qaeda affiliates and the ISIS group running amok in Syria and Iraq:
No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning – no negotiation – with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.
Even more importantly, he recognized that the foundation of any effort to deal with these terrorists must come from recognition by Muslims and Arabs to clean up their own house:
It is time for the world – especially Muslim communities – to explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of al Qaeda and ISIL.
It is the task of all great religions to accommodate devout faith with a modern, multicultural world. No children – anywhere – should be educated to hate other people. There should be no more tolerance of so-called clerics who call upon people to harm innocents because they are Jewish, Christian or Muslim. It is time for a new compact among the civilized peoples of this world to eradicate war at its most fundamental source: the corruption of young minds by violent ideology.
That is exactly right. While in Cairo he pretended that there was no real conflict, now he seems to understand that while this needn't be a clash of civilizations between the West and the East, the rhetoric of his predecessor about nations having to choose whether they were with the U.S. or not is closer to the mark than the platitudes he used to spout. Having come into office acting as if the commitment of President George W. Bush to fight a war against Islamist terror was a historical mistake that could be redressed by conciliatory speeches and withdrawals of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama now seems to have learned the error of his ways. The delusion that the U.S. could bug out of the war in Iraq and ignore the crisis in Syria without cost has been exposed by the rise of ISIS. Though he continues to insist that American ground troops won't take part in this latest round of a war that began long before he took office, there can at least be no mistaking that the U.S. is back in the fight and understands that this time there can be no premature withdrawals or foolish decisions to opt out of the conflict.
Such tough-minded and more realistic positions also characterized the president's attitude toward other, not entirely unrelated issues.
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he stuck to his belief in a two-state solution and his commitment to making it a reality. But he also finally acknowledged a major truth:
The situation in Iraq, Syria and Libya should cure anyone of the illusion that this conflict is the main source of problems in the region; for far too long, it has been used in part as a way to distract people from problems at home.
While relations remain frosty between Washington and Jerusalem, at long last, with this speech, the administration seems to have rid itself of the delusion that pressuring Israel into territorial concessions would solve all the problems of the Middle East.
Also to his credit, the new hard line from Obama was not limited to the Middle East. His rhetoric about Russian aggression against Ukraine was equally tough and left no room for doubt that the United States supports Kiev against the Putin regime's provocations and will stand by its NATO allies in Eastern Europe.
And though the president has repeatedly weakened the West's position in negotiations over the threat from Iran's nuclear program, here, too, he was at least ready to again demand that Tehran commit to a process that will make the realization of their ambitions impossible.
Leaving aside recriminations about all the mistakes that preceded this moment, it must be acknowledged that the president has gone a long way toward correcting some, though not all, of his most egregious foreign-policy errors. But the problem is that it will take more than rhetoric to address these challenges.
Without adequate resources, American military efforts in Iraq and Syria are bound to fail. Nor can we, if we really believe that ISIS and other al-Qaeda affiliates are a genuine threat to U.S. security, rely entirely on local Arab forces to do a job they have proved unable to do for years. As our Max Boot wrote earlier today, America can't bomb its way out of this problem.
Nor can the challenges from Iran and its terrorist allies waging war against Israel be met with only words. The same is true for the effort to halt Russia's campaign to resurrect the old tsarist and Soviet empires. Without military aid to Ukraine and similar efforts to bolster the Baltic states and Poland, Vladimir Putin will dismiss the president's speech as empty bombast.
By giving a speech that included major elements that often sounded like those given by his predecessor, the president turned a corner today in a speech that seemed to embody his transformation from a man lost in his own delusions and ego to one who knew he was the leader of a nation embroiled in a generations-long war not of its own choosing. But in the coming weeks and months and the last two years of his presidency, he will have to match his actions to the fine rhetoric we heard today. Based on his past history, it is impossible to be optimistic about Obama's ability to meet that challenge. Throughout his address, the president seemed to be drowning in multilateral platitudes and the kind of liberal patent nostrums that have helped bring us to this terrible moment in history. But at least for a few minutes on the UN podium, the president gave us the impression that he understands the large gap between the illusions that helped elect him president and the harsh reality in which the nation now finds itself.
What Obama Left Unsaid
A year ago President Obama was contemplating bombing Syria in order to punish Bashar Assad for his use of chemical weapons. Now U.S. warplanes are actually bombing Syria–but not Assad's forces. This week's air strikes targeted only ISIS and the Khorasan group, a subset of the Nusra Front, which is fighting against Assad's regime. There are credible reports that the U.S. gave a heads-up about the airstrikes to the Iranian and Syrian regimes but not to the Free Syrian Army, our ostensible allies on the ground.
A year ago President Obama was contemplating bombing Syria in order to punish Bashar Assad for his use of chemical weapons. Now U.S. warplanes are actually bombing Syria–but not Assad's forces. This week's air strikes targeted only ISIS and the Khorasan group, a subset of the Nusra Front, which is fighting against Assad's regime. There are credible reports that the U.S. gave a heads-up about the airstrikes to the Iranian and Syrian regimes but not to the Free Syrian Army, our ostensible allies on the ground.
The Free Syrian Army forces have no love lost for ISIS and they have fought against its fanatical fighters whose activities have been largely focused not on resisting the Assad regime but on consolidating control of rebel-held areas. But the Free Syrian Army has worked with Nusra against the Assad regime and its leaders are understandably perplexed by the U.S. failure to target Assad.
McClatchy reports from Turkey: "By focusing exclusively on Islamic State insurgents and al Qaida figures associated with the Khorasan unit of the Nusra Front, and bypassing installations associated with the government of President Bashar Assad, the airstrikes infuriated anti-regime Syrians and hurt the standing of moderate rebel groups that are receiving arms and cash as part of a covert CIA operation based in the Turkish border city of Reyhanli."
It is hard to figure out if Obama, who has publicly been on record as demanding Assad's departure from power since 2011, is even interested in hastening regime change anymore. Anyone listening to his United Nations speech today would have been left perplexed. While Obama had a long and fiery denunciation of ISIS's "network of death," he mentioned Assad only once: "Together with our partners, America is training and equipping the Syrian opposition to be a counterweight to the terrorists of ISIL and the brutality of the Assad regime," he said. "But the only lasting solution to Syria's civil war is political – an inclusive political transition that responds to the legitimate aspirations of all Syrian citizens, regardless of ethnicity or creed."
That's a long way from Obama's statement in August 2011: "For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside." Nor, it should be noted, did Obama have any harsh words for Iran, which is sponsoring Assad's murderous attacks on his own people. Rather than denouncing Iran (whose support for terrorism went unmentioned), he offered the mullahs yet another olive branch: "My message to Iran's leaders and people is simple: do not let this opportunity pass. We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful."
The fact that Obama is no longer demanding Assad's resignation and that U.S. aircraft are not targeting any regime installations suggests that Obama may view Assad and his Iranian patrons as de facto allies against ISIS. This, sadly, is more evidence of the theory that Michael Doran and I have previously advanced that Obama is trying to engineer an entente with Tehran that would turn Iran into America's partner in the Middle East. He may even be going easy on Assad to win Iranian support for a nuclear deal.
If so, this is a tragically misguided policy that will make the U.S. complicit in Iranian-sponsored war crimes while actually undermining our goal of turning Sunni tribes in both Iraq and Syria against ISIS: The Sunnis will not fight if they perceive the opposition to ISIS as being dominated by Iran and Assad. The president would be better advised to pursue a more evenhanded strategy of bombing both ISIS and the Assad regime. Otherwise we risk "degrading" one group of violent, anti-American fanatics while empowering a competing group of violent, anti-American fanatics.
A Haunting Feeling About Obama
For those who believe that the air strikes we're conducting against Syria will achieve President Obama's goal of defeating ISIS, consider this story in yesterday's New York Times, which begins this way:
For those who believe that the air strikes we're conducting against Syria will achieve President Obama's goal of defeating ISIS, consider this story in yesterday's New York Times, which begins this way:
After six weeks of American airstrikes, the Iraqi government's forces have scarcely budged the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State from their hold on more than a quarter of the country, in part because many critical Sunni tribes remain on the sidelines.
This news comes as we learned over the weekend that ISIS attacked an Iraqi army base, killing upwards of 300-500 Iraqi soldiers. "If the survivors' accounts are correct," the Washington Post reports, "it would make Sunday the most disastrous day for the Iraqi army since several divisions collapsed in the wake of the Islamic State's capture of the northern city of Mosul amid its cross-country sweep in June."
So while in Iraq we've been pounding ISIS from the air for a month and a half, we haven't begun to fundamentally alter the facts on the ground.
Now keep this in mind: the situation in Iraq, while certainly challenging, is many times less complicated for us than the situation in Syria, which is (a) ruled by an enemy of America; (b) a client state of Iran; and (c) engaged in a ferocious, multi-sided civil war involving forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the Free Syrian Army.
In addition, in Iraq there are Iraqi Security Forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga who are willing to fight ISIS, albeit imperfectly. (Both have suffered serious military reversal this past summer.) Success in Iraq depends on working with Iraq's Sunni tribes, which happened during the counterinsurgency strategy in 2007-08.
In atomized, hellish Syria we have no such advantages. Which is why if President Obama persists in refusing to allow U.S. "boots on the ground"–if he doesn't allow American troops to coordinate on the front lines with forces opposing ISIS–we can't defeat ISIS. That doesn't mean we can't inflict damage on it, of course; but inflicting damage is one thing, defeating ISIS is quite another.
The president, in ordering air strikes in Syria, has dramatically escalated our involvement in this war. But one cannot shake the haunting feeling that he's simply going through the motions; that Mr. Obama is stunned to find himself in this predicament, that his heart and will are not in this war, and that he's not really committed to winning it.
ISIS, on the other hand, is.
Obama Discovers the Value of Credibility
Politico has a perceptive story wondering whether and how President Obama's decision to extend the war against ISIS to Syria will affect his UN diplomacy as the General Assembly meets this week in New York. The story goes through the two obvious options. On the positive side of the ledger, the inclusion of Arab countries in the coalition "could add momentum to U.S. efforts to form a broad international campaign against the radical Sunni group." As a counterpoint, however, the high-profile military action could be considered too controversial for some. But then Politico hits the third possibility:
Politico has a perceptive story wondering whether and how President Obama's decision to extend the war against ISIS to Syria will affect his UN diplomacy as the General Assembly meets this week in New York. The story goes through the two obvious options. On the positive side of the ledger, the inclusion of Arab countries in the coalition "could add momentum to U.S. efforts to form a broad international campaign against the radical Sunni group." As a counterpoint, however, the high-profile military action could be considered too controversial for some. But then Politico hits the third possibility:
There are also questions at play about the credibility of the U.N. Since Obama and the Arab countries involved acted without U.N. approval, some may again express doubts about the relevance of the global body, particularly when some countries with veto power are intent on blocking concerted action.
Right–on a fundamental level, it doesn't much matter what happens to Obama's UN diplomacy. The president will lead a Security Council session tomorrow intended to gain a broad commitment from countries to "stem the flow of foreign fighters to extremist groups" such as ISIS. And that's not unimportant. Any commitment, especially from Western Europe or the Arab world, helps.
And that is what tells us that Obama's decision to strike before the UN gathering, instead of after it, was a strategically smart call. Those who oppose the strikes altogether don't much care about the timing, unless a delay allows for a congressional vote, of course. But if Obama was planning to go it alone anyway, the timing was shrewd.
After Obama balked on attacking Bashar al-Assad's regime over the dictator crossing Obama's not-so-red line on chemical weapons, Obama's defenders made a very silly attempt at spinning that foreign-policy disaster. They said it was the threat of military force from Obama that made Assad willing to strike a deal to turn over his chemical weapons.
Few bought it. And the deal was a joke: not all chemical weapons were listed, and Assad seems to have fooled Obama and cheated the deal anyway (as many assumed would be the case from the beginning). But now he can actually test the effect that a credible threat of force would have since he'll have backed up his words with actions. Now when Obama says he might attack, he really might.
But what if his willingness to use force doesn't rally the UN to America's cause? That's OK too, since having attacked without the UN in the first place shows that when he believes American interests are truly at stake, Obama will go around the UN. The lack of UN authorization should never be mistaken for a per se "unjust" war. But had he put the Syria strikes on hold until he could rally the UN, Obama would have left just such an impression, and it would have been more complicated to go it alone and more onerous to get the Arab states on board. Now the U.S. is quite clearly not hostage to the whims of the dictator protection racket that is the United Nations.
In other words, in choosing the timing of his Syria strikes wisely, Obama may have learned a lesson about strategic calculation that his critics, especially on the right, have been imploring him to learn. Obama has, thus far, learned this lesson through failure rather than success.
And it's not just about largely discredited authoritarian creep mobs like the UN. Obama's faddish fixation on retrenchment chic and Western Europe's schizophrenic appetite for confrontation have left NATO countries in Russia's neighborhood unsure their allies will fulfill their obligations of mutual defense. And so they've taken matters, however modestly, into their own hands. As Reuters reported last week:
Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania launched a joint military force on Friday that Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said could start its first exercises in the tense region in the next year.
The three countries and other states in the area have been on high alert since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in March – and Western powers accused Moscow of sending troops to back rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Polish defense officials said the new joint unit could take part in peacekeeping operations, or form the basis of a NATO battle group if one was needed in the future.
NATO, being an alliance of democratic-minded free countries, is far more effective at its tasks than the UN generally is at its own, and there's no comparison when the matter is the defense of the free world. But NATO isn't exactly in its prime at the moment. Obama is ambivalent about the organization, democracy is in retreat in Western Europe, and Turkey has become an example of a country that could never be admitted to NATO in its current form were it not already in the alliance.
Going through international organizations can be a great way to give any coalition a sense of legitimacy. But countries have interests, and they protect those interests whether the UN approves or not. Barack Obama is going to address the UN with a simple message: he's not bluffing. For once, they'll believe him.
Yesterday's Real News Out of Iraq and Syria
There were three big stories yesterday out of Iraq and Syria. Question: which is the most significant?
There were three big stories yesterday out of Iraq and Syria. Question: which is the most significant?
Story No. 1: The U.S. Navy and Air Force, in cooperation with five Arab allies (Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE) launched a series of air strikes and cruise missile strikes on ISIS targets in and around Raqaa, Syria. Separately, the U.S. launched air strikes against the Khorasan group, another jihadist terrorist organization in Syria, closely linked with the Nusra Front, which was said to be plotting attacks against Western targets.
Story No. 2: ISIS continued to attack the Kurdish area of north-central Syria, killing large numbers of people and pushing more than 130,000 refugees over the Turkish border.
Story No. 3: ISIS attackers in Anbar Province, Iraq, reportedly killed more than 300 Iraqi soldiers after a weeklong siege of Camp Saqlawiya where some 800 soldiers had been trapped. Few if any Sunni tribal fighters did anything to prevent yet another large Iraqi army formation from suffering annihilation. The Iraqi army showed itself unable to supply its soldiers or to fight effectively.
Judging from the news coverage, story No. 1 is the most important. But in reality I'd argue that No. 2 and especially No. 3 are more significant. No one doubts that the U.S. can launch air strikes on ISIS. The question is whether those attacks will be effective in degrading and eventually destroying this terrorist group. The answer is: not until there is an effective ground force able to take advantage of the disruption created by American bombs. Until that happens, ISIS will stay on the offensive.
We know, of course, that after three years of American neglect the Free Syrian Army is in no position to attack the heart of ISIS-controlled territory in Syria. It is also disheartening to learn that after a similar three years of American neglect, the Iraqi army is in no position to effectively challenge ISIS either. Same goes for the Sunni tribes, which at the moment lack both the will and the means to fight ISIS effectively. The Kurdish peshmerga–the other proxy force we are counting on–are in only marginally better shape. They also need more equipment and training.
What this means is that, however welcome, the U.S. air strikes in Syria are of more symbolic importance than anything else. Their military significance is likely to be scant until the U.S. can do more to train and arm forces capable of mounting ground attacks on ISIS militants. Already six weeks of U.S. air strikes in Iraq have failed to dislodge ISIS from its strongholds; there is no reason to believe that six months of air strikes in isolation will work any better. As former Defense Secretaries Bob Gates and Leon Panetta have said, it will take "boots on the ground" from the United States to galvanize and train the potential anti-ISIS forces. But because President Obama is so far prohibiting U.S. troops from working alongside anti-ISIS fighters in the field, "there's not a snowball's chance in hell" of the current strategy succeeding–to quote the succinct summary of retired Gen. Jim Conway, former commandant of the Marine Corps.
War on Terror: What's Old Is New Again
Writers often don't choose their own headlines, and the one over this Politico Magazine piece does not appear to reflect the author's input. But it does highlight how an unfortunate piece of conventional wisdom has crept into mainstream publications regarding the war on terror. The piece, by former CIA analyst Aki Peritz, is headlined "Are We Too Dysfunctional for a New War on Terror?" Setting aside the potential effect of congressional deadlock on defense policy, the problematic word here is: "new."
Writers often don't choose their own headlines, and the one over this Politico Magazine piece does not appear to reflect the author's input. But it does highlight how an unfortunate piece of conventional wisdom has crept into mainstream publications regarding the war on terror. The piece, by former CIA analyst Aki Peritz, is headlined "Are We Too Dysfunctional for a New War on Terror?" Setting aside the potential effect of congressional deadlock on defense policy, the problematic word here is: "new."
Is the "old" war on terror over? Not by any reasonable metric. Al-Qaeda is not now, and was not even after bin Laden's death, on the run. President Obama has somewhat taken the war on terror off the front burner for many Americans through his policy of killing instead of capturing potential terrorists–not to mention the fact that he's a Democrat, so the antiwar movement, which was mostly an anti-Bush movement, has receded from view. (Though the fringe activists of Code Pink have continued yelling at senators.)
Complicating Obama's desire to end the war on terror is that he has only presided over its expansion, for a simple reason. Obama can choose to end America's participation in a traditional land war by retreating from that country. It's ignominious but yes, a war can plausibly end if one side just leaves.
But the war on terror isn't a traditional land war. The American retrenchment over which Obama has presided has had all sorts of wholly predictable and deadly results, but those results are, in Obama's mind, for someone else to deal with. So for example we have Russia on the march, but as far as Obama's concerned, it's Ukraine's war. Terrorism is different, because when terrorists fill a vacuum, they create a safe haven, and when they do that they threaten America.
Thus we have Thursday's Wall Street Journal report on the terrorist group known as Khorasan, which many in the West hadn't heard of until last week:
U.S. officials say Khorasan is a growing hazard, particularly to the U.S., because its members are focused on violence toward the West and have been eyeing attacks on American airliners.
On Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as Islamic State "in terms of threat to the homeland." It was the first time a U.S. official has acknowledged the group's existence. …
Officials wouldn't describe in any detail the nature, location or timing of the plots. Together, Nusra Front and Khorasan are suspected to have multiple plots in the works targeting countries in Europe as well as the U.S.
Other news organizations have since followed the Journal's lead and reported on Khorasan. Syria has become an anarchic incubator of terrorist groups, itself an obvious source of possible trouble for U.S. counterterrorism and homeland security efforts. It also magnifies the threat to regional stability, which puts U.S. interests further at risk.
How such a threat multiplies in that environment is often misunderstood. The groups don't necessarily "team up" on an attack against the West. But it helps to connect those who want to attack the West but don't have the means or the knowhow with those who have the means and knowhow but not the desire to attack the West. And it has eerie echoes from past collaborations. As the Council on Foreign Relations noted in a 2006 backgrounder on the Hezbollah-al-Qaeda relationship:
As former National Security Council members Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon describe in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror, a small group of al-Qaeda members visited Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon in the mid-1990s. Shortly thereafter, according to testimony from Ali Mohammed, an Egyptian-born U.S. Army sergeant who later served as one of bin Laden's lieutenants and pled guilty to participating in the 1998 embassy bombings in eastern Africa, Osama bin Laden and Imad Mugniyeh met in Sudan. The two men, who have both topped the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists, agreed Hezbollah would provide the fledgling al-Qaeda organization with explosives and training in exchange for money and manpower. Though it is unclear whether all terms of that agreement were met or the degree to which the two groups have worked together since. Douglas Farah, a journalist and consultant with the NEFA Foundation, a New York-based counterterrorism organization, says Hezbollah helped al-Qaeda traffic its assets through Africa in the form of diamonds and gold shortly after the 9/11 attacks. U.S. and European intelligence reports from that time suggest the two groups were collaborating in such activities as money laundering, gun running, and training. It's not clear whether these past collaborations were isolated incidents or indications of a broader relationship.
Khorasan's leader, according to the New York Times, "was so close to Bin Laden that he was among a small group of people who knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before they were launched." And the Journal adds that the group "is also pursuing a major recruitment effort focused on fighters with Western passports, officials said." So it's easy to understand why American counterterrorism and intelligence officials are taking the threat seriously.
A member of bin Laden's inner circle is leading a group planning attacks on the U.S., was recently living in Iran, and is utilizing a terrorist haven teeming with weapons and possible recruits. This is not a "new" war on terror. In many cases it's not even a new enemy. No matter how uninterested the American president is in the global war on terror, the war on terror is still interested in him.
Is ISIS Mainstreaming Hezbollah?
One of the side effects of the rise of ISIS has been to boost the diplomatic position of Iran, one of the terror group's chief adversaries. But just as Iran is reaping benefits from its opposition to ISIS, so, too, may Tehran's chief terror auxiliary: Hezbollah. Evidence of this is provided in today's New York Times in which the Lebanese terror group seeks to boost its reputation certain of a responsive audience in the West.
One of the side effects of the rise of ISIS has been to boost the diplomatic position of Iran, one of the terror group's chief adversaries. But just as Iran is reaping benefits from its opposition to ISIS, so, too, may Tehran's chief terror auxiliary: Hezbollah. Evidence of this is provided in today's New York Times in which the Lebanese terror group seeks to boost its reputation certain of a responsive audience in the West.
Iran and Hezbollah have much in common with ISIS in terms of hostility to the West, support for terror, and Islamist ambitions. But the Shia-Sunni religious schism makes them implacable foes as well as being on opposite sides of the ongoing wars for control of Iraq and Syria. This also places them, at least in theory, on the same side as the United States as it now haltingly attempts to fight ISIS. That awkward juxtaposition has convinced the Iranians that the West is no longer serious about stopping their drive for nuclear weapons. This conclusion is well supported by the latest pathetic rumblings from the Obama administration about a "face-saving" proposal to help conclude another weak nuclear deal. The bottom line there is that Iran has good reason to believe it can now either defy the West entirely and push on to fulfillment of its nuclear goal or sign a deal that can be easily evaded to the same end.
Hezbollah's goals are more limited. The Lebanese terror group has been badly damaged by its intervention in Syria on behalf of the Assad regime. Acting on Tehran's orders, Hezbollah has taken heavy losses and found itself embroiled in a conflict that it can't win as Syrians revolted against Iran's ally. But it, too, sees belated Western intervention against ISIS as a potential turning point in the conflict. As the Times notes, even though both Iran and Hezbollah agree that there will be no coordination with the United States—a position that the administration is adamant about—the reality on the ground may be different.
The Syrian civil war is a complex conflict in which the various sides–Assad's forces and his Hezbollah allies, moderate Syrians, more radical anti-regime forces, and ISIS–are all at war with each other. Secretary of State John Kerry noted last week that Assad is "playing footsie" with ISIS as he seeks to strengthen them at the expense of more credible domestic foes.
This awful situation is largely the result of the West's refusal to intervene in Syria years ago when it was possible to both topple Assad and prevent the emergence of ISIS. There are only bad choices left, of which allowing ISIS to continue to expand would be the worst. But even as the U.S. chooses among those unsavory options, Hezbollah is hoping the new alignment will solidify their position in Lebanon as well as normalizing them in the eyes of the world. This is something the U.S. must resist.
The decision of Hezbollah's PR chief to give an interview to the Times's Beirut bureau chief is a sign the group knows the time is ripe to bolster their international standing. But the resulting article, which includes comments from other pro-Hezbollah figures, seems to make the case that there is a wide gulf separating the group from ISIS. But this PR campaign should not go unanswered.
In the article, Hezbollah official Mohammed Afif claims the group warned the West about the danger from terrorism but nobody listened until ISIS began beheading Western captives. Another pro-Hezbollah voice is Kamel Wazne, who is given the last word in the Times piece. He says Hezbollah only presents a threat to Israel, not the U.S. and Europe. But that is a lie. Hezbollah has conducted terror operations at Iran's behest in both Europe and South America over the years. Merely being an ISIS rival in the cutthroat world of Middle East conflict ought not give Hezbollah a Western seal of approval.
By going into a war with ISIS in a halfhearted manner, President Obama does not appear to have a strategy to actually "degrade," let alone defeat, ISIS. But one of the perhaps unintended consequences of this lead-from-behind approach will be to further empower and validate Hezbollah's own murderous efforts that have already contributed to the death toll in Syria.
The United States will have to do more than merely say it won't cooperate with Iran and Hezbollah against ISIS. It must actively aid the efforts of those forces that are fighting against these outside meddlers who are in many respects similar to ISIS. The U.S. appears to be now heading toward a situation where it will not only fail to eradicate ISIS but will also strengthen those terrorists who are looking forward to operating in the future under the cover of an Iranian nuclear umbrella. That is a formula for more chaos. For an administration that considers "don't do stupid stuff" to be its guiding principle, that's pretty stupid.
Defense Policy on Autopilot
President Obama has just sent 3,000 troops to Liberia to fight Ebola and 1,500–and counting–to Iraq to fight ISIS and hundreds, possibly thousands, more to Eastern Europe to deter Russia. Earlier he sent more than 150 troops to Africa to fight Joseph Kony and he keeps sending troops to carry out various Special Operations missions from Libya to Somalia. Oh, and he has committed to keep at least 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after this year.
President Obama has just sent 3,000 troops to Liberia to fight Ebola and 1,500–and counting–to Iraq to fight ISIS and hundreds, possibly thousands, more to Eastern Europe to deter Russia. Earlier he sent more than 150 troops to Africa to fight Joseph Kony and he keeps sending troops to carry out various Special Operations missions from Libya to Somalia. Oh, and he has committed to keep at least 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after this year.
Everett Dirksen famously said: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." This line might be adapted to troop deployments: A thousand here, a thousand there, and pretty soon you're talking about real commitments. While the absolute numbers committed in recent months are not great–and not as significant as they should be to accomplish their missions especially in Iraq/Syria and Afghanistan–they are indicative of the continuing demand for U.S. military personnel around the world.
Yet what almost no one seems to be noticing is that even as the administration continues to deploy the military at a breakneck pace, funding for the armed forces is in precipitous decline. A series of budget cuts culminating in sequestration threaten to slice a trillion dollars in projected defense spending over the next decade, necessitating severe cutbacks in military strength–cutbacks which have already begun.
As Michele Flournoy and Eric Edelman–senior former defense officials under President Obama and President George W. Bush, respectively–wrote just a few days ago: "The provisions of the Budget Control Act and sequestration have already precipitated a readiness crisis within our armed forces, with only a handful of Army brigades ready for crisis response, Air Force pilots unable to fly sufficient hours to keep up their skills and Navy ships unable to provide critical U.S. security presence in key regions. Although last year's congressional budget deal has granted some temporary relief, the return to sequestration in fiscal 2015 and beyond would result in a hollow force reminiscent of the late 1970s."
The Army is particularly threatened by these cuts which are likely to shrink the active duty force from 510,000 soldiers today down to 420,000 by the end of the decade. The Army chief, Gen. Ray Odierno, has warned that going below 450,000 active duty personnel will result in an Army unable to meet even its most minimal commitments. "We have to look when enough is enough, and it is time to have that debate," he said last week.
Yet what is striking is that we are not having that debate. Even as the danger around the world grows, Washington seems to be on budget-cutting autopilot. Democrats are more concerned about protecting entitlement spending, Republicans about avoiding tax increases. Neither party seems particularly worried about the potentially cataclysmic erosion of our military strength. If the current crises from Ukraine to Iraq are not sufficient to wake us up to the need to maintain a strong military, it is hard to know what it will take.
Barack's World
President Obama has declared his strategy is to "degrade and defeat" ISIS. Yet he's hoping to do so by relying on a plan that is ludicrously insufficient. It's worth noting that the criticism of his approach isn't being led by Republicans as much as by U.S. military leaders (as this Washington Post story makes clear), by retired generals, and by former Obama defense secretaries like Leon Panetta and Robert Gates.
President Obama has declared his strategy is to "degrade and defeat" ISIS. Yet he's hoping to do so by relying on a plan that is ludicrously insufficient. It's worth noting that the criticism of his approach isn't being led by Republicans as much as by U.S. military leaders (as this Washington Post story makes clear), by retired generals, and by former Obama defense secretaries like Leon Panetta and Robert Gates.
Secretary Panetta told CBS News that ISIS emerged as a threat because the United States pulled out of Iraq too soon and became involved in Syria too late, while Secretary Gates said this:
The reality is, they're not going to be able to be successful against ISIS strictly from the air or strictly depending on the Iraqi forces or the Peshmerga or the Sunni tribes acting on their own. So there will be boots on the ground if there's to be any hope of success in the strategy. And I think that by continuing to repeat that [there won't be troops on the ground], the president in effect traps himself.
Yet the president, when he spoke at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida last week, once again declared that American troops will not undertake a combat mission in Iraq. "I want to be clear," Mr. Obama said. "The American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission."
The president doesn't understand that to will the end you also have to will the means to the end. Mr. Obama would like the richest, best armed, and most formidable terrorist group ever–one that now controls large portions of two nations–to be defeated. Yet he can't succeed simply by relying on air strikes and Iraqi and Kurdish forces and the Syrian opposition. (Just a month ago the president said the notion that arming Syrian rebels would have made a difference has "always been a fantasy" and mocked the opposition as being "made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.") That's clear to just about every person who has seriously examined this matter. (I commend to you this report by the Institute for the Study of War, which lays out just how formidable our task is if we hope to defeat ISIS.) Yet Mr. Obama persists in living in a world of make believe.
We can see what's occurring. The president has a theological-like devotion to not using American combat missions to fight ISIS. This makes his commitment to defeat ISIS impossible to achieve. Yet rather than admit that to us or to himself, the president has invented assumptions that affirm what he wants to believe. This requires him to operate in a realm free of facts. To step through the looking glass. To live in Barack's World.
Barack's World is a place this president retreats to when the world becomes too complicated and unaccommodating. Where the wish is father to the thought. Where he can disassociate from reality. Where, when reality collides with ideology, reality loses.
While the president increasingly finds refuge in Barack's World, the rest of us have to deal with the shattered pieces that are being left in his wake. Barack Obama is a careless man, to paraphrase a passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. He has smashed up things and retreats back into his own world, letting other people clean up the mess he has made. And what a mess it is.


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Moto Guzzi California prototype – Click above for high-res image gallery Moto Guzzi, the other, other Italian motorcycle manufacturer, used its latest dealer meeting in Monte Carlo to pull the wraps off its two latest prototypes: a brand new version of the long-running California and the V7 Scrambler. Each of these models would appear to be a direct assault at a specific machine from Triumph; obviously the V7 Scrambler would go toe-to-toe with the Triumph of the same name, while the California would be a logical competitor to the British brand's reborn Thunderbird. Unlike most... Read More

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Salted Caramel Almond BarsBy Jennifer McHenry on March 10, 2014I have a slight obsession with sweet and salty desserts. There's just something about a little extra salt that can transform a dessert from good to great. Specifically, salted caramel holds a special place in my baking heart. These bars are a lovely way to enjoy salted caramel. They start with a simple, buttery crust. Next comes homemade caramel with […]Read more
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Braised Beef with Pears and Fresh Ginger
Published: September 2009 Servings: 6 SERVINGS
- 6 pounds meaty beef neck bones
- 1/4 cup olive oil plus additional for brushing
- 5 cups chopped onions (about 1 1/4 pounds)
- 2 1/2 cups diced celery
- 2 cups diced carrots
- 3 tablespoons chopped peeled fresh ginger
- 6 large garlic cloves, chopped
- 1 1/2 cups dry red wine
- 10 whole fresh Italian parsley sprigs plus chopped for garnish
- 6 large fresh thyme sprigs
- 5 large fresh rosemary sprigs
- 4 Turkish bay leaves
- 1 1/2 teaspoons juniper berries*
- 2 pig's feet, split in half lengthwise
- 8 cups beef broth (preferably organic)
- 1 tablespoon all purpose flour
- 2 large ripe unpeeled Bartlett pears, halved, cored, each half cut into 4 wedges
- *Available in the spice section of most supermarkets.
PREPARATIONView Step-by-Step Directions
Preheat broiler. Stand neck bones (close together for support), meat side up, in row in heavy large roasting pan. Brush meaty tops with oil; sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Broil until meat is deep brown, turning pan for even cooking, about 12 minutes. Transfer bones to rimmed baking sheet. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F.
Place roasting pan over 2 burners. Add 1/4 cup oil, onions, celery, and carrots. Sauté over medium-high heat until tender and beginning to brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer 1 cup vegetable mixture to small bowl and reserve for sauce.
Add ginger and garlic to pan; stir 30 seconds. Add wine and boil until reduced to glaze, about 5 minutes. Return neck bones to pan, arranging flat side down in single layer. Nestle in herb sprigs, bay leaves, and juniper berries. Top with pig's feet, cut side down. Pour broth over and bring to boil.
Cover roasting pan tightly with foil and place in oven. Braise until meat is very tender and falling off bones, about 3 hours. Using tongs, transfer neck bones to rimmed baking sheet to cool. Discard pig's feet.
Strain pan juices into large bowl, pressing on solids in strainer to release all juices; discard solids. Spoon all fat off surface of pan juices, reserving 1 tablespoon fat for sauce. Return juices to roasting pan. Boil over 2 burners until reduced to 3 1/2 cups, about 20 minutes, occasionally stirring up browned bits. Transfer juices to large pot. Add reserved 1 cup vegetable mixture. Stir 1 tablespoon reserved fat and flour in small bowl to smooth paste; whisk into sauce. Boil until reduced to 3 1/2 cups, about 12 minutes. Add pears to sauce. Simmer pears, uncovered, until tender, about 8 minutes.
Pull all meat off bones; cut meat into bite-size pieces. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Mix meat into sauce in pot. DO AHEAD Stew can be made 1 day ahead. Cool 1 hour; cover and refrigerate. Rewarm before continuing.
Spoon stew into large bowl. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.
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