October 10, 2014

The Double Game Our Allies Play

During the 1944 Warsaw uprising, Stalin ordered the advancing Red Army to stop at the outskirts of the city while the Nazis, for 63 days, annihilated the non-Communist Polish partisans. Only then did Stalin take Warsaw. No one can match Stalin for merciless cynicism, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is offering a determined echo by ordering Turkish tanks massed on the Syrian border, within sight of the besieged Syrian town of Kobane, to sit and do nothing. For almost a month, Kobane Kurds have been trying to hold off Islamic State fighters. Outgunned, outmanned and surrounded on three sides, the defending Kurds have begged Turkey to allow weapons and reinforcements through the border. Erdogan has refused even that, let alone intervening directly. Infuriated Kurds have launched demonstrations throughout Turkey protesting Erdogan’s deadly callousness. At least 21 demonstrators have been killed.

During the 1944 Warsaw uprising, Stalin ordered the advancing Red Army to stop at the outskirts of the city while the Nazis, for 63 days, annihilated the non-Communist Polish partisans. Only then did Stalin take Warsaw.

No one can match Stalin for merciless cynicism, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is offering a determined echo by ordering Turkish tanks massed on the Syrian border, within sight of the besieged Syrian town of Kobane, to sit and do nothing.

For almost a month, Kobane Kurds have been trying to hold off Islamic State fighters. Outgunned, outmanned and surrounded on three sides, the defending Kurds have begged Turkey to allow weapons and reinforcements through the border. Erdogan has refused even that, let alone intervening directly. Infuriated Kurds have launched demonstrations throughout Turkey protesting Erdogan’s deadly callousness. At least 21 demonstrators have been killed.

Because Turkey has its own Kurdish problem – battling a Kurdish insurgency on and off for decades – Erdogan appears to prefer letting the Islamic State destroy the Kurdish enclave on the Syrian side of the border rather than lift a finger to save it. Perhaps later he will move in to occupy the rubble.

Moreover, Erdogan entertains a larger vision: making Turkey the hegemonic power over the Sunni Arabs, as in Ottoman times. The Islamic State is too radical and uncontrollable to be an ally in that mission. But it is Sunni. And it fights Shiites, Alawites and Kurds. Erdogan’s main regional adversary is the Shiite-dominated rule of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan demands that the U.S. take the fight to Assad before Turkey will join the fight against the Islamic State.

It took Vice President Biden to accidentally blurt out the truth when he accused our alleged allies in the region of playing a double game – supporting the jihadists in Syria and Iraq, then joining the U.S.-led coalition against them. His abject apologies to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Turkey notwithstanding, Biden was right.

The vaunted coalition that President Obama touts remains mostly fictional. Yes, it puts a Sunni face on the war. Which is important for show. But everyone knows that in real terms the operation remains almost exclusively American.

As designed, the outer limit of its objective is to roll back the Islamic State in Iraq and contain it in Syria. It is doing neither. Despite State Department happy talk about advances in Iraq, our side is suffering serious reverses near Baghdad and throughout Anbar province, which is reportedly near collapse. Baghdad itself is ripe for infiltration for a Tet-like offensive aimed at demoralizing both Iraq and the U.S.

As for Syria, what is Obama doing? First, he gives the enemy 12 days of warning about impending air attacks. We end up hitting empty buildings and evacuated training camps.

Next, we impose rules of engagement so rigid that we can’t make tactical adjustments. Our most reliable, friendly, battled-hardened “boots on the ground” in the region are the Kurds. So what have we done to relieve Kobane? About 20 airstrikes in a little more than 10 days, says CENTCOM.

That’s barely two a day. On the day after the Islamic State entered Kobane, we launched five airstrikes. Result? We hit three vehicles, one artillery piece and one military “unit.” And damaged a tank. This, against perhaps 9,000 heavily armed Islamic State fighters. If this were not so tragic, it would be farcical.

No one is asking for U.S. ground troops. But even as an air campaign, this is astonishingly unserious. As former EU ambassador to Turkey Marc Pierini told The Wall Street Journal, “It [the siege] could have been meaningfully acted upon two weeks ago or so” – when Islamic State reinforcements were streaming in the open toward Kobane. “Now it is almost too late.”

Obama has committed the U.S. to war on the Islamic State. To then allow within a month an allied enclave to be overrun – and perhaps annihilated – would be a major blow.

Guerrilla war is a test of wills. Obama’s actual objectives – rollback in Iraq, containment in Syria – are not unreasonable. But they require commitment and determination. In other words, will. You can’t just make one speech declaring war, then disappear and go fundraising.

The indecisiveness and ambivalence so devastatingly described by both of Obama’s previous secretaries of defense, Leon Panetta and Bob Gates, are already beginning to characterize the Syria campaign.

The Iraqis can see it. The Kurds can feel it. The jihadists are counting on it.

© 2014, The Washington Post Writers Group

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.