ISIS Crisis Exegesis
By David Swanson
July 14, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- Talking with Iran has made the war
profiteers and their servants sad and the rest of the world happy.
Perhaps the novel idea of negotiating rather than killing will be
carried over to several other parts of the world. Mainstream
corporate voices are even
raising the idea of talking with ISIS, or at least talking with
the nations of the region ISIS is in about ISIS, or at least ceasing
to make the ISIS Crisis worse by ignorantly doing everything wrong —
which just might include making friends with Iran in order to fight
ISIS together.“But what about ISIS?” That
has been the endless zombie question encountered by all peace
activists ever since the
propaganda coup of the videos of two U.S. journalist beheadings. And
part of the answer has always been: learn where it came from.
Phyllis Bennis’s new book can help with that job wonderfully. The
book is called
Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer.
Whether you think you understand ISIS or not, I urge you to pick up
a copy, or better a box of copies. This is a small book that should
be passed out like a vaccine to residents of the enormous camp of
refugees from sanity and historicity that we call the United States
of America.
Bennis’s book is excellent on what to do, although
that topic is found in a handful of pages near the end. The focus,
however, is on understanding origins and context. If anything, this
is overdone, though it’s hard to see what the harm could be in
people learning a little too much. The book covers Syria, the Arab
Spring, Libya, Iran, the United Nations, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
many other tangentially related topics (I wish she’s added a section
on the phony reports of ISIS actions in the United States). The book
is excellent on the 2013 Syria Missile Crisis and the role that
popular resistance played in preventing a massive U.S. bombing
campaign in Syria. That, even more so than the successful
negotiation with Iran this week, should be our model for future
activism.
Bennis relates an excellent history of the
Mountain Rescue Excuse and places it in the context of the
Imminent-Genocide-in-Benghazi Scam and other past justifications to
launch wars that have predictably and immediately veered off into
unrelated murderous operations.
But I think the most interesting point in this
wide-ranging book may be one that Bennis makes about the Sunni
Awakening. You might recall that when the United States began the
2003-2011 destruction of Iraq it quickly dissolved the Iraqi
military, dismantled the civil service, and got rid of the Baath
Party. Angry, trained, and armed fighters joined the popular
resistance to the U.S. occupation. Among the new fighting groups
that formed was Al Qaeda in Iraq. In 2006, the Bush administration
gave up on the hopeless mission-never-to-be-accomplished of trying
to fight these groups, and started buying them off. This was a key
part of the success of the “surge” that was itself no success at
all. But some of the groups, including AQI refused to be bought off
or to cease fighting.
In 2008, the United States turned over to the
Iraqi government the job of buying off Sunni groups. The Iraqi
government ceased making the payments. And the growth of ISIS, the
renamed AQI, was underway. And it was exacerbated by an Iraqi
government that shut out Sunnis and attacked Sunnis, while being
funded and armed by the U.S. government. People think ISIS came out
of nowhere, but many of us were, in the years before ISIS hit the
news, struggling
to oppose the U.S. provision of weapons to the Iraqi government
for use in attacking Iraqis. This is where ISIS and broad support
for ISIS among Sunnis came from.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia had told
Sir Richard Dearlove of MI6, “The time is not far off in the Middle
East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shi’a.’ More
than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.” ISIS funding
flows from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and Qatar, as well as from
oil sales and artifact sales and kidnappings and thefts.
When 1,300 ISIS fighters overwhelmed 350,000 Iraqi
soldiers and helped themselves to loads of U.S. weaponry, ISIS had
the support of Sunni leaders angered by the Iraqi government, and of
former Iraqi military leaders thrown out of work by Paul Bremmer —
not to mention benefitting from the chaos and flood of weaponry into
Syria, and critically from the lack of enthusiasm for their cause
among members of the Iraqi military.
So why do I say the Sunni Awakening is the most
interesting point? Because something was working. Making small
payments of cash to Sunnis — sums far smaller than those spent on
the weapons and the training (at
$4 million per trainee now) to fight them — was working. What
if, instead of ending those payments, they had been continued, or
been transformed into a program of nonviolent aid to everyone in the
region, accompanied perhaps by a note of apology for having
destroyed the place?
Bennis’ first recommendation for what to do is an
arms embargo. I think if Americans realized that their country was
arming the region that their country constantly laments the violence
in, the idea of an arms embargo would have overwhelming appeal.
Beyond that, Bennis recommends: an inclusive Iraqi government, an
end to airstrikes, a withdrawal of U.S. troops, and the use of
diplomacy, including possibly talks with ISIS.
Bennis also suggests reversing the U.S. Supreme
Court’s decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project
which can make teaching non-violent activism to groups abroad into
the crime of “material support for terrorism.” And she proposes a
massive increase in U.S. aid through U.N. agencies.
Of course, aid has a tendency to make things
better and a proven record of working in Iraq. So I assume every
other possible approach will be tried first.
NOTE TO THOSE IN WASHINGTON DC AREA:
Come to the book launch party for this book, with its author, on
July 27 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at Busboys & Poets 5th and K, 1025
5th St NW, Washington, DC.
David Swanson (born
1969) is an American activist, blogger and author. David obtained a
Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Virginia in 1997.
http://warisacrime.org