What ISIS is really thinking!

What is ISIS thinking? Five possible explanations for why the group is beheading Americans.

Personally, I think that mass atrocities and beheadings is ISIS’ way of negotiating with the Americans over the issue of recognition of their de facto state. Because without recognition, even if unofficial, the state that ISIS is creating means little. With unofficial recognition, ISIS can make billions rather than millions of dollars from the sales of oil under their control, even if they have to sell it on the down-and-low. Recognition also allows ISIS the time it needs to consolidate its hold on the territories currently under its control, and to govern.

Continue reading “What ISIS is really thinking!” →

A Chorus of Doom and Damnation

Getting rid off of a genocidal tyrant like Assad is still an essential component of the remedy needed for Syria, and the region.

The chorus for re-legitimating Assad continues to grow bigger and louder, with two more experts joining the fray through an op-ed in the New York Times that appeared today. The two experts, Julien Barnes-Dacey, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Daniel Levy, the director of the council’s Middle East program, argue that:

Continue reading “A Chorus of Doom and Damnation” →

Is Obama Our Psychopath-In-Chief?

President Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2013.

Some of those who defend Obama’s policy in Syria and the Middle East claim that he actually knows what he is doing, and that by referring from overt intervention he is allowing various enemies of the United States to fight on Syrian and Iraqi territories, which serves America’s interests, or so they assert. But the things to which these “experts” seem to be oblivious here is the impact of the alleged policy on the Syrian and Iraqi peoples.

Continue reading “Is Obama Our Psychopath-In-Chief?” →

Obama has ignored Syria for too long: it’s the rise of Isis, stupid – now help

Blanket, cold-hearted realism doesn’t work when networked, cold-hearted terrorism does. Photo ilustration: DonkeyHotey / Flickr via Creative Commons

Comment is free | theguardian.com.

This column was ranked one of the five best columns for Monday August 25 by thewire.com.

It’s time for him to do the right thing by arming moderate rebels, imposing a no-fly zone and expanding military action beyond Iraq

Barack Obama is embarking on a global course correction, if not an outright reversal: the policy of “don’t do stupid stuff” – the non-interventionism so praised by the Farid Zakarias and Tom Friedmans of the world – is getting forced out, albeit in the typical Obama fashion of admitting nothing and never going fast or far enough.

Continue reading “Obama has ignored Syria for too long: it’s the rise of Isis, stupid – now help” →