Anti-ISIS Coalition: A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep

Persian Gulf petrodollar states have agreed to support Washington’s “no-boots-on-the-ground” aerial bombardment of Iraq and Syria. The agreement to “depend” on the Americans to “contain” their offspring ISIS came after President Obama asked the regional allies to support another millennia of killing to strengthen America’s tenuous grip on global power – with little care for borders, international law, and national sovereignty.
For all appearance, the enlisting of the petrodollar states ensures that money is not going to be a problem for the bankrupt War Party in this open-ended war. For all its bellicose rhetoric, though, Obama’s plan is at best more of a strategy to contain ISIS rather than eradicate it.
His problem is that the US does not have reliable partners. At this point it isn’t even clear any of them plans to do anything other than continue to bankroll ISIS and other “moderate” terrorists, which they have been doing with or without the “coalition” anyhow. In addition, the NATO allies are no more inclined to send troops, because promises of no boots on the ground notwithstanding, Obama’s war footprint is large and expanding.
To complicate matters, France is talking up the anti-ISIS conference scheduled for Monday, September 15, and wants to invite Iran to the meeting. It makes perfect sense, they claim, “because Iran is already directly fighting ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.” But US Secretary of State John Kerry says it would not be appropriate to invite Iran to the conference or the coalition!
Official Washington says they would not ally with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad either, but it is hard to see how their fighting against ISIS (Assad’s opponents) will not benefit the government in Damascus. The problem is that Washington does not say how they plan to work both with Iran and against Iran; both with the Saudis and against the Saudis; and with Qatar and Turkey but not entirely, not wholly with them.
Another problem with Washington’s linguistics is that its “moderate” Syrian opposition ally, once called the Free Syrian Army, no longer exists. It is now an integral part of ISIS, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. So on the pretext of fighting ISIS, Washington is in fact arming and training ISIS.
Curiously, however, Washington and allies secretly and openly coordinate direct and indirect support for ISIS and other terrorist groups with contradictory ambitions to re-establish military presence, dominate regional oil resources, roll back Iran, Lebanon and Syria, defend an expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East to suit their geopolitical objectives.
One way or another, the plan is in motion, charged with imperial hubris, while the expansion of the “American Caliphate” has provided a perfect pretext for the fundamental contours of this scenario to unfold. That explains why despite the mostly phantom nature of the coalition, the US has spurned cooperation with the two nations already involved in fighting ISIS: Syria (directly) and Iran (indirectly) – Iran doesn’t have boots on the ground.
At the end of the day, the impression becomes unavoidable that Washington wants to exclude Tehran and Damascus from the war, because it is designed to partition Iraq and accelerate the push for regime change in Syria – with a helping hand from ISIS, as the medieval butchers have skin in the game. Quite obviously, it is also the reason why the political class in Tehran is not joining the fictional coalition.
Without question, Washington’s ambitious “Coalition of the Killing,” with links to Pentagon contractors and no diplomatic/political mandate, is a mile wide and an inch deep, in which the potential for doing harm rivals the possibility of doing good – clearly in contravention of international law and the UN Charter.