Behind Washington’s ‘Crackpot’ Deal with Turkey to Fight ISIS

[KoKo]

Under the guise of fighting ISIS, Turkey's president is re-igniting a bloody war with the Kurds for his own political purposes.

by
Conn Hallinan--Foreign Policy in Focus

Overruling the Crackpots

Why is the White House going along with this madness?

In part, because a number of U.S. State Department officials have the same obsession with overthrowing Assad as Erdogan does. In part that’s because the U.S. military often manages to convince civilians that dropping a lot of bombs will work, all experience to the contrary. And partly it’s that crackpot thing.

As Hugh Roberts points out in his excellent analysis of Syria in the London Review of Books, there is a possible path out, but it is almost exactly the opposite of the one Turkey and the U.S. are pursuing.

To begin with, the demand that Assad must relinquish his office before there can be serious talks should be dispensed with. No one — least of all Assad — is going to negotiate his own demise, and the Syrian Army and the country’s Alawite, Christian, and Druze minorities know exactly what will happen to them if the Damascus regime collapses. The Nusra Front may not as brutal as the Islamic State, but that’s about the only standard by which the al-Qaeda affiliate looks good. Anyone who believes the “moderates” will take over should consider unicorn hunting as a profession.

In the long run Assad should go, and one suspects that Syrians would vote him out at some point given the chance. But the “out first” demand, popular among Syrian oppositionists and some in the State Department, is just a way to continue the war. The only real hope is a ceasefire and a national unity government representative of Syria’s enormously diverse population. An arms embargo on all parties, and a commitment to block foreign fighters from infiltrating the country, could encourage the parties to step back from the current stalemate and consider negotiations.

Will that get rid of the Islamic State? Nope. The Islamic State is an actual state, with a large population, a lot of whom are not just waiting to rise against their Islamic captors. ISIS is brutal — though the region’s Arabs suffered far more deaths in the invasion of Iraq — but it’s not corrupt. To imagine that the inept and corruption-riddled Iraqi Army is up for a serious scrap is delusional.

Iraq’s Shiite militias, meanwhile, are tough and capable, but also very sectarian. Many Sunnis simply don’t trust them.

The Turkish Army doesn’t want to go into Syria, and there’s zero support in any Western country for a replay of Iraq and Afghanistan. On top of which, a U.S. or NATO invasion is exactly what ISIS would like to provoke.

Ironically, the only force that could possibly defeat the Islamic State is the Syrian Army. Getting from here to there, however, will require a diplomatic sea change in the region. But one thing is certain: the current U.S.-Turkish “plan” will make everything worse.

How do these crackpots come up with this stuff?

More at...........

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/08/05/behind-washingtons-crackpot-deal-turkey-fight-isis