Which Whackos?

The President just ordered military action in northern Iraq along with the dispensation of humanitarian assistance. This is in reaction to recent actions by ISIS fighters. Basically ISIS were the strongest group of rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al Assad. ISIS are radical Sunnis whereas Assad's government is made up of Alawite Shiites. The border between Syria and Iraq is largely porous desert and ISIS had likely been shuttling resources across it for quite some time, probably with a determined blind eye shown by the US back in those days when Assad was the bad guy and ISIS were the good guys (we called them the Syrian rebels back then). As the front lines in Syria stabilized ISIS turned their attention to Iraq. Meanwhile the US had badly screwed up Iraq. Remember W and the whole Saddam has WMD thing? Of course the country had been run by a minority Sunni dictator and as soon as voting was allowed the Shiites elected their own man. Of course the Shiites wanted to punish the Sunnis, the Sunnis didn't like going from oppressed to oppressors, and the non-Muslim Kurds saw a chance to take action towards forming the state they'd always wanted to. Naturally the years that followed were...unpleasant.

As the situation stabilized Nouri Al Maliki, the Shiite in power, saw that the US was presenting him from oppressing the Sunnis. So he played the democratic leader card and told the US to get out. Barack Obama wasn't going to cause a diplomatic controversy to stay in Iraq. So then Maliki started to tighten the screws on Iraq's Sunnis. When Sunni ISIS  started pouring over the border into the Sunni regions of Iraq chafing under Maliki's Shiite rule they naturally welcomed them. It all reminds me of some of the speeches various statesman (are said to) give to the Athenian people in Thucydides Peloponnesian War; basically these leaders urge the Athenians to aggressively oppress and enslave many weaker poleis because if they don't dominate others then others will dominate the Athenians. Whither this course is right or wrong doesn't appear in the logic of the orators either due to their own thought process or more likely that of the Athenian people.

Anyway ISIS quickly took over the mostly Sunni parts of the country but seemed to have no luck advancing into the Shiite center of the country. The western media had been publishing anticipatory stories about ISIS taking Baghdad and, when this did not promptly happen, sort of forgot about them. Instead of continuing along the line of the Tigris, ISIS turned its advance west towards Kurdistan. Kurdistan had been semi-autonomous as a result of US efforts and the Kurds had taken Kirkuk and a number of oil fields in the confusion of the initial ISIS invasion. Now cut off from the Shiite government in Baghdad they are for all practical importance an independent state. Kurdish peshmerga fighters who were supposed to be formidable, were quickly pushed back by ISIS likely as a result of ISIS' fighters being battle hardened by fighting in Syria unlike the Kurds whose recent conditions had been comparably peaceful. As Kurdish forces rapidly fell back, various minorities sheltering under their protection become exposed. Although Iraq's only Christian settlement was recently destroyed, most attention has been focused on a religious group called the Yazidis whose doctrine seems to be a typically near eastern fusion of Zoroastrian and Abrahamic dogmas. They wound up trapped on a mountain. The US parachuted food and water down to them and launched airstrikes against ISIS allowing the Kurds to advance. Recently Maliki has called troops into Baghdad to protect himself against parliament and the new Iraqi president who are trying to remove him at the behest of the US.

So who are the good guys? ISIS being Sunni comes from broadly the same block as Saddam Hussein, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, as well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE et cetera some of whom have played an important role in bankrolling the group. Meanwhile Assad and the Shiites in Iraq including (until recently) Maliki are both backed by Shiite Iran as is Hezbollah. The Kurds in Iraq are naturally connected to those in Turkey who have historically posed a military threat to that NATO ally which is Sunni and so semi-sympathetic to the Saudi block. Neither list is one all of our enemies or friends. It does speak to the utility of Israel as an ally whose isolation at least means that it doesn't involve such twisty affiliations.

Anyway we need to put pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program which means weakening Assad and the Shiites in Iraq which is exactly what ISIS does which is why we were/are so big on their operations on the Syrian side of the border while vehemently opposed to the mess they've exposed in Iraq. Backing them however would lead to further instability and genocide as well as attacks on the west as ISIS is basically a hideous al Qaeda offshoot that is posting photos of mass killings on social media. So which side do we back?

This is why our best course would be to avid getting involved in the Middle East at all. The expansion of fracking means that the Middle East is useful for nothing at all strategically at a time when mass military provocation and small scale violence between China and its neighbors in East Asia could set of a conflict. Any sort of conflict over there military or not threatens to maul major stock indexes and seriously injure the global economy. In light of that seeking employ significant resources in the Middle East seems foolhardy. There is space for minor actions such as the occasional airstrike, the use of drones, and aid. There is also good reason for backing Israel as it is an ally because it lacks a dangerous ideology or undesirable commitments as well as possessing a developed economy. Beyond the buzzing of a few drones however, it would be prudent to aviod becoming entangled in the region. Why, remember we nearly gave weapons and a no-fly zone to ISIS and now we are having to act against them who are anyways using US equippement given to the Iraqi army and captured by them. Now think about arming the Kurds, how long until we regret that?