Obama's “ISIS Czar” Bails Out

With astute timing, retired four-star Marine Corps general John Allen, the man in charge of the U.S. effort to cobble together a united front against the Islamofascist “Islamic State,” which has conquered large swaths of Iraq and Syria, imposing its malign and extremely repressive rule on the remaining inhabitants in those areas (as well as practicing slavery and systematic rape of sex slaves, and destroying World Heritage Site archaeological treasures for good measure, and of course the standard beheadings and amputations for “UnIslamic” transgressions), is rushing out the door on the heels of embarrassing Senate testimony less than a week ago by General Lloyd Austin, head of Central Command, that the U.S. had only “4 or 5” trained Syrian fighters to pit against ISIS in Syria. [See previous essay, below, for that.] [1]

Allen will no doubt go on to a lucrative career “in the private sector,” as they say, peddling his connections and influence on behalf of corporations whose “business model” is feeding at the public trough.

Allen, the “Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL,” has been in the job only since September 2014. He plans to abandon the listing ship of Obama's anti-ISIS policy by the end of this year.

But I may be too unkind to Allen. Supposedly his wife's ill health (she has an unspecified auto-immune disease) is the reason he's stepping down. Which sounds suspect. Does she need around-the-clock care from him? Doubtful. But if true, it would probably be the first time in modern U.S. history that a man who spent his entire adult life clawing his way up the greasy pole of power really DID decide to throw it all away “to spend more time with my family” in the stock phrase that is used as a fig leaf when high-level apparatchiks get the ax or leave due to an unacknowledged internal conflict; verbiage that is symptomatic of the reality that our rulers aren't frank enough to explain honestly what they're doing and why.

I suspect Allen's frustration with Obama's indecisiveness and fecklessness in dealing with ISIS is a more likely reason he's leaving after barely more than a year. That, and his reluctance to be associated with a dismal failure of a policy and strategy, a failure and ineptitude thrown into stark relief by Austin's stunning testimony a few days ago.

After a year of half-assed, indecisive U.S. involvement in the resistance to ISIS, the “Islamic State” “caliphate” is more stubbornly entrenched than ever, periodically braying about its latest atrocity or assault on civilization. (It's big on dynamiting UN World Heritage Sites, the physical remnants and evident of humankind's past experience, a barbaric assault on memory, an attempt to lobotomize our species.)

Allen published an op-ed back in August 2014, stating that the Islamic state is a “clear and present danger to the U.S.” that “must be destroyed,” and only U.S. power was equal to the task. Yet, with ISIS more entrenched than ever, Allen is precipitously abandoning the fight against this “clear and present danger to the U.S.” which “must be destroyed,” after barely a year. The month after Allen's urgent essay appeared, Obama tapped him in September 2014 to “lead” the anti-ISIS effort. Given what has transpired since, we must suspect that Obama hired him precisely to co-opt a critical voice agitating for a forceful U.S. effort. Better to have him inside the tent pissing out that outside the tent pissing in, as a cynical political saying goes. [2]

On the other hand, Allen in his piece argued for precisely what seemed to be Obama's policy, the cobbling together of a coalition of nations and groups (same as Secretary of State John “Skull and Bones” Kerry's ballyhooed Mighty Coalition of 22 nations and groups, that so far seems to have not much more substance than the ghostly divisions Hitler spent the last few weeks of his life pushing around on a map in his bunker deep under the Chancellery in Berlin) and “boots on the ground” to consist of Kurds, Syrians, Iraqis, and whomever.

Maybe it just wasn't done “muscularly” enough. Certainly the initial indifference of Kerry and Obama to the fate of Kobani, in Syria on the Turkish border, where the Kurds (whom the U.S. allegedly backs) was deemed of no importance, until it suddenly dawned on Obama and his power clique that it would generate negative publicity if Kobani fell to the Islamofascists, and then abruptly reversed themselves and launched U.S. airstrikes, enabling the Kurds to fight off the jihadi psychopaths.

As far as the “coalition,” those 22 whatever, Kerry might just as well have said to ISIS “We're going to HUFF and PUFF and BLOW YOUR CALIPHATE DOWN!”

Turkey, very belatedly, announced it would bomb ISIS- but that was just a cover to restart a war with the Kurds. Nice. (More on that in my essay Erdogan's Kristallknacht. Just scroll down until you get to it.)

Here are some excerpts from Allen's jeremiad against ISIS. He starts by painting it as a global threat (which is a stretch), and says the ISIS execution of putative American journalist James Foley-

"will snap American attention with laser-like focus onto the real danger IS poses to the existence of Iraq, the order of the region and to the homelands of Europe and America." [WOW! A threat to the white homelands!]

Sounds serious, right? He continues:

"President Barack Obama, our commander-in-chief [sic: Allen was retired from the military at the time and perched in a sinecure at the Brookings Institution, that hive of bourgeois policy plotting], was right to order airstrikes on IS elements in northern Iraq. He was also right to order humanitarian relief for the Yazidis and other desperate Iraqi minority elements fleeing the onslaught of IS elements, but until the grisly death of James Foley much of the American public was only beginning to awaken to what IS is and the enormity of the threat it represents."

So in the third paragraph he's praising “our commander-in-chief,” Obama, a theme he returns to at the end. Was he apple-polishing to get a job? That could have been one motive, but not the sole one. (It paid off as the following month Obama elevated him to “ISIS Czar,” in the headline description of his role.)

Another excerpt:

"The U.S. is now firmly in the game and remains the only nation on the planet capable of exerting the kind of strategic leadership, influence and strike capacity to deal with IS. It is also the only power capable of organizing a coalition’s reaction to this regional and international threat. As a general officer commanding at several levels in the region, I can say with certainty that what we’re facing in northern Iraq is only partly a crisis about Iraq. It is about the region and potentially the world as we know it." [You're “certain” of that, huh? The whole world...]

And just what happened with that coalition organizing? Secretary of State John “Skull and Bones” Kerry announced with great fanfare a mighty alliance of “22 nations and organizations” he cobbled together to annihilate a band of what was then a few thousand armed terrorists who had just put the entire Iraqi army to flight, capturing their heavy weapons in the process.

Allen ended the piece with more apple-polishing directed towards Obama (man, was that guy lobbying for a job or what?), and a table-pounding sounding of the alarm over IS:

"Bottom line: The president deserves great credit in attacking IS. It was the gravest of decisions for him. But a comprehensive American and international response now —NOW— is vital to the destruction of this threat. The execution of [American] James Foley is an act we should not forgive nor should we forget, it embodies and brings home to us all what this group represents. The Islamic State is an entity beyond the pale of humanity and it must be eradicated. If we delay now, we will pay later."

So why quit so soon if the problem is so urgent and critical and with potentially earth-shaking dire consequences? Just because your wife is unwell? Hire a home care aide. You can afford it.

But I agree with Allen's next-to-last sentence there. Of course, lots of other people do similar or identical things. The Saudi Arabians, for example, with their hundreds of beheadings a year, and amputations. And the U.S. has done and does horrid things, including the extermination of tens of millions of people during its history. Nevertheless, wiping out ISIS would be a good thing, and help a lot of their current and potential victims. It would be a positive use of U.S. power (a rare occurrence in itself).

1] “Obama's Islamic State War Czar Stepping Down,” Bloomberg View, September 22, 2015, and “Report: Obama 'ISIS Czar' Stepping Down,” Military Times, September 22, 2015.

2] “Gen.Allen: Destroy the Islamic State Now,” Defense One, August 20, 2014. Note that this was published prior to Obama choosing Allen. So Obama knew what he was getting with Allen.

 

 Obama and Fearless Warrior, Shoulder To Shoulder. That was then. This is now.

Those ISIS punks don't scare me! (But I sure don't want to be connected to failure!

Time to pull the ripcord on my golden parachute!)

[Unfair caption, maybe? Time will tell. But too amusing for me to resist.

Note to the observant: the photo predates Allen getting his fourth star.]