U.S. and Allies Form Coalition With Intent to Destroy ISIS

[morningfog]

The Obama administration said Friday that the United States and its allies had formed a core coalition to fight Sunni militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, unveiling a military and political campaign that officials said could serve as a model for combating extremist groups around the world.

In a hastily organized meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit here, diplomats and defense officials from the United States, Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark conferred on what they called a two-pronged strategy: working to bolster allies on the ground in Iraq and Syria, while attacking Sunni militants from the air. They said the goal was to destroy the Islamic militant group, not to contain it.

“There is no containment policy for ISIL,” Secretary of State John Kerry said at the beginning of the meeting, using an alternate acronym for ISIS. “They’re an ambitious, avowed, genocidal, territorial-grabbing, caliphate-desiring quasi state with an irregular army, and leaving them in some capacity intact anywhere would leave a cancer in place that will ultimately come back to haunt us.”

But he and other officials present made clear that at the moment, any ground combat troops would come from either Iraqi security forces and Kurdish pesh merga fighters on the ground in Iraq, or from moderate Syrian rebels opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. “Obviously I think that’s a red line for everybody here: no boots on the ground,” Mr. Kerry said.

* * *

The Obama administration is also seeking to pursue a sequential strategy that begins with gathering intelligence, and is followed by targeted airstrikes, more robust and better-coordinated support for moderate rebels, and finally, a political reconciliation process.

* * *

“This is going to take months,” one Defense Department official said on Friday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/world/europe/nato-summit.html?_r=0

Here we go. We are entering an open ended air war in Iraq AND Syria. We are looking for regime change in Syria as well. "Destroying" IS is impossible without a ground war. So, this war will just go on indefinitely without an obtainable objective (like Afghanistan) or we will end up with a ground war.

[morningfog]

1. Bush Lite doctrine of pre emption.

[deutsey]

2. I think the American Civil War and WWI

were only supposed to "take months" as well.

[morningfog]

3. Indeed. And the current objectives are absurd:

Ousting Assad.
Building "moderate" Syrian Army.
Destroying IS.
For fucks sake.
This is even more ambitious and unattainable than bush's folly.

[CJCRANE]

4. We've seen this movie before.

And before too long, I've no doubt Hillary will pop up and run on spreading freedom and American values all over the world...

Which never seems to actually work out.

It just seems to create more chaos and more problems to deal with down the road.

In the meantime, we never get a chance to solve our own problems here at home or rebuild our own infrastructure.

It's almost like there is a plan to weaken the sovereignty of every nation in the world and make them unable to deal with their own problems.

And which all coincidentally helps transnational corporations and the arms and surveillance industry.

[morningfog]

5. We've seen this movie too many times. It always fails.

[newfie11]

6. +infinity!!!!!!!nt

[morningfog]

7. Kick

[Octafish]

8. PNAC Still Pulls a Lot of String

Would never think they were attached to John Kerry, but they're showing up against the brick backdrop.