Category: Operation Empty Chair

Operation Empty Chair

Operation Empty Chair Syria Terrorism 18 Comments

Who is funding ISIS?

…just last week in the aftermath of the French terror attack but long before the Turkish downing of the Russian jet, we wrote about “The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking” in which we asked who is the one “breaching every known law of funding terrorism when buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various “western alliance” governments, and why is it that these governments have allowed said middleman to continue funding ISIS for as long as it has?”

Hint: It isn’t Halliburton.

The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire

I Miss W. Operation Empty Chair The One 26 Comments

“What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies and people like France,” Obama said. “I’m too busy for that.”

You don’t say.

Operation Empty Chair

Operation Empty Chair Syria 17 Comments

Frederic Hof, former special advisor for transition in Syria at the U.S. State Dep’t;

[A]s Syria began to descend into the hell to which Assad was leading it, I did not realize that the White House would see the problem as essentially a communications challenge: getting Obama on “the right side of history” in terms of his public pronouncements. What the United States would do to try to influence Syria’s direction never enjoyed the same policy priority as what the United States would say. […]
Having failed miserably as a prophet in 2011 does not deter me from predicting the following: Obama will bequeath to his successor a problem of gargantuan dimensions if he does not change policy course now. Left to the joint ministrations of Assad and the Islamic State, Syria will continue to hemorrhage terrified, hungry and hurt human beings in all directions while terrorists from around the globe feast on the carcass of an utterly ruined state. Western Europe now reaps a whirlwind of desperate and displaced humanity it thought would be limited to Syria’s immediate neighborhood.

A chilling, and necessary read.

Operation Empty Chair

Operation Empty Chair 12 Comments

Edward N. Luttwak;

In reality Putin’s young bombing campaign has hit very few Islamic State targets. Yes, aircraft have flown and bombs have been dropped, but the Russians have no ground intelligence in place to identify targets any more than the United States has, except in those rare occasions when black-flagged vehicles are actually seen driving around in broad daylight–which is why the Islamic State has expanded ever since the U.S. bombing started. But Putin must certainly be innocent of the accusation that his air force has bombed the U.S.-trained “pro-democracy” freedom fighters, because the trainers themselves have admitted that the first lot on which one-tenth of the budget has been spent, i.e., $50 million, are exactly five in number, the rest having deserted after receiving their big family-support signing bonus and first paycheck, or after they were first issued with weapons (which they sold), or after first entering Syria in groups, when they promptly joined the anti-American Jabhat an-Nuṣrah, whose Sunni Islam they understand, unlike talk of democracy. That guarantees Putin’s innocence: All five extant U.S.-made freedom fighters are reportedly alive and well, though one may have defected since the last count. (It would really be much cheaper to hire Salvadoran contract gunmen and fit them out in Arab head-dresses.)

Update: White House Is Weighing a Syria Retreat

Operation Empty Chair

Operation Empty Chair Syria 22 Comments

Daily Caller;

Two senior analysts at CENTCOM signed a written complaint sent to the Defense Department inspector general in July alleging that the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are. The reports were changed by CENTCOM higher-ups to adhere to the administration’s public line that the U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and al Nusra, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the analysts claim.
That complaint was supported by 50 other analysts, some of whom have complained about politicizing of intelligence reports for months. That’s according to 11 individuals who are knowledgeable about the details of the report and who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity.

Glenn Reynolds: SO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DID ALL THE STUFF THEY ACCUSED BUSH OF DOING. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS, BUSH WON THE WAR, AND THEY LOST IT.

I Felt A Great Disturbance In The Narrative

More Pavilions At Folkfest Operation Empty Chair 28 Comments

Update: New link to the video. Youtube “terminated” the original account, of course.
Breitbart;

The Youtube footage, which is embossed with the badges of the Hungarian police force, shows the migrants rejecting food packages and bottled water, throwing them onto the train tracks. Although some children appear keen to accept the food, the adults turn it down, in some cases throwing it back at police.
The migrants, described by some outlets as refugees, have been gathered at train stations in Hungary in the hope of travelling onwards to Austria and Germany. Hungarian authorities initially refused to let them through, resulting in chaotic scenes at Budapest’s main train station this week, but have now agreed to help them travel to the Austrian border.

Related.

Operation Empty Chair

Libya Operation Empty Chair Syria 2 Comments

But I would argue another known known is that this grievous situation is not going to get better anytime soon. Do the exercise yourself. Project out five years from now: Is it likely Syria will have stabilized? Is it likely Iraq will have? Yemen? Will Libya? In recent weeks, I’ve posed these questions to various experts from the U.S. military and diplomatic community and from the countries within the region itself. Their response was always that in all these cases it’s more likely than not that turmoil will persist — not only for the next five years, but quite possibly for much, much longer than that.
These experts might all be wrong about one or two of these cases. But it seems unlikely they are wrong. But here’s the one known unknown you can take to the bank: The Middle East is in a period of protracted crisis and instability, and, as we have seen with each passing day, the collateral damage and knock-on effects grow worse. While Syria is already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, having endured more than four years of war, with hundreds of thousands dead and more than 7 million internally displaced, many more months and years of war will clearly only exacerbate that. Some 6 million are at severe risk of famine in Yemen. Libyans crowd onto small rubber rafts and pack into boats in the often vain hope of making their way to Europe. Refugee camps are posing a potentially unsustainable burden in Jordan and Lebanon. Unrest is begetting more unrest. One U.S. military leader told me that the Islamic State was reducing its recruitment efforts because it did not need them — more would-be extremists were volunteering. Continuing in the same vein, try the thought experiment yourself: Do you consider it more or less likely that extremism will add to the number of countries in crisis in the next five years? In North Africa? Sinai? Saudi Arabia? Afghanistan? How will falling oil prices exacerbate this? The meddling of a reenergized Iran?

Cheery reading.

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