11-16-2015; ISIS Part Two

11-16-2015;  ISIS Part Two

Near the end of June, while riding my bicycle for Peace and Environmental Justice across the United States, a six to ten hours a day endeavor, I wrote a piece entitled “What About ISIS, Dan?” In it I tried to separate the two identities of the organization, one a proto-state and the other a loosely organized criminal terror network.  Two manifestations require two solutions. I label the terrorist facet criminal because it will take policing and justice tools to  stop it. Bombing Syria will not end the criminal actions no more than the bombing and invading Afghanistan and Iraq ended al Qaeda. In fact invading those countries increased al Qaeda’s number and forcefulness.

Today I read an article written the Saturday morning of the Democratic Presidential Debate, as the news of the Paris attacks were still being updated. “There Is Only One Way to Defeat ISIS,” by Charles Pierce of Esquire. With a flourish Pierce laid out the only means of ending the state facet of ISIS and what is at stake for what we call civilized society. But ending the state of ISIS might not be a possibility. 

It costs the US taxpayers a million dollars per soldier to wage a war and occupation. If ISIS with stealing its weapons from the Iraqi army and its food from the people it controls can do the job for one quarter the cost, at 20,000 soldiers -a low estimate- then it would need a $5 Billion dollar annual budget. And ISIS controls thousands of miles of Iraq and Syria, 20,000 is a very low estimate for soldiers that at times has been reported to be closer to 40,000 and even 100,000. 

Clearly ISIS is getting help from some of the neighboring states. And Pierce fills in that part of the puzzle with information gathered by WikiLeaks in 2010. Saudi Arabia, Qatra, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are the culprits. My objection to Pierce’s writing is that it does not consider the possibility that there is a real need for a new Sunni state in the Middle East. At one time early after we invaded Iraq  it was thought that it needed to be split into three autonomous regions, Kurdish, Shia, and Sunni. Considering that the Gulf Alliance, really a Sunni Alliance, has a willingness to fund such a state and the Shia of Iraq have no intention of really including the Sunni in a government maybe that idea needs to be revived.