Typical.

Editor,

The article linked to below is pretty good.

It fails to suggest, however, negotiating publicly and explicitly with Iran, the USA's other bete noir in the region, to enlist Tehran's help in getting the Shiite government in Baghdad to moderate its oppressive, exclusive, downright murderous policies towards Iraq's Sunni minority.

Beating ISIS on the ground includes undermining its support: from the reactionary Gulf monarchies, and from indigenous Sunnis so alienated by Baghdad they are fighting for ISIS.

Washington's understanding of the political mess in the Middle East is a rat's nest of contradictions and stupid thinking. Dropping bombs satisfies certain primal urges for revenge and feels like one is "doing" something, but it only makes the political situation worse by further obscuring it.

It is amazing to me that the USA is going to bomb Syria and refuses to talk to Assad about it and that Iran is a major axis in the balance of power in the region and the USA refuses to talk to Tehran.

Kerry keeps enumerating the white, Western, former colonial powers who have signed up for the next iteration of the Iraq War and even throws in some autocratic Arab states who also are root causes of the problem, and somehow this consensus makes bombing the right thing to do.

Talking straight to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states about stopping the export and funding of Sunni extremism, talking to Iran about political reconciliation in Iraq, and talking to Assad about containing ISIS are the right things to do.

Of course, Washington is set to buy billions of dollars worth of bombs and missiles from the "defense" industry instead, as it so typically does.

Re: "To Crush ISIS, Make a Deal With Assad" (9/16/2014)