This is crazy stuff. The United States and Israel are on opposite sides in the ISIS War.
Same time Jordan sends its Air Force in to pummel the Islamists, Israel under Bibi Netanyahu kills more of the Islamist's ground-war enemies. Then Boehner rewards this crap with a flood of nice words to Israel and his invitation to Netanyahu to address Congress. It's truly amazing.
Israel uses American aircraft. American missiles. American aid money involved, some part of that $3 billion a year we toss to the Netanyahu government. American command and control systems. American satellite intelligence.
All this is used to kill members of the coalition fighting ISIS. Right at the point where President Obama seeks the statutory authorization for Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution to wage war:
[The Congress shall have Power...] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water...Seems Speaker John Boehner (R) has got himself confused about which side we are on.
What does Bibi Netanyahu do with his American toys ???
He kills people on the way to a refugee camp in Lebanon to recruit Sunni military officers to go back to work with the Syrian Army. The mission for all of these guys is fighting the Islamists in western Syria. Then last week Bibi attacks two communication centers that are used in part to monitor Islamist assets -- critically in support of Jordan's Air Force.
All this happens during a period of relative peace on Israel's northern border.
Over the last several years trouble between Lebanon and Israel had pretty much gone away from the Arab side. You get the odd tit-for-tat revenge killings. Sorry about that and a hearty "Welcome to the Middle East." But otherwise the top priorities for Hizb Allah/Hezbollah and the Syrian government had gone exclusively to beating back ISIS and their allies Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nusrah/al-Qaeda Front.
Israel has faced minimal violence there for five years and counting.
One could argue that HAMAS has picked up the slack. But that's down at Gaza, nowhere near Syria. we can be assured that Netanyahu can tell "south" from "north."
HAMAS, in the south, is financed by the same pack of Cult of Mohammad fanatics that have supported Muslim Brotherhood all the way back, plus creating al-Qaeda/al-Nusrah and ISIS. In the south Israel is fighting against the Islamists.
In the north Israel is helping the Islamists. Actively. Steadily. Like I said, "crazy." What else?
And John Boehner just had to get the House involved.
Jihad Mughniyeh
That's a name. Not an organization. Not a place. And the Arabic name "Jihad" means "struggle for Allah" or "Allah's triumph." Which is about the same as the meaning of "Israel" as a name in Hebrew, as given to Jacob the Patriarch in the Book of Genesis.
On the left with his father.
In death: a symbol for Sunni-Shi'ia unity.
That is how this young man is depicted in print and online media from sources across the Middle East and North Africa, with Israel and Saudi excepted. This Jihad Mughniyeh was one of the victims of the Israeli aerial attacks.
In the popular cultures of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran his death has had impacts that work out entirely opposite to the stated goals of Bibi Netanyahu and his Likud/NeoCon allies.
-- vimeo.com/119538735
The younger Mughniyeh was not a bomber. He wasn't a seasoned military officer, either. What he did really well over the last three years of his life was to recruit for the fight against the Islamists. His specific area was the war in western Syria.
That war has two opposing sides: the secular Ba'athist regime headed by the Assad dictatorship vs. the Islamists tagged as Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nusrah Front/al-Qaeda and ISIS. The Ba'athists are supported on the ground by Iran's Quds Force, Egypt's army at the Saudi border with Iraq, and Lebanese Hizb Allah/Hezbollah. Aerial support comes from the United States, Jordan and to a lesser extent from Sunni regimes to the south.
Any party talking about a Third Way "Moderate" option in Syria is lying. We'll see a Martian Invasion mirroring "War of the Worlds" before that happens.
One of the main points of the Arab Ba'athist movements, everywhere, was that they would minimize Sunni-Shi'ia divisions. Show minimal preferences, if any. Unity before sectarian historical divisions.
Mughniyeh supported Assad & allies. He was the principal representative for Hizb Allah/Hezbollah in 2013 at the funeral of the mother of Qassem Suleimani, the Major General heading Iran's Quds Force. Gen. Suleimani was observed at the reception introducing Mughniyeh to his senior commanders and the top leaders of the IRGC and to his friends among the political elite.
Murder Has Consequences
Going forward after the break created by this Mughniyeh killing, one additional point to note is that the young man was also popular among Sunni officers and men from the Syrian Army.
He is seen as having been the prime instrument for communication for the negotiations that facilitated their return to anti-Islamist service. The Syrian Army had fractured on sectarian lines in 2011 and 2012. Depending on where they were located, personal safety and security for families could not be assured for Sunni personnel.
Now the families are in refugee camps in Lebanon. Relatively speaking, they are safe. Given a suitable route for return, the men go back to Syria to support their own Ba'athist/modernizing approach to civil society. (Assad is a dictator. Well, they're Arabs. That's what happens over there.)
Still in his twenties, Mughniyeh was able to use his contacts reportedly with the Assad family and from meeting Gen. Suleimani when he was a teenager to arrange for no-fault returns to service for these Sunni officers and enlisted men. These Sunni returnees were active participants from at least as far back as the Battle of al-Qusayr in 2012.
Getting Sunni help has been critical to stopping the Islamists. It's not just that they are disciplined military people. A number of them have the years of experience that it takes to become expert artillerymen.
Top notch artillery is half the puzzle for defeating ISIS.
So now he is gone. Jihad Mughniyeh was killed by an Israeli pilot or gunner using American equipment. And what people will remember of him is that he ignored the Sunni/Shi'ia distinction. That he was Shi'ia, himself, but put his effort to including Sunni military men in a fight that his own Hizb Allah/Hezbollah organization had set out to win by itself.
Together, his people and the Sunni military men beat the Islamists almost every time out. They might see a setback here and there, such as a mass kidnapping of Lebanese policemen. Suicide bombings are the ISIS trademark. What matters is that where they can surround an Islamist force, they can annihilate them.
It doesn't hurt that ISIS is leaderless. Local units operate with little to no instructions from above. They haven't won a battle since last June.
What works in western Syria, works in Iraq. And keep in mind that most of the Kurds in both fights are Sunni, at least in local forms of what it means to be Sunni.
Mosul is now 90% surrounded and will be retaken come spring with destruction of a large ISIS contingent. Isolated ISIS units are being hunted with drones, then attacked by air and by land. Assuming the Sunni-Shi'ia cooperation continues, the ISIS War could reach up into Syria in the east by summer of 2015 with a roll-up phase to follow.
Perpetual War and Profit
This is terrible news for the Perpetual War crowd. The Carlyle Group and its Saud and Bush royals could lose tens of millions of dollars. That Carlyle Group has always been something special.
Gee, going from nothing to managing $14 billion in 15 years. Earning investors returns above 35% a year working the war stocks -- compared to Bernie Madoff's 10% a year that's real money.
Who says that betting on war don't pay !!
"The Carlyle Group is a godsend for conspiracy theorists who are convinced that the world is run by, and on behalf of, a shadowy network of wealthy men."
Well, yeah. What else?
Bush41 and James Baker were listed "employees" at Carlyle Group in the 2000s.
D'oh.....
The only problem for the Perpetual War crowd is that if communism can go down, so can ISIS.
The legacy of Jihad Mughniyeh could provide the means to achieve exactly this end. A strong return for the Ba'athist themes of Sunni-Shi'ia unity and Arab nationalism make the most of ISIS propaganda irrelevant.
Also, gotta love the irony that goes with this man's first name! Perfect.