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ISIS

Obama Attempts To Bomb Extremism, It Won’t Work

President Obama’s decision to bomb Syria stands in stark violation of international law, the UN Charter, and the requirements of the U.S. Constitution. It contradicts his own commitment, stated a year ago in the UN General Assembly, to reverse Washington’s “perpetual war footing.” And it portends disaster for the people of Syria, the region, and much of the world. The White House stated goal is to destroy the headquarters of the violent and extremist ISIS militia. But you can’t bomb extremism out of existence. The U.S. bombs do not fall on “extremism,” they are falling on Raqqah, a 2,000 year-old Syrian city with a population of more than a quarter of a million people – men, women and children who had no say in the take-over of their city by ISIS. The Pentagon is bombing targets like the post office and the governor’s compound, and the likelihood of large number of civilian casualties as well as devastation of the ancient city, is almost certain.

The Absurdity Of US Policy In Syria

If the United States and its allies want to combat the Islamic State jihadists (IS, formerly known as Isis) successfully, they should arrange a ceasefire between the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the non-IS Syrian opposition. Neither the Syrian army nor the “moderate” Syrian rebels are strong enough to stop IS if they are fighting on two fronts at the same time, going by the outcome of recent battles. A truce between the two main enemies of IS in Syria would be just that, and would not be part of a broader political solution to the Syrian crisis which is not feasible at this stage because mutual hatred is too great. A ceasefire may be possible now, when it was not in the past, because all parties and their foreign backers – the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran – are frightened of the explosive advance of the Islamic State. US Secretary of State John Kerry told the US Security Council on Friday that there is room for everybody “including Iran” in an anti-IS coalition.

US Bombs Syria Without UN Or Congressional Authorization

The American war on ISIS has expanded into Syria tonight, with Pentagon officials issuing a brief statement claiming credit for a round of about 20 targets hit in northeastern Syria this evening. The attacks involved both the use of US bombers, including F-22 and B1s, fighter warplanes including F-16s, F-15s, and F/A-18s. They’ve also fired Tomahawk cruise missiles from the USS Arleigh Burke in the Red Sea. Details of what was hit are not clear so far, though some reports say that an ISIS headquarters was among the targets. The Pentagon insisted it wouldn’t provide addition details about the “ongoing operations,” but plenty of information continued to emerge in the hours that followed the strike.

CBS: Foments Unfounded Fears About Isis

Aside from asking a guest to answer a question you've already removed "any doubt" about in your own mind, it is strange to consider these execution videos evidence that the group poses a threat to the United States. They have executed people they have taken hostage in violent, war-torn countries. This is criminal behavior, to be sure, but the idea that they constitute a danger to "national security" doesn't add up. McDonough doesn't exactly clarify matters either, since he appears to be arguing that a group can pose such a threat without having intelligence about any particular threat.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Congress Flees But We’re Still Fighting

Yesterday, Congress decided to leave town early and recess until after the elections in November. The good news is that they aren’t likely to do much more damage between now and November. We have time to put pressure on Congress and the White House on major issues and make those issues part of their campaigns. Join us in taking action to prevent the US from getting into another quagmire by putting a stop to the war on ISIS, calling on the FCC to get out of DC and listen to the people and organizing to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership from being Fast Tracked. We'll be in New York for a week full of education, organization and mobilization to solve the climate crisis.

Obama Declares Another Illegal War

President Barack Obama escalated the drone war he has conducted for the past five and a half years by declaring his intention to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, or ISIL. Since August 8, Obama has mounted at least 154 airstrikes in Iraq. He will send 475 additional US troops, increasing the total number in Iraq to about 1,600. Obama announced he would conduct "a systematic campaign of airstrikes" in Iraq, and possibly in Syria. But, not limiting himself to those countries, Obama declared the whole world his battlefield, stating "We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are . . . if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven."

Who’s Your Daddy, ISIS?

Let us be clear, if that is possible, about President Obama’s plan to deal with ISIS, the boogeyman of America’s own making. The president last week swore that he would “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State, after having spent three years providing weapons and money to jihadists fighters, including ISIS, in hopes that they would “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Syrian state of president Bashar Assad. So, the Americans set out to destroy one state, in Syria, whose government had never presented any danger to the U.S., and wind up creating another state, a caliphate astride the borders of Syria and Iraq, that openly declares its intention to do battle with the U.S.

How Does This End?

No one is saying that ISIS or al Qaeda or any other extremist organizations are a bunch of nice guys, or that they wouldn’t deserve all the terrible things the US military could do to them. The problem is that we’ve been kicking terrorist ass over the world, but in doing so, we’re not pausing for a moment to consider the unintended consequences. In the 1980s, we decided that the enemy of our enemy, the Soviet Union, would make great friends. We handed off hundreds of millions of dollars to arm and train the Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan. We did not fully understand who these fighters were, nor did we fully appreciate or seem to care about the radical social policies they would enact if they won, so long as they could be a pain in the side of the “evil empire." The problem was that those same fighters included Osama Bin Laden, and future members of the Taliban.

How The West Created ISIS

Military action is necessary to halt the spread of the ISIS/IS “cancer,” said President Obama. Yesterday, in his much anticipated address, he called for expanded airstrikes across Iraq and Syria, and new measures to arm and train Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces. “The only way to defeat [IS] is to stand firm and to send a very straightforward message,” declared Prime Minister Cameron. “A country like ours will not be cowed by these barbaric killers.” Missing from the chorus of outrage, however, has been any acknowledgement of the integral role of covert US and British regional military intelligence strategy in empowering and even directly sponsoring the very same virulent Islamist militants in Iraq, Syria and beyond, that went on to break away from al-Qaeda and form ‘ISIS’, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or now simply, the Islamic State (IS). Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. This ill-conceived patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East.

UK Prime Minister Warned Air Strikes In Syria Illegal

David Cameron has been warned that UK air strikes against Isis in Syria could be illegal under international law. Officials in the House of Commons Library have cast doubt on the Prime Minister’s view that Isis targets could be bombed in Syria as well as Iraq on the grounds that the Assad regime in Syria is “illegitimate.” In a briefing paper for MPs, officials said: “Action in Syria will be difficult to justify legally without a request for assistance from the Assad government, and it is unlikely that the West could be seen to be responding to such a request. “The British Government has said that any action in Syria will comply with international law, and the most likely way to achieve this would be to claim that military action is for humanitarian purposes, using the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. This remains controversial, however, without a United Nations Security Council resolution to authorise it.”

CODE PINK Hijacks Kerry’s ‘Defeat ISIS’ Speech

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s testimony on the need to destroy the Islamic State could have been most convincing, if it wasn't for signs reading “Congress Stop Obama’s War” and “More War More Extremists” held by CodePink activists behind his back. Activists of the pro-peace, anti-militarist movement surrounded Kerry with shocking pink signs as he gave testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, making a case for the Obama administration’s Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) strategy. The testimony was being broadcast into the homes of millions of Americans by national TV channels. “ISIL (IS) must be defeated. Period. End of story,” Kerry said, stressing that despite a long history of debates on overseas military campaigns, he thinks that “all” will be able to agree with this statement.

Tell Congress “No” To More War

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Martin Dempsey testified before the war-friendly Senate Armed Services Committee on September 16, 2014 about the extent of the US military's role in fighting Islamic. The hearing was interrupted by peace protesters from CODE PINK and Popular Resistance. Non-Profit Quarerly began noting “The hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday morning began with repeated disruptions from antiwar protesters.” They went on to urge more action from the antiwar movement, writing: “History would suggest that it’s time for the antiwar movement to raise important issues about the U.S. plan to deal with ISIL. Maybe this war against ISIL is different; maybe this is an instance where U.S. military action is necessary to stop ISIL, which has now gathered a large military force and deployed it like a professional army. Maybe ISIL can’t be dealt with the way that the U.S. is addressing Al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia. But it is nevertheless the role of the anti-war movement to engage in and elevate the quality of the debate when American civilian and military leaders contemplate military action overseas.”

Chelsea Manning Breaks Silence To Criticise Obama’s Isis Strategy

Chelsea Manning, the US army soldier who worked as an intelligence analyst in Iraq before being arrested for passing state secrets to WikiLeaks, says the only way to defeat Isis is to allow the group to set up its own contained “failed ‘state’” where over time its fire would “die out on its own”. Writing in the Guardian, Manning says her experience as an all-source analyst near Baghdad in 2009-10 leads her to doubt the strategy being followed by the Obama administration. She warns that the US-led mission to destroy the extremist group is destined to fail because it will merely feed a “cycle of outrage, recruitment, organizing and even more fighting that goes back decades”. Even with the support of non-western forces, attacking Isis directly from the air or with special forces on the ground risks mission creep and the repeat of past errors. “I believe that Isis strategically feeds off the mistakes and vulnerabilities of the very democratic western states they decry,” she writes.

James Foley Is Not A War Ad

To the extent that the U.S. public is newly, and probably momentarily, accepting of war -- an extent that is wildly exaggerated, but still real -- it is because of videos of beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff. When 9-11 victims were used as a justification to kill hundreds of times the number of people killed on 9-11, some of the victims' relatives pushed back. Now James Foley is pushing back from the grave. Here is video of Foley talking about the lies that are needed to launch wars, including the manipulation of people into thinking of foreigners as less than human. Foley's killers may have thought of him as less than human. He may not have viewed them the same way. The video shows Foley in Chicago helping Haskell Wexler with his film Four Days in Chicago -- a film about the last NATO protest before the recent one in Wales. I was there in Chicago for the march and rally against NATO and war. And I've met Wexler who has tried unsuccessfully to find funding for a film version of my book War Is A Lie.

Why We Oppose The War On ISIS

Below are views of people whose voices are not often heard in the corporate media but who have worked on issues of militarism and war for many years. We asked people who recognize that war is not the answer to complex foreign policy issues for their views on President Obama’s recent speech declaring war on ISIS. Obama did not use the word “war” as he prefers to explicitly state what is really happening by talking about “air strikes” and “counter terrorism.” In reality his speech was a declaration of war. And, he says it will last three years, which we suspect underestimates the war-quagmire he is beginning. As we have said in previous columns President Obama needs to get (1) authorization for the use of military force from Congress, and (2) authorization from the United Nations before the attack he has announced. He is not pursuing either but instead has taken on the power to send the United States into a new war on his own.

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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