Thomas Wictor

I’ll admit it: I was wrong. The US and Europe were never destined to bring about peace in the Middle East. Western powers should only provide advanced weaponry and other military support to nations in the region. Middle Easterners understand how to do things in their part of the world. We’re completely clueless.

Looking back on Operation Iraqi Freedom, I realize now that it was destined to fail. The US and our Coalition partners had to do things the western way. Therefore we went to the United Nations and tried to get their approval. Congress debated and eventually approved the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. We built up our forces around Iraq. President George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein and his two sons 48 hours to leave the country.

This famous photo symbolizes western hubris.

I’m not saying that Saddam shouldn’t have been removed from power. My point is that the way we did it guaranteed that disaster would follow. I didn’t know this until just a few nights ago.

The westerners who took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom did so in good faith. It wasn’t “ill advised,” because we’d been hearing Muslim Arabs say the same thing for decades.

“Because of you, all we have here are religious or secular dictatorships. We just want to be free!”

So we took them at their word. I was one of those people who thought that once the Iraqis were free, they’d create a functioning democracy. What I still can’t accept is the near-instant descent into savagery. In response to daily mass murder, we had western swine saying swinish things.

This is his worst quote.

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow—and they will win.

They blew up marketplaces. How was that being Minutemen? Maybe the Michigan Manatee meant THIS kind of Minuteman.

The Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) would do a great job blowing up marketplaces.

Michael Moore is typical of the western mindset. He has no ability to conceptualize conflict resolution in the Middle Eastern. I have no ability either. But I do know that our attempts to bring about peace in the region could never, ever have succeeded.

There was a long debate among Arab armed forces over whether or not they should adopt the American M16 rifle. The rifle is seen as a symbol of American imperialism. Therefore anyone who uses it is an American stooge.

Most Arab armed forces use the Russian AK-47. Arab terrorist groups have the AK-47 in their logos.

Personally I don’t think that Arabs are any different from me as people. They aren’t inferior. But the world must accept cultural realities. Going into an Arab country with our flags and our M16s was not going to end well. After the Sunni tribes of Anbar agreed to turn against al-Qaeda, they explained that they’d fought us because they thought we’d come to Iraq to steal their women.

That accusation says everything about them and nothing about us. We prefer our own women. American women don’t have to cover themselves up. They can do this if they want.

You don’t have to approve. I don’t approve. That sort of display is cheap and tacky. But the point is that stealing women wasn’t on the list of reasons why the US invaded Iraq. Yet intelligent, adult men actually thought that we wanted to put their women in cages and take them home with us.

Western firepower, Middle Eastern fighters

Everybody forgets—or denies—that Israelis are Middle Easterners. For a long time, they were our only real allies. Then came the United Arab Emirates, which spent ten years in Afghanistan with us.

Fighting, I mean. UAE pilots are so skilled that they were given some of the hardest close-air support (CAS) missions.

I believe that now, most of the Arab League can be considered allies of the US. They do so out of self-interest, which makes them completely dependable. Over a little more than a decade, the US shared our most advanced military technology with Arab nations. We also helped Arab nations create and train some of the most lethal special-operations units on earth.

What we as westerners should do going forward is to just give support. Material support, not moral. We shouldn’t get involved ourselves, because we can’t understand the cultures. The only people capable of figuring out what to do are Middle Easterners.

Here’s an example of our abject failure. I learned about it only twenty minutes ago.

Jaish al-Thuwar also stated they did not apply to join the American Train-and-Equip program because of the stipulation that trainees would only be allowed to fight ISIS and not the regime.

Did you know that Syrian rebels we trained had to pledge to not fight Assad? I thought the entire point of training moderate rebels was to fight Assad. So the Train-and-Equip program was delusional.

Who but westerners would come up with something as worthless as training and equipping moderate rebels as long as they promised to not rebel? It’s like a parody. If they’re fighting the Islamic State instead of Assad, then they are by definition not rebels, since the Islamic State is an invading force, not the government of Syria.

The New York Times wrote an obituary for the Syrian Democratic Forces (QSD) about three weeks after the organization was formed.

[Ten] days of interviews and front-line visits across northern Syria with many of the forces in the alliance, called the Syrian Democratic Forces, made clear that so far it exists in name only, and that the political and logistical challenges it faces are daunting.

Beyond the early logistical factors, the new alliance faces what is perhaps a more serious challenge in the long term: Though it is intended to begin clawing back territory from the Islamic State in mostly Arab areas, nearly all of the group’s fighting power comes from ethnic Kurdish militias.

That demographic reality is likely to further alarm Turkey, a vital American ally that considers Kurdish autonomy near its southern border a security threat. It also limits the forces’ ability to strike the jihadists in predominantly Arab communities — Kurdish fighters have less motivation to fight for those areas, and could deeply anger residents by doing so.

“The backbone of these forces are the Kurdish groups because of their experience fighting ISIS and their numbers,” said Redur Xelil, a spokesman for Syria’s dominant Kurdish force, the Y.P.G. But he talked about how that could be a limiting factor in fighting for cities like Raqqa, the Islamic State’s headquarters in Syria: “We have to be realistic that the Y.P.G. can’t go by itself into Raqqa, or people will say, ‘What are you doing there?’ ”

Some of the alliance’s forces have cooperated before, but relations are not always smooth. The Kurdish military strength in the area means that Kurds set the agenda, and many clearly look down on their Arab partners.

For their part, Arab rebel fighters say they worry about their partners’ close ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which the United States, Turkey and others list as a terrorist organization. They also distrust the motives of the thousands of Kurdish fighters who have come to Syria from Iraq, Turkey and Iran.

Two months later.

Since the U.S.-backed alliance was formed last October, its fighters have opened several major offensives against Islamic State with the ultimate goal of capturing Raqqa.

The alliance has separately been fighting in recent weeks against Nusra Front, Ahrar al Sham and other insurgents in northern Aleppo province.

Washington’s strategy in Syria shifted in 2015 from trying to train thousands of fighters outside the country to supplying groups headed by U.S.-vetted commanders.

Whoever those US-vetted commanders are, they made the QSD into the most successful armed force in Syria. Somehow the people in charge of the QSD overcame every potential problem—ethnic, religious, motivational, logistical, technological, tactical, political, geopolitical, strategic, ballistic—and they did so secretly, in less than two months.

It’s because they’re Middle Easterners. They understood what would work and what wouldn’t. Now they’re expanding their horizons.

Hussein Kocher, leading member of Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and a prominent commander in the Kurdish-Arab alliance of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said their forces are determined to “liberate the whole Syrian soil from Deash (ISIS) terrorists”.

“It is time to liberate the entire soil of Syria from the fascist regime as well,” he insisted.

“Starting the battle for al-Hawl town in Hasakah province was the first step towards the liberation of Syria and its people from the radical and suppressive groups.”

“After the liberation of Hasakah countryside, all social components of the region are invited to join the SDF in a bid to liberate the entire Syrian soil,” Kocher concluded.

Western methods of fighting wars can’t be applied to the Middle East. The average western mind is unable to comprehend the complexities of the region, so let’s not even try. Let’s just choose a side and give it the means to win.