John Kerry and General John Allen are currently on an arm-twisting tour of America's putative allies in the region, trying without any luck to coerce the locals into doing America's dirty work by having Muslims killing Muslims on the ground while America does the courageous work of dropping bombs from 50,000 feet.
US propaganda has been hot 'n heavy in its desperation to convince her ever-shrinking club of "strategic allies" and the American public that ISIS poses an existential threat, but clearly, nobody's buying the bullshit. That's why no one is willing to put actual soldiers on the ground to fight ISIS.
So it looks like some sort of "moderate" force of Syrian rebels will be cobbled together from miscellaneous Islamic free-booters, who will serve as the imaginary anti-Assad, anti-ISIS forces that the Nations of Virtue are supporting with their air war. Such a force will inevitably be riddled with people who were with al-Nusra or ISIS last week and may be again next week, but are happy to be our "moderates" this week in return for a handsome fee.
While America and her allies come off looking cowardly and opportunistic, the reputation of ISIS as the most successful anti-Imperialist resistance in the modern era will continue to be enhanced with every Hellfire missile and Paveway bomb aimed at them.
The Muslim world generally, and the Arab world in particular, has a population of disaffected young males that numbers in the tens of millions. Unemployed and marginalized, they equate ISIS victories with a resurgent Arab pride. They recognize that leadership throughout the Arab world consists of corrupt stooges firmly in America's orbit. Not only are they highly motivated to fight America, they are even more highly motivated to fight their own oppressive governments that have for generations put America's supposed interests ahead of their own.
At this point, almost two months after the latest bombing campaign started, it's already obvious the strategy of stopping ISIS from the air isn't working. It's also obvious that our Muslim "friends" in the neighborhood are reading the realities on the ground far more realistically than the war-mongers in Washington, which is why they're not putting boots on the ground.
Government's from Jordan to Egypt to the Gulf recognize that would be the last straw for their restive youth, but that is likely just delaying the inevitable. The black flag of Islamic State has emerged as the most powerful symbol of Arab resistance in the modern era.
This is the real Arab Spring, and it has momentum on its side.
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