Inside the Islamic State

NY REVIEW OF BOOKS



LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

The Election is Six Weeks From Today. Here Are Six Things We Know About It.



CHRIS CILLIZZA, WASHINGTON POST

Six weeks from today, the country will vote. (Yes, I am excited!)
While there are still plenty of variables at play, I (and the political class more generally) do know some things -- both about where the races stand today and where they are headed. Here are six things I know.

Bruce Braley

1. The Senate is a toss up.   That, in and of itself, is a remarkable statement given how the map so heavily favors Republicans and how historical trends for second term midterms bode so poorly for the President's party.  And yet, all of the election models agree that control remains very much a close call -- although, at least right now, they also all suggest that Republicans have an edge  -- albeit it a slight one. [Not so slight if you look at the NYT Upshot or Nate Silver's blog, FiveThirtyEight. Respectively they give the Rebooblicans a 67% or a 60% chance to take the Senate. Doesn't seem so slight to Esco, but Esco's more than willing to accept the optimism of the Washington Post]  Make no mistake: If Republicans fail to take back the Senate with this map, the Democratic retirements that have come this cycle and President Obama's popularity problems, it will be a gigantic swing and miss. And, as of today, it remains a possible if not likely outcome.

Sen. Kay Hagan

2.  There are five races that will decide the majority. Alaska, Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina are the four closest Democratic-held seats, according to the models I wrote about on Monday -- and the ones likely to be the deciding sixth GOP pickup if Republicans win back the Senate. (That assumes wins by Republicans in Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana.) Republicans look best in Iowa followed by Alaska, Colorado and North Carolina. (Sen. Kay Hagan's remarkable resilience is a whole blog post of its own.) Then there is Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, who has developed into the GOP's biggest headache in the final stretch of the race.  Roberts is in real danger of losing to independent Greg Orman -- especially now that Democrat Chad Taylor has been removed from the ballot. If Republicans win six Democratic seats and lose Kansas -- thus keeping them from the majority -- Roberts will be the most hated man in Republican politics. And rightly so since this race should never have been a race in the first place.





3. President Obama is a big problem for Democrats. B-I-G.  In a series of poll released last week in places like Arkansas, Kentucky and even North Carolina, President Obama's job approval rating never crested 40 percent. In the first two states, he was in the very low 30s. Ask any Democratic consultant what their side's biggest problem is heading into November and they will tell you Obama. Ask any Republican consultant what their side's biggest advantage is heading into November and they will tell you Obama. Bipartisanship! The reality is that for people like Pryor, Landrieu and Alaska's Mark Begich, overperforming the president of their party by 15 or more points is a very tough thing to do.  That's true -- to a lesser extent, but still true -- for people like Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, Bruce Braley in Iowa and Mark Udall in Colorado.  The tough thing for Democrats is that it's getting dangerously close to being too late for a change in Obama's approval numbers to have a real impact on the political dynamic in their state.

Steve Israel is the Chairman of the DCCC. (Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

4. Democrats -- and Democratic-aligned super PACs -- are winning the spending war. This is perhaps the most under-told story of the election.  Here's the Wall Street Journal on the trend: "Since July 3, the largest super PACs aligned with Democrats have raised four times the money of pro-GOP super PACs, and have now spent $60 million to Republicans' $38 million, data compiled by The Wall Street Journal shows." And, it's not just on the super PAC side.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee doubled the fundraising haul of its Republican counterpart in August and had an almost $10 million cash edge heading into the fall. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ended August with a $5 million lead over the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And, Republican strategists closely watching ad spending in key Senate races acknowledge that they are being outspent -- in some cases badly -- on TV. In Colorado, for example, Democrats and their allied groups dropped over $1 million on TV ads in the first two weeks of September; Republicans spent just over $300,000. North Carolina and, until recently, Iowa are other examples of where Democrats have used their spending edge to boost their candidates. And, that advantage will get even more important in October. Democrats' early money allowed them to reserve air time at lower rates while Republicans are just now doing that.

U.S. Senator Mark Udall, left, and his Republican challenger, Cory Gardner. (Denver Post file photos)

5. Republicans think the Islamic State is their winning issue.  Scott Brown (R) is up with a TV ad this morning attacking President Obama and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) as "confused about the nature of the threat" posed by the Islamic State. In Colorado, Rep. Cory Gardner (R) has hammered Sen. Mark Udall (D) on the issue; "The only person who doesn't believe [the Islamic State] is an imminent threat is Mark Udall," Gardner told the Denver Post last week. Less than four in ten Americans approved of how President Obama was handling foreign policy in an early September Washington Post-ABC News poll. That same survey showed a majority (53 percent) of people said that Obama had been "too cautious" on foreign affairs.  More than seven in ten self-identified Republicans felt that way.  Hitting Obama on his response to the Islamic State has become the new hitting Obama on the Affordable Care Act for the Republican base. It remains to be seen whether the ongoing airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria will alter than dynamic.

 

Gov. Tom Corbett (Pa.)

6. Governors are going down. Yes, there are a handful of very vulnerable Senate incumbents and a handful of sitting House members -- Mike Grimm, I am looking at you -- who won't be coming back for the 114th Congress. But, if you are looking for high-profile incumbents headed toward defeat, the 36 governors races on the ballot in 42 days time is where you should be looking. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania is a dead man walking and has been for at least a year. Maine's Paul LePage (R) has a chance but that's only because a third party candidate is splitting up the considerable anti-him vote.  Democratic governors in Illinois and Connecticut -- two states where Democrats start at the five-yard line and just have to get the ball in the end zone (see this post on political cliches ASAP) -- look to be in bad shape. And, in Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) is in serious jeopardy of losing after a first term in which his main accomplishment was to drive a massive wedge within the state's Republican party.  But, wait, there's more!  Govs. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Scott Walker (R-Wisc.), Rick Snyder (R-Mich.), John Hickenlooper (D-Co.) and Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) are all in serious races where no one would be surprised if they lost.

===========================================

P.S.:  As of 9/29/14,  All three major election forecasting models saw an uptick in the likelihood of Republicans winning the six seats they need to retake the Senate majority over the past week, movement largely due to the party's strengthened chances in Alaska, Colorado and Iowa.

MID-EAST MUSLIMS IN CRISIS

Syrians check a damaged house, reportedly hit by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in western Aleppo province on Sept. 23. Sami Ali/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

TOM FRIEDMAN, N.Y. TIMES

The rise of the Islamic State, also known and ISIS, is triggering some long overdue, brutally honest, soul-searching by Arabs and Muslims about how such a large, murderous Sunni death cult could have emerged in their midst. Look at a few samples, starting with “The Barbarians Within Our Gates,” written in Politico last week by Hisham Melhem, the Washington bureau chief of Al-Arabiya, the Arabic satellite channel.

“With his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President Obama ... is stepping once again — and with understandably great reluctance — into the chaos of an entire civilization that has broken down. Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism — the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition — than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago.

“Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed,” Melhem added. “The promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings in their early heydays — all has given way to civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of absolutism, both in its military and atavistic forms. ... The jihadists of the Islamic State, in other words, did not emerge from nowhere. They climbed out of a rotting, empty hulk — what was left of a broken-down civilization.”

 

The liberal Saudi analyst Turki al-Hamad responded in the London-based Al-Arab newspaper to King Abdullah’s call for Saudi religious leaders to confront ISIS ideology: How can they? al-Hamad asked. They all embrace the same anti-pluralistic, puritanical Wahhabi Sunni ideology that Saudi Arabia diffused, at home and abroad, to the mosques that nurtured ISIS.

“They are unable to face the groups of violence, extremism and beheadings, not out of laziness or procrastination, but because all of them share in that same ideology,” al-Hamad wrote. “How can they confront an ideology that they themselves carry within them and within their mind-set?”

 

Nurturing this soul-searching is a vital — and smart — part of the Obama strategy. In committing America to an air-campaign-only against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, Obama has declared that the ground war will have to be fought by Arabs and Muslims, not just because this is their war and they should take the brunt of the casualties, but because the very act of their organizing themselves across Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish lines — the very act of overcoming their debilitating sectarian and political differences that would be required to defeat ISIS on the ground — is the necessary ingredient for creating any kind of decent, consensual government that could replace ISIS in any self-sustaining way.

 

The tension arises because ISIS is a killing machine, and it will take another killing machine to search it out and destroy it on the ground. There is no way the “moderate” Syrians we’re training can alone fight ISIS and the Syrian regime at the same time. Iraqis, Turkey and the nearby Arab states will have to also field troops.

After all, this is a civil war for the future of both Sunni Islam and the Arab world. We can degrade ISIS from the air — I’m glad we have hit these ISIS psychopaths in Syria — but only Arabs and Turks can destroy ISIS on the ground. Right now, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stands for authoritarianism, press intimidation, crony capitalism and quiet support for Islamists, including ISIS. He won’t even let us use our base in Turkey to degrade ISIS from the air. What’s in his soul? What’s in the soul of the Arab regimes who are ready to join us in bombing ISIS in Syria, but rule out ground troops?

This is a civilization in distress, and unless it faces the pathologies that have given birth to an ISIS monster its belly — any victory we achieve from the air or ground will be temporary.

Airstrikes Move To Syria, Target More Than Just ISIS

A handout picture released by the U.S. Navy shows the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG 58) launching a Tomahawk cruise missile against Islamic State targets in Syria on Tuesday.

NPR

In a major escalation of the air campaign against Islamic extremist groups, the U.S. and Arab allies jointly hit targets inside Syria for the first time.

The New York Times says, "The intensity of the attacks struck a fierce opening blow against the jihadists of the Islamic State, scattering its forces and damaging the network of facilities it has built in Syria that helped fuel its seizure of a large part of Iraq this year."

 Missiles being launched off a Navy ship, bound for Islamic State targets in Syria. Video Credit By Associated Press on Publish Date September 23, 2014. Image CreditUnited States Navy                           

Besides the U.S., the Pentagon says that Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates "participated in or supported" operations against targets associated with the self-declared Islamic State.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki confirmed that "we informed the Syrian regime directly of our intent to take action through our Ambassador to the United Nations (Ambassador [Samantha] Power) to the Syrian Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

At a morning Pentagon briefing, Lt. Gen. William Mayville, the Joint Chiefs director of operations, said there were three waves of attacks and that coalition partners provided combat air patrols and conducted airstrikes as part of the final two waves.

"We warned Syria not to engage U.S. aircraft. We did not request the regime's permission. We did not coordinate our actions with the Syrian government. We did not provide advance notification to the Syrians at a military level, or give any indication of our timing on specific targets. Secretary [of State John] Kerry did not send a letter to the Syrian regime," Psaki says.

The remains of a house that was reportedly hit by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in the village of Kfar Derian in Syria. Credit Sami Ali/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images        

Who Was Targeted?

— The Islamic State in its Syrian headquarters of Raqqa.

— The Al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra, in northwest Syria.

— A shadowy group known as Khorasan that the U.S. says is planning an imminent attack against the United States and Western interests.

Most officials speaking publicly on Tuesday characterized the Khorasan threat as imminent. Lt. Gen. Mayville Jr., who is in charge of operations for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, said the terrorist group was nearing “the execution phase of an attack either in Europe or the homeland.”

 But one senior counterterrorism official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the group might not have chosen the target, method or even the timing for a strike. An intelligence official said separately that the group was “reaching a stage where they might be able to do something.”

 Khorasan is closely allied with the Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda’s designated affiliate in Syria, according to American intelligence officials. The group, they said, is made up of Qaeda operatives from places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Africa and Chechnya who have traveled to Syria on the orders of Ayman al-Zawahri, the Qaeda leader.

 

An unnamed U.S. official tells The New York Times that the Khorasan group is led by "Muhsin al-Fadhli, a senior Qaeda operative who, according to the State Department, was so close to [Osama] Bin Laden that he was among a small group of people who knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before they were launched."

 

Mr. Fadhli, 33, has been tracked by American intelligence agencies for at least a decade. According to the State Department, before Mr. Fadhli arrived in Syria, he had been living in Iran as part of a small group of Qaeda operatives who had fled to the country from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. Iran’s government said the group was living under house arrest, but the exact circumstances of the Qaeda operatives were disputed for years, and many members of the group ultimately left Iran for Pakistan, Syria and other countries.



Gary Cameron / Reuters

 

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told Katie Couric of Yahoo News that the United States had followed the group for two years. “I can say that the enhanced security measures that we took” banning uncharged electronic devices on some flights were “based on concerns we had about what the Khorasan group was planning to do,” he said.

NPR's Deborah Amos tells Morning Edition that militants with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, were a major focus of the attacks. The Pentagon said the strikes "employed 47 [Tomahawk cruise missiles] launched from USS Arleigh Burke and USS Philippine Sea operating from international waters in the Red Sea and North Arabian Gulf, as well as U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fighter, remotely piloted and bomber aircraft deployed to the U.S. Central Command area of operations."

According to Deborah: "What is striking about this air campaign is that it was expanded to include the Nusra Front.

"Those strikes took place in northwest Syria. The Nusra Front is an al-Qaida affiliate and has been at odds with ISIS. In fact, some of al-Nusra's fighters have been at war on the ground with ISIS, joining with more moderate groups against them."

NPR's Tom Bowman says not much is known about the Khorasan group: "The Pentagon says they took this action to disrupt an imminent attack plotting against the United States by this group that's made up of seasoned al-Qaida veterans. There were eight strikes around Aleppo targeting this group. [The Pentagon says] it had training camps, explosives and munitions productions facility, communications building and also command and control facilities."

Gen. Mayville said that "we've been watching" Khorasan and that the group "clearly is not focused" on fighting the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad but instead had been "putting down roots" to work toward attacks on the U.S.