Operation Featherweight: Month 2, Week 2, Day 6.

Yesterday the US Senate approved President Barack Obama's bill to arm and train 'moderate' insurgents in Syria on the pretext of fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) by 78 votes to 22. As the President is unlikely to veto a bill he himself introduced it will now pass into law and that arming and training will begin shortly.

Although I remain very opposed to this I have to say that I really consider it non-news. As it seems unlikely the US will able to find any insurgents in Syria who don't have ties with terrorist groups such as ISIL, Al Qaeda or the Islamic Front (IF) and want to build a secular democracy rather then simply oust a majority Shia government they will probably end up strengthing extremist groups who will simply side with ISIL. That will simply have the effect of prolonging the conflict because the insurgent groups have already demonstrated that they cannot win and will only be weakened by US air-power. If the US does stick to its fantasy of resurrecting the Free Syrian Army (FSA) then basic training for the US military takes around 6 months. If the US is going to cut that time in half to 3 months it's still going to be January 2015 before the FSA are in a position to start their long and arduous advance north to where ISIL are located.

Due to the underhand and downright illegal way that the US has conducted itself thus far in its undeclared war against Syria there is a strong suspicion that the US trained insurgents will have no intention of fighting ISIL and will instead move to overthrow the Syrian government. The US should be deeply afraid of this because as Libya showed it is when the government is overthrown that the infighting begins and the descent into chaos and carnage really starts to speed up. The Syrian government is obviously going to be opposed to being overthrown so is likely now to start concentrating its efforts on eradicating the FSA from its final pockets of resistance in the suburbs of Homs and the capital Damascus. As a result when the US backed insurgents are ready to be deployed there will be nowhere to deploy them to leaving the US with little more then 3000 fighters to try and take on ISIL and all the other insurgent groups in Syria.

So as far as I'm concerned this element of Obama's strategy is just a waste of time, money, effort and lives. What I did find particularly nasty though was the way that rather then submitting a bill on this strategy to be discussed and voted on in detail Obama instead tacked it onto a federal government spending bill. That left Congress a choice between approving the bill or forcing another unpopular shutdown of the federal government right before the mid-term election. That is probably the most forceful thing a President can do to shut down dissent or even simple political discourse over a policy that he himself cannot justify.

Aside from the internal politics the US military really stepped up the intensity of their operations against ISIL. Up until now the US has only engaged in small, pin-prick strikes that have destroyed an anti-aircraft gun here and an Humvee there. This strategy has been described as inoculating ISIL against attack making them stronger by allowing them to adjust to operating whilst under aeriel attack. 

On Wednesday (17/9/14) the US stepped things up a gear by striking an ISIL ammunition store south-east of Baghdad. This single strike destroyed a large amount of ammunition that ISIL had been hoping to use to repel the Iraqi army's attempts to liberate Ramadi and Fallujah. On Thursday (18/9/14) the US carried out a single air-strike against an ISIL base near south-east of Mosul. This strike destroyed an armed "technical" truck and two buildings used to house ISIL fighters. It is being reported that in excess of 300 ISIL fighters were killed in this strike. That is 300 volunteers that now won't be able to pick up a rifle and try and kill members of the Kurdish Peshmerga if and when they move in to liberate Mosul.

Sadly rather then being the result of the US suddenly realising what is required to defeat ISIL this intensification seems to have occurred in response to increasing pressure from the other 39 nations in the coalition. Today France carried out it's first air-strike against ISIL. This involved an undisclosed number of Rafale attack aircraft flying from their base in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to north-eastern Iraq which is a distance of around 1,500km (900miles) each way. Their target was an ISIL logistics depot containing fuel, ammunition and other supplies. It was completely destroyed in the attack.

Obviously if France, Australia and the UK were to continue carrying out strikes like this while the US insists on refusing to allow them to operate from bases within Iraq and itself sticking to small, pin-prick strikes it would really highlight just how ineffective and borderline reckless Obama's strategy actually is.

16:20 on 19/9/14 (UK date).