“A professional ground force coalition-of-the-willing led by the United States is something this writer has been long urging. This would involve American combat skin-in-the-game along with ground forces from countries such as Turkey, Jordan, France, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. The final three on the list have already volunteered forces to fight the Islamic State; recruiting the others would require hard-nosed diplomacy. But if the Islamic State is the threat the Trump administration says it is — and the people of Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, and Ankara, who have all suffered terror attacks at its hands, would agree — why would its neutralization be left to militiamen? In addition to putting the military defeat of the Islamic State in the hands of military professionals, the Pentagon’s plan for northern Syria must take several other factors into account………”

Forget the nonsense about the Coalition of the Willing (and Bribed if unwilling). It will be an American war, if it happens. After ISIS is defeated, kicked out of the major Syrian cities like Raqqa, it will be a different war. The Turks will want to crush Kurdish aspirations for autonomy, that will be their priority. It would be like pushing the toothpaste back into the tube. Expect more spectacular fireworks inside Turkey. The Saudis will want some kind of Wahhabi-ized regime in the liberated area. The Qataris (and the Turks) will want some say for the Muslim Brotherhood as well. The Syrian Jihadis, masqueraded as ‘moderate opposition’, will want some ethnic cleansing of Alawis and Shi’as. Some of the Arab allies from the Persian Gulf will try to get America to join their regional sectarian Jihad (as Obama warned last year), to enter a new conflict with Iran and Lebanon, who have either forces or advisers in Syria.
A recipe for another sectarian region-wide war. A war the pro-Jihadi Salafis and their potentates could not wage without the help of their enemies, the Americans.

America will be pushed to get involved in an even wider field of multi-wars in the Middle East. A regional war urged by regional potentates and princes as their only hope to push the menacing Iranian mullahs back. More Americans killed, more Arabs and Muslims killed. That is not a good recipe for fighting Arab Muslim radicalism. It could be a formula for expanding it.

Cheers

M. H. Ghuloum