Today In CSM

Can we at least get the Turks and the Kurds to make peace? I don't know how we ever get peace between a lot of other factions that are fighting if we can't even get the two of them to agree to fight against IS and not each other. This link is for the summary of who hates who and make things nearly as clear as mud.

To sum up: The US is bombing IS to help the Kurds – whom it views as allies – and the government in Baghdad. The US is generally avoiding attacks on the Syrian regime as a lesser of two evils. Turkey, meanwhile, is enthusiastically bombing the Kurds and only reluctantly going after IS, while lusting to set its sets on the government in Damascus. Turkey doesn't trust Baghdad and its burgeoning military relationship with Iran.

The Sunni Arab monarchies in the US coalition also can't stand the Baghdad government, which they view as oppressing the country's Sunni Arab minority, and are far less interested in fighting IS than Assad's government, which they view as an Iranian proxy that is oppressing Syria's Sunni Arab majority. Iran wants to destroy the Islamic State, particularly in Iraq, but the Islamic Republic and its Hezbollah allies from Lebanon also desperately want to shore up the Syrian regime.

The Islamic State wants to slaughter everyone who doesn't agree with them. The Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, though slightly more restrained than the cartoonishly savage IS fighters, feels likewise. Meanwhile, the trickle of Free Syrian Army fighters the US is training aren't fighting anyone much at all, at least not yet. 

Yes, Turkey is bombing our allies in the fight against IS. And in other news of people doing shit to hurt their own interests, there is the US Congress who can't wrap their minds around the idea that we don't run the world. 

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush played down diplomacy in favor of isolation and military action – unilateral American action if necessary – for dealing with rogue states like Iraq and Iran.

The approach never won the broad support of global powers, instead leaving the United States essentially isolated and criticized, rather than supported, as it sought to address the regime of Saddam Hussein. When Mr. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, America was left to largely go it alone.

We did have allies, but they were few and far between. Back to CSM and the fact that the rest of the world is not waiting on our Congress to give its OK to the deal.

Three European powers, Russia, and China – are already moving forward with Iran based on an assumption that the nuclear deal is done and sanctions on Iran will start to be lifted by the fall. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was in Tehran last week, and European businesses are flooding into Iran to secure a slice of the anticipated boom as the government starts spending in big-ticket projects again.

So the rest of the world is going to be free to trade with the Iranians and the only thing we are left with is the likelihood (especially if we have a Rep president) of going to war with Iran.

The rest of the international community would blame the deal’s failure on the US, Secretary Kerry says. Other powers would lift their sanctions, and Iran, freed from both sanctions and constraints on its nuclear program, would ramp up its uranium enrichment – raising again the specter of military action to halt Iran’s nuclear progress.

But at least we'll always have Israel.

Some Middle East experts worry that rejection of the deal would leave the US and Israel isolated, both in the region and internationally. That is especially true as Gulf Arab states appear to be coming to a consensus of support for the deal – especially in light of the reinforced US strategic support that the Obama administration has been pledging to help counter a deal-emboldened Iran.

America’s isolation in the wake of congressional rejection of the deal would be all the stronger, says Mr. Litwak of the Wilson Center, because it would appear to the rest of the world that the US was turning back to a post-9/11 faith in “regime change” as the only way to deal with rogue states.

Just to end with some "good" news; here's Bernie Sanders on guns. 

Senator Sanders might once have agreed with Perry that taking guns away is not the solution. Coming from a rural state where hunting is common and gun rights have popular support, Sanders has opposed some of Democrats’ gun control measures. But on Sunday he told NBC’s Meet the Press that he supported a nationwide ban on guns other than those used for hunting.

"Nobody should have a gun who has a criminal background, was involved in domestic abuse situations. People should not have guns who are going to hurt other people, who are unstable," Sanders said. "We need to make sure that certain types of guns used to kill people, exclusively, not for hunting, should not be sold in the United States of America."

Now that's a nice strong stance that I can get behind. Yes, you hunters can have guns. From the wingnut perspective, we have Rick Perry. 

Mr. Perry told Jake Tapper Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” the answer to gun violence is not restricting guns, but allowing more people to carry them. If more people had had guns in the Lafayette theater, he said, the gunman would have been stopped before he got the chance to cause so much harm.

Of course, arm everyone. Then instead of the two deaths, plus the gunman, it would have looked like a Shakespearean tragedy with everyone shooting everyone because no one can distinguish good guy from bad guy. The glasses didn't make him any smarter.