Hacker News Reader

Comment by frotak | Hacker News Reader

The first attack on oil convoys was in November 2015 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/middleeast/us-strike...)

Primarily this was to avoid unnecessary civilian and collateral damage:

"Until Monday, the United States refrained from striking the fleet used to transport oil, believed to include more than 1,000 tanker trucks, because of concerns about causing civilian casualties. As a result, the Islamic State’s distribution system for exporting oil had remained largely intact."

Plus why destroy infrastructure required by civilians during peacetime if you don't have to? That just puts them in a worse position when all this is done.

View on HN

The consequence of not destroying this infrastructure is that a vicious and brutal regime has much more resources and has an easier time surviving. By protecting a couple of "civilian" truck drivers -- and if your day job is illegally smuggling oil for a terrorist organization, one must question how much of a "civilian" you really are -- we guarantee that actual civilians in the Islamic State, not to mention civilians in areas attacked by it, will suffer far longer.

"The USA, great protector of Middle Eastern civilians." Somehow I'm not buying it. The USA does what's good for their bottom line. Everything else is propaganda.

the US only started bombing the oil trucks once their hand was forced by the russians doing so while pointing out that the US had been avoiding these obvious targets. we can speculate on reasons that they held back before then, but i suspect it had to do with the oil being sold to the turks.

The US gave another explanation why they didn't attack oil infrastructure:

> A former CIA director said the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State has been reluctant to attack oil wells controlled by the extremist group partly because of environmental concerns. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/25/michael-more...

Suddenly the US becomes the protector of mother earth?

Close, but I don't think so. The ISIS is supported by the Saudis; as long as they could sell oil, it saved the Saudis money. The Saudis have long opposed air strikes on ISIS. Saudis are using ISIS as proxies in their fight against the new Iraqi government and Syria.

I'm really not sure where the oil-exporting Saudis benefit financially from ISIS undercutting them on the black market. Or indeed where you've got the idea they're opposed to air strikes they've even participated in.

Any tactical enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend inclinations towards supporting ISIS that Saudi might have are are also rather tempered by the fact that wresting control of Mecca from the American-allied kleptocrats of the House of Saud is rather close to the top of the Islamic State's to-do list. Which actually makes them more of a threat than Assad or Iranian-backed Shia militias

The suggestion that Turkey is a sufficiently influential ally for the US to not just disregard but actively encourage cross border black market oil trade with ISIS is almost as silly.

Before ISIS took off, they were Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Here's an old news story I quickly dug up about the Saudis asking US not to hit them: http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/234500/saudi-arabia-agains...

ISIS are Sunnis. Saudis are Sunnis. Iran, Syria are Shia (as are Hezbollah). That's one factor. The other is: some regimes have it in for Assad; they want to get rid of him. They'll support anybody taking on Assad. That's another factor.

Bearing in mind the Saudis launched airstrikes against ISIS in Syria themselves a couple of months later, it's not really plausible they want[ed] to protect ISIS as opposed to avoid the US stepping in to stabilise the Iraqi government (or bombing Sunni cities)

ISIS being Sunnis actually makes them more dangerous to the House of Saud, since they represent a challenge to their legitimacy as rulers rather than their population's natural enemy. Similarly, the US damaging the ISIS economy and prestige actually strengthens Saudi Arabia's position as the benefactor-of-choice for aspirant Sunni militants.

I have a friend from the region (Aleppo, to be precise). He claims that Saudi airstrikes actually hit the groups fighting ISIS, and not ISIS. As I haven't followed the news as closely as he does, I'm inclined to take his read on it.

USA is not a single entity with a single voice.

Historically, generals of strong empires tend to go fight rebellions or weaker enemy states for prolonged time even if they could destroy them quickly. They do that to maintain power, or the empire will have no more enemies and the military's influence drops.

I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, but that is one of many reasons American entities (military, politicians, whatever) act against some other Americans' interests.

Doesn't the old saw about "never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity" comes to mind instead? American political leadership is desperately incompetent and is obsessed with avoiding bad publicity at all costs. That more than adequately explains our comically ineffectual war strategy.

It seems that way to me. The current administration desperately hope to be able to do nothing and have it resolve itself or do just the bare minimum response to each crisis, but usually underestimate just what that bare minimum response is and have to ramp it up a bit due to political pressure or saving face.

Of course, that attitude is pretty much due to the previous administration being too naively adventurous and stupidly causing big messes that are still causing problems.

And the previous administrations attitude is due to them thinking the problems were caused by the previous previous administration being too weak in their military responses.

etc etc ad infinitum...

Thankfully we have wikileaks to clear that up for us so we don't have to "ascribe" anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com