一
世界局勢瞬息萬變。
由於Obama過去在競選的期間與在執政後，曾藉若干場合，發表
歐巴馬現在派遣軍事顧問前往伊拉克，有點類似當年甘迺迪介入越戰的初期
台灣建州運動關切的是: (1)在美國極可能又會被迫派遣地面部隊前往中東的情況下，華府
二
「紐約時報」在9/16/
我們現在就來讀那篇社論:
“The Slippery Slope Begins” (滑坡開始)
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
New York Times
SEPT. 16, 2014
//A week ago, President Obama stood before the American people and promised that the expanding fight against the Islamic State — a vicious Sunni militant group known as ISIS or ISIL that is terrorizing parts of Iraq and Syria — would not mean a commitment of American ground troops. “As I have said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission,” he said.
On Tuesday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had a very different message when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “If we reach the point where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific ISIL targets, I’ll recommend that to the president,” he said, citing a potential attempt to retake the strategic important Iraqi city of Mosul as an example.
There is no way to read this other than as a reversal from the firm commitment Mr. Obama made not to immerse the country in another endless ground war in the Middle East.
Even though General Dempsey’s remarks were conditional, the Obama administration has turned on a dime in record time and opened the door to deeper, more costly American involvement even before the strategy is fully sketched out. And this is happening without Congress ever giving Mr. Obama the authority to wage war.
It’s impossible to believe that General Dempsey was speaking just for himself, though administration officials said his remarks were not cleared by the White House. His initial comments were contained in written testimony, so they would have gone through a review process, at least by Pentagon officials, and scrubbed in advance for errors and misstatements.
He reinforced his position under questioning by members of the Senate committee. American forces in Iraq “are not participating in direct combat. There is no intention for them to do so,” he said, but “I’ve mentioned, though, that if I found that circumstance evolving, I would, of course, change my recommendation.”
So what changed in the last week? Has there been some new intelligence assessment about the Islamic State’s strengths that requires an urgent shift in policy? Has the administration run into difficulty persuading Arab countries and others to join its mission, which cannot succeed without their support? Or was General Dempsey leaving his options open to a ground war, as military leaders like to do, despite what Mr. Obama has promised?
These possibilities are highly disturbing, and they certainly do not provide any basis for considering a move toward a ground war.
White House officials insisted after General Dempsey’s testimony that there is no change in Mr. Obama’s policy. The best proof of that would be for Mr. Obama to reassert his pledge and stick to it.
If there is any lesson to be taken from recent military conflicts, it is how easily the country can slip into an intractable war, with consequences that cannot be fully foreseen, and the fight against the Islamic State is more complicated and multidimensional than most.
The international coalition that Mr. Obama says is crucial to his plan is just being formed. While there have been positive steps toward a new government in Iraq, the positions of defense and interiors ministers remain unfilled as politicians continue to fight for power. Meanwhile, American-led training of forces in Iraq and Syria (the so-called moderate opposition) that are supposed to be central to the military campaign will take months, and congressional approval of the $500 million that Mr. Obama has requested for training and equipping Syrian rebels is far from certain.
The alarming uncertainty that General Dempsey has injected into the still evolving military strategy makes it even more important that Congress carry out its constitutional duty and debate and vote on the new mission in Iraq and Syria.//
當各方在對Dempsey將軍的證詞做出解讀時，白宮隨後就急忙
三
由於美國的民意已出現變化，歐巴馬即乘勢重返伊拉克，雖然他現在
"Obama has "turned his Middle East policy around," Indyk wrote last week. "We were in the process of withdrawing from the Middle East, and that has had a dramatic impact on our influence with all the players there. Now we're coming back — gradually [and] hesitatingly, no doubt, but the direction is clear."" [歐巴馬已翻轉了他的中東政策，我們美國正在重返中東，無疑地是
Indyk前幾天說的話應該不會說錯，所以我們必須說，歐巴馬政
關於這個議題，我們以後將會為文加以分析，讓鄉親們更加了解。我
“Old echoes in new Mideast policy”
By Doyle McManus
The Los Angeles Times
9/14/2014
--- The Arab Spring of 2011 opened new doors for Islamic radicalism, sectarian division and tribalism.-
---In a volatile region, a renewed U.S. emphasis on stability.
//Here's the nightmare scenario that kept Obama administration officials awake at night this summer as they watched the black-masked guerrillas of Islamic State sweep across Iraq: First, the insurgents could invade Baghdad, toppling Iraq's government and forcing a Saigon-style evacuation of the U.S. Embassy. Then they could move into Jordan, a close U.S. ally that has maintained a peaceful border with Israel for a generation. From there, they could even threaten Saudi Arabia, the linchpin of the world's oil markets.
To most Americans, Islamic State is scary mostly as a terrorist threat, a new version of Al Qaeda with a grisly penchant for beheading U.S. citizens. That's the image President Obama emphasized in his speech announcing a U.S.-led offensive last week: "ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple," he said.
But Islamic State is more than that: It's an insurgent army that has defeated traditional military units in Syria and Iraq and has swelled in power by seizing weapons and conscripting recruits. It has taken and held a significant swath of territory — something Al Qaeda never even attempted.
That makes it a danger to almost every country in the already unstable Middle East; and that, plus the potential for future terrorism — but not the beheadings, nor the massacres in Iraq — is what prompted Obama and his aides to launch the large-scale offensive he announced last week.
The Middle East never stops being a problem for the United States, no matter how hard a president tries to pivot away to other regions. The reason isn't merely oil, or Israel or even terrorism, although those factors count, of course. Instead, the underlying problem is that after more than a decade of war and revolution, the old order of the Middle East — corrupt, inefficient but stable governments living within their borders — has broken down.
A decade of wars and uprisings has weakened (or, in some cases, toppled) old regimes, but it hasn't replaced them with effective new ones.
The brief upsurge of democracy movements in the Arab Spring of 2011 didn't solve that problem; instead, it opened new doors for Islamic radicalism, sectarian division and tribalism.
The terrorism we fear is mostly a product of that chaos. So the strategic, long-term goal for any U.S. president, argues Martin Indyk, who served as Obama's chief Middle East negotiator until earlier this year, must be to "create a new order."
That won't be easy, of course, especially when Americans (and their president) are still mourning their losses from earlier expeditions into the Arab world and are determined to have a smaller footprint in the region. But Obama appears, at least tentatively, to agree with the goal.
The president's effort in Iraq is already larger than the two counter-terrorism campaigns he described as models: Yemen or Somalia. In only a few weeks, he has deployed more than 1,000 additional military personnel and launched more than 160 airstrikes to stop Islamic State's advance.
Obama has "turned his Middle East policy around," Indyk wrote last week. "We were in the process of withdrawing from the Middle East, and that has had a dramatic impact on our influence with all the players there. Now we're coming back — gradually [and] hesitatingly, no doubt, but the direction is clear."
The most obvious reversal, of course, was Obama's decision to send troops back into Iraq — even if, so far, they are barred from direct combat — less than three years after withdrawing.
Obama also changed his mind about Syria's moderate opposition, which he long dismissed as incapable but now describes as a key U.S. partner.
And he has revived the old U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia and other conservative Sunni governments, an essential part of any strategy if the U.S. wants to avoid the appearance of a Western military campaign against Muslims.
When Egypt's military overthrew the elected government of Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the United States initially condemned the coup and halted military deliveries. That led to a pronounced chill in the U.S.-Saudi partnership because the Saudi royal family saw Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood as a threat and supported the coup.
But when Secretary of State John F. Kerry traveled to the Middle East last week to seek help in the fight against Islamic State, Saudi Arabia hosted the meeting — and Egypt's foreign minister was there.
"I only see agreement," said Prince Saud al Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister.
The lesson: For now, faced with the threat of Islamic State, the United States' first priority in the Arab world isn't democracy; it's stability.
If that sounds familiar, there's a reason. It echoes the policies the United States pursued for half a century, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the brief optimism of the Arab Spring.//
四
歐巴馬政府顯然已在執行「重返中東」的政策，但這是否表示「重返
包括副總統拜登在內的美國政府高層人士總是說: 美國可以邊嚼口香糖，邊吹口哨。建州派希望美國真有能力同時應付
最近白宮國家安全顧問Susan Rice銜命到北京，主要的目的之一是要說服老共參加以美國為首
底下這篇「紐約時報」的報導說，美國海軍作戰部長Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert前幾天在華盛頓所舉辦的一項論壇中透露，馬來西
這件讓老共跳腳的事顯示美國海軍十分積極，也顯示美國在執行「重
“Malaysia Risks Enraging China by Inviting U.S. Spy Flights”
By Jane Perlez
The New York Times
9/14/2014
BEIJING — //Malaysia’s reported invitation to the United States to fly spy planes out of East Malaysia on the southern rim of the South China Sea seems likely to intensify China’s anger at American surveillance of the strategic waterway and its disputed islands, analysts say.
The United States’ chief of naval operations, Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, told a forum in Washington last week that the recent offer by Malaysia for P-8 Poseidon aircraft to fly out of the country’s most eastern area would give the United States greater proximity to the South China Sea.
Malaysia, which has had warm ties with China, has not confirmed whether it made the offer. The United States has vowed to maintain its influence in the region in the face of China’s rise, and this year won an agreement with the Philippines to give American troops, warships and planes greater access to bases there.
Admiral Greenert spoke the day before Gen. Fan Changlong, a vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, warned the national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, during her visit to Beijing that the Obama administration should halt what he called the “close-in” surveillance flights by P-8 Poseidon planes over the South China Sea and along China’s coast.
As China under the leadership of President Xi Jinping asserts claims in the South China Sea and develops a more sophisticated fleet of submarines, it has increasingly contested the right of the United States to conduct surveillance flights over what it says are China’s territorial waters. Among other capabilities, the P-8 Poseidons can detect submarines.
Last month, a Chinese fighter pilot flew within 30 feet of a P-8, nearly causing a collision, the Pentagon said. That P-8, a new fast, high-flying plane built by Boeing and loaded with digital electronics, was based with a squadron of six P-8s that arrived at Kadena air base in Japan last year. The Pentagon has more than 100 P-8s on order from Boeing.
Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian defense minister, was asked at a news conference whether permission had been given for “U.S. fighters” to operate out of East Malaysia. “That is not true,” he said, according to accounts in the Malaysian press. The minister was not asked about surveillance planes.
Discussions between Malaysia and the United States for the use of an air base in Sabah, in northeast Malaysia, have been underway for some time, according to a senior Asian diplomat who is familiar with the talks. The diplomat declined to be named because of the secrecy of the matter.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the reported Malaysian offer.
Malaysia, unlike the Philippines and Vietnam, has had good relations with China even though it also has territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. Malaysia, for example, claims James Shoal, just 50 miles from its shore but more than 930 miles from the Chinese mainland. China says the shoal marks the southernmost tip of the nine-dash line, a demarcation on maps made by the Chinese after World War II that China says forms its boundary in the South China Sea, but which few other countries recognize.
The state-run Malaysian energy giant, Petronas, is exploring for oil and gas inside the nine-dash line without retaliation from China.
Beneath the good will between the two countries, Malaysia has felt China’s increasing military power and has been seeking a balance by reaching out to the United States, the senior Asian diplomat said.
In his speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Admiral Greenert said, “We have opportunities here, and I think we’ve got to continue to nurture them.”
The Malaysian offer to the United States came, in part, because “China has surprised Malaysia by bringing military ships into its waters and tacitly threatening offshore Malaysia oil and gas exploration,” said Ernie Bower, senior adviser for Southeast Asia Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Malaysia has also felt pressure from China after a Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared en route to Beijing with 153 Chinese passengers on board in March.
China would interpret an accord between the United States and Malaysia as a direct challenge to Beijing’s insistence that the American spy flights were an infringement of China’s sovereignty, said Wu Xinbo, the director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
The United States says that foreign aircraft have the right to fly over waters beyond a nation’s 12-mile territorial line. China asserts that foreign aircraft do not have the right to fly within its 200-mile exclusive economic zone without permission.
“By reaching this agreement with Malaysia, the United States is saying: ‘If your neighbors can accept this surveillance, why should you complain?’ ” Mr. Wu said.
The United States’ desire for access to Malaysia for spy flights was one more pressure point on China and its growing military capacity. “The question is, will China bow to U.S. pressure and whether increasing pressure will change China’s activities,” Mr. Wu said.
In his speech, Admiral Greenert said he met with the commander of China’s Navy, Adm. Wu Shengli, four times in the past year and had established good relations, even as he explained that the United States would not be receding from the South China Sea.
“His point to me,” Admiral Greenert said, was “ ‘I’m going to be there too, by the way, because my nation says these are our near seas, these are of interest to us.’ ”//
台灣建州運動發起人周威霖
David C. Chou
Founder, Formosa Statehood Movement
(an organization devoted in current stage to making Taiwan a territorial commonwealth of the United States)
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