{"id":253,"date":"2014-06-16T12:16:59","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T12:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=253"},"modified":"2014-06-16T12:17:40","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T12:17:40","slug":"give-the-sunnis-a-real-alternative-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=253","title":{"rendered":"Give the Sunnis an Alternative NOW!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Unless President Obama says something fast to give secular Sunnis some hope that the US will take their interests seriously this time, they have no alternative to ISIS<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Say something to the Sunnis! \u00a0Give them an alternative!<\/strong>\u00a0 And it has to be real. \u00a0If we are seen to be warming to Iran, it will be a disaster. \u00a0Sunnis will never believe they have a path ahead. \u00a0And it must be soon. \u00a0Before any possible US military or intelligence support to existing government forces, or consideration of dialogue with Iran. \u00a0Finally, we must make clear that Maliki will go. \u00a0 President Obama now owns the Iraq issue. \u00a0He needs to act now, not later this week.<\/p>\n<p>If he doesn&#8217;t, it will be a mistake even bigger than the early missteps of President Bush&#8217;s Administration in firing the Iraqi Army and equating all secular Sunnis they have no place in the &#8220;new Iraq.&#8221; \u00a0It&#8217;s worse this time because it demonstrates an inability to learn from the past.<\/p>\n<p>The President needs to be public in this message. \u00a0And he needs through credible representatives, reach out to tribal leaders, in Iraq and respected Iraqi leaders who have exiled themselves outside Iraq. \u00a0They have been pleading for the US to take a greater role for years to offset the drift of the Baghdad government toward sectarian division.<\/p>\n<p>Ten years from now I hope people are not debating the mistakes of the Obama administration in Iraq&#8211;for Iraq&#8217;s sake as well as our own.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unless President Obama says something fast to give secular Sunnis some hope that the US will take their interests seriously this time, they have no alternative to ISIS. Say something to the Sunnis! \u00a0Give them an alternative!\u00a0 And it has &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=253\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,71,70,61,62,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}