The Cruise Lines International Association tells the AP they already share their U.S. passenger manifests with authorities so they can run the names through their databases.
Why doesn't Turkey just increase security and checks at border crossings into Syria? Even if the recruits get into Turkey via a cruise ship, they still have to cross a border to get into Syria. Maybe instead of sending our military to train Iraqi forces and Peshmerga, a likely futile endeavor, the U.S. should take some border patrol agents off the Mexican border and send them to Turkey to show them how it's done.
The Mexican cartels, which are just as violent as ISIS, haven't been blowing up U.S. border crossings or staging mass executions at them. How many border guards have been killed while doing car and truck searches? The cartels view having a load caught at the border as an acceptable risk and the cost of doing business. Maybe ISIS would see failed border crossing attempts by new recruits the same way – particularly since the recruits haven’t yet been accepted into ISIS, let alone trained as fighters.
While that’s not a serious suggestion, it would be nice to see some creative outside-the-box proposals, instead of the same old, ineffective one of stepped-up intrusions into everyone's privacy in hopes of catching a few bad guys.
Other half-serious suggestions: Where are the FBI and DEA informants, like the ones who are so good at playing members of FARC that they can trick seasoned Russian and Syrian arms smugglers and corrupt African officials willing to move huge loads of drugs? The U.S. only needs a few, because they use the same ones over and over. Even after the pretend FARC informants are outed and testify in court, they get their next prey to fall for the same ruse. Surely by now the FBI has some agents who can play an ISIS guy well enough to be able to meet a newbie recruit in Turkey and trick him into thinking he's the Syrian connection who's going to take him to a safe house and then across the border.
If not, maybe the FBI could recruit a few cooperating incarcerated terrorists for the job. They wouldn't even have to know a lot about Turkey or Syria, if they're only tasked with tricking European or American recruits who have never been there before.
Stopping the recruits at the Turkish-Syrian border and increasing the obstacles at the Syrian-Iraqi border seems like a better plan to me than spending $5.6 billion on aid and training for the Iraqi forces and Peshmerga in Iraq. Without new recruits ISIS may die out on its own in Iraq. While ISIS could change its policy at any time, at least so far, the European recruits say they are given their choice of going to Syria or Iraq, and the overwhelming majority choose Syria. They say Iraq is more difficult -- both in terms of the fighting and the accommodations. (Also, access to the internet isn't as good as it is in Syria.)
If ISIS can't regenerate the hundreds or thousands of fighters it loses in battle with new recruits, ISIS' rivals will sense when their numbers start dwindling. They will align with each other to take ISIS out. The rival militant groups may share ISIS' goal of a Caliphate state with Sharia law, but they sure don't agree al-Baghdadi should be the Caliph.
Obama was careful not to include Syria in yesterday's announcement of sending more advisers to Iraq to beat back ISIS. It's all about aid to Iraq. He said he wants to re-establish the border between Syria and Iraq so ISIS can't go back and forth between the two, making it easier for ISIS to advance in Iraq. It appears he's abandoned the ill-advised idea of training the Syrian rebels.
The so-called moderate rebels of the Syrian Revolutionary Front are in tatters. They want to take out Assad. They worked with Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaida) when it suited them. But they were also willing to work with the U.S. to get arms and training to use against Assad. When that didn't happen, and they saw civilians being killed in the airstrikes, they became unhappy with the U.S. But their earlier willingness to support the U.S. earned them a target on their back from al Nusra.
The other day, U.S strikes hit the Ahrar al Sham headquarters in Idlib, supposedly in its quest to kill "Khorasen" leaders. Ahrar al Sham are al Qaida backed rebels fighting Assad who sometimes work with Jabhat al Nusra. They are also popular in Syria. With the U.S. hitting Jabat al Nusra and Ahrar al Sham, what once was a decent relationship between the moderate rebels and JaN, is no more. The moderate rebels are basically in no-man's land, untrusted by the U.S., other rebels and al Nusra. None of the rebels believe any longer that the U.S. cares about taking out Assad. So who would the U.S. train?
Obama may agree we're just unnecessary surplusage in Syria and it’s better to let the rebels, ISIS and its assorted competitors in Syria fight it out by themselves. That way all of them get weakened. But whatever his thinking, he's making it very clear he's only interested in seeing ISIS beaten back in Iraq. His interest in Syria seems limited to blocking ISIS from using the Syria-Iraq border to advance in Iraq.
If the coalition partners would just increase the pressure on Turkey to control its borders and stop the recruits from crossing into Syria, it wouldn't matter whether they come to Turkey by cruise ship, bus or airplane. If the recruits can't get into Syria, they can't go from Syria to Iraq. By the time we finish training the Iraqis and Peshmerga, ISIS may already have disintegrated as a major threat -- or have self-destructed. I would rather wait and see if that happens before committing $5.6 billion. That money, and the millions or billions more dollars we will spend on weapons and tanks and fighter jets, much of which will end up in the hands of ISIS or other militant groups, could be put to much better use here at home.
