November 1 - Islamic State Victories in Spite of Russian and American Bombing; Erdogan's Cynical Election Strategy; The Strategic Incoherence of the Obama Administration's Iraq/ Syria Policy

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the reversal of President Obama’s pledge not to put boots on the ground in Syria and assess the resilience of the Islamic State who, despite Russian and American bombing, have captured strategic town in Homs province and are poised to capture the main road that links Damascus with the northern cities. Hassan Hassan, the co-author of The New York Times bestseller “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror” who is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House in London and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington D.C., joins us to discuss the deepening proxy war that will extend the agony in Syria.

Part 2

Then we analyze the Turkish elections with early returns indicating President Erdogan’s ruling AKP Party is close to a majority while the pro-Kurdish HDP and nationalist MHP parties appear likely to cross the 10% threshold to claim seats in parliament. An expert on Turkey Asli Bali, a professor at the UCLA School of Law who specializes in International Human Rights and the Laws of War and is the author of the forthcoming book, “Constitutional Design in Religiously Divided Societies”, joins us to discuss the role of Turkey’s intelligence service the MIT in the recent bombings that appear to be a deliberate strategy of Erdogan’s to polarize the country ahead of today’s elections.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the role of the Kurds in fighting the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria where they appear to be the only allies the U.S. has in the region as the Obama Administration continues its delusional policy of working with the corrupt government in Baghdad which is allied with Russia and Iran, and Turkey’s cynical president Erdogan, who appears to working against U.S. objectives by bombing the Kurds who we’ve just sent in American boots on the ground to fight with.David Phillips, a former senior adviser and foreign affairs expert to the State Department during the administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama and the author of “The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East”, joins us to discuss  the strategic incoherence of our Iraq/Syria policy.