National Defense Briefs – 04/26/16

By W. Thomas Smith Jr.

NATIONAL DEFENSE BRIEFS is a series produced by National Defense Consultants, LLC, aimed at informing readers with timely military and homeland security news updates, trends, definitions, and short commentaries. Defense issues are inextricably connected to business. In that, MidlandsBiz.com and National Defense Consultants presents the “National Defense Briefs” that matter.

• Selective service (also known as the military draft or military mass-conscription) “may be headed for the scrap heap,” according to a Military Times report. “A bipartisan group of House lawmakers – several of whom sit on [the House Armed Services Committee] – has already offered legislation to abolish the Selective Service system, calling it an outdated vestige of military history,” the report says. “Committee officials said the authorization bill language is not geared toward keeping or eliminating the Selective Service system, but reviewing the cost and operation of a program that hasn’t been used to fill the ranks since 1973.”

• The Times report adds, “The agency’s activities cost taxpayers roughly $23 million each year, and a 2012 Government Accountability Office report questioned whether the system could even provide a list of draftees to the Defense Department if called upon to do so.”

• The push by lawmakers to abolish the draft follows “months of hand-wringing over whether women will be forced to register for the draft as part of the military’s plans to open combat jobs to all troops regardless of gender,” the Times reports.

• A report just-released by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation contends there are four major “conflict hubs” which draw jihadists, worldwide. The report states, “Seventy-six percent of prominent jihadis have fought in at least one of four major regional conflict zones. These are the Levant (Iraq/Syria), Sahel (Algeria/Mali/Mauritania/Niger), Khorasan (Afghanistan/ Pakistan), and East Africa (Somalia/Kenya). Though the movement is global, these hubs serve as gathering points.” [Read full report at http://tonyblairfaithfoundation.org/sites/default/files/Milestones-to-Militancy.pdf]

• An ISIS suicide-bombing attack in Baghdad, Monday, killed at least 11 people and wounded another 39. The bomb detonated in a predominantly Shia district of eastern Baghdad. The terrorist army claims it was targeting Iraqi security forces. The bombing was the third such blast in four days in the Iraqi capital, according to reports.

• Meanwhile, an ISIS suicide-bombing attack in Damascus, also Monday, killed at least six people (scores were wounded). The bomb detonated in a predominantly Shia district south of the Syrian capitol near a Syrian army checkpoint. The attack “was on the outskirts of Sayeda Zeinab, home to Syria’s holiest Shi’ite Muslim shrine,” according to Reuters.

• Fighting continues against ISIS in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East and West Asia; with ISIS now operating at varying levels in all hemispheres throughout the world. There are also indications that ISIS and Boko Haram “have begun to collaborate more closely, raising alarm that they are working together to attack American allies in North and Central Africa,” according to a report last week in the New York Times.

• As we have reported, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (also ISIS), the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and the Islamic State (IS). Many Arab-speaking people refer to ISIS as Daesh, an acronym for Al Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham (the Arabic translation of the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham). ISIS originated with Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2006. But AQI formally severed ties with ISIS in 2013-2014. AQI is also known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia or AQM.

– W. Thomas Smith Jr. – a former U.S. Marine rifleman – is a military analyst and partner with NATIONAL DEFENSE CONSULTANTS, LLC. Visit him at http://uswriter.com.