By Brigitte L.Nacos
It took the beheading of American James Foley for “the entire world” to be “appalled” as President Obama said the other day. Never mind that the same savage horde has beheaded and otherwise brutally killed and maimed many, many Christians, Shiites, Yazidis, and even fellow-Sunnis both in Syria and in Iraq.
The whole world should have been appalled for a long time and banned together to fight the jihadist killing machine. But there is no united front in sight.
Call it Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or Islamic State. The name does not matter. What matters is that what was once a group of terrorists has grown into a well-financed and well-equipped guerrilla force that can stand up to al-Assad’s Syrian army and to Iraq’s military. Their reign of terror is so horrendous that Al Qaeda Central, looking almost moderate in comparison, cut its ties to ISIS a while ago. The self-proclaimed Islamic State is too brutal for Al Qaeda!
How did ISIS become so powerful? Some blame George W. Bush for invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein; others blame Barack Obama for pulling out of Iraq and for not supporting pro-democracy rebels in Syria; still others cite all of the above.
But this is not the time to play the blame game. Instead, it is high time for the White House to recognize that ISIS is an imminent threat and act.
According to the group’s slick news magazine DABIQ, “the world has divided into two camps, the camp of Islam and faith, and the camp of kufr (disbelief) and hypocrisy – the camp of the Muslims and the mujahidin everywhere, and the camp of the jews, the crusaders,their allies, and with them the rest of the nations and religions of kufr, all being led by America and Russia, and being mobilized by the jews [sic].”
This is not the time to laugh about ISIS’s version of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” prediction. They consider “the historic battle in the current region” (Syria/Iraq) as the step that will lead to “the conquest of Constantinople and Rome” and an expansive Caliphate.
ISIS must be stopped, defeated. Otherwise, these hordes continue to steamroll ahead. They already control about one third of Iraq’s and Syria’s territories.
Air strikes in Iraq will not do. Nor will an expansion of such strikes to Syria. Not the Kurdish forces and not what is left of Iraq’s military will be able to defeat ISIS. U.S. Military leaders know it. And I suppose the president’s national security team knows it.
If they have not already done so, members of the National Security Council must come up with a strategy or strategy options to best counter ISIS. Now!
This is a time of real crisis and thus high time for President Obama to become fully engaged and show that he is engaged. He must forcefully lead—at home and abroad.
At home, he needs to consult with congressional leaders—both Democrats and Republicans—and communicate with the American public.
Abroad, he must work hard to build a coalition of Arab and European countries willing to join the fight against ISIS.
The other day, the president said, “From governments and peoples across the Middle East there has to be a common effort to extract this cancer, so that it does not spread. There has to be a clear rejection of these kinds of nihilistic ideologies.”
Why didn’t he name and blame the two most flagrant villains here—Saudi Arabia and Qatar who have been in the forefront of supporting Jihadism and the most extreme Jihadist organizations?
As for taking the fight to ISIS, this is a hierarchical organization that may well stand and fall with its centralized leadership. In this case, successfully targeting the organization’s leaders, first of all Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, could mean the group’s disintegration.
If the above cannot be accomplished, I am afraid the only option left would mean some boots on the ground, the boots of Special Forces in particular missions—hopefully with a broad coalition involved.
Professor Nacos: "But this is not the time to play the blame game."
I disagree.
We must assign blame in order to correct the corrupted social political dialogue that has neutralized the sure-handed American leadership of the free world that's vital to defend our preferred liberal world order.
If we fail to highlight the wrong-doers in our midst and their malfeasance, their input will continue to corrupt our social political dialogue and fatally undermine the clear American leadership needed to compete effectively with the likes of ISIS.
The proximate causes of the crisis are, one, the construction of ISIS in Syria that combined with, two, the U.S.-abandoned vulnerability of Iraq. Both conditions arose from post-Bush events, such as the degeneration of the Arab Spring, that are related to policy course changes made by Obama that fundamentally deviated from Bush's foreign policy.
In fact, President Bush handed the Iraq mission to President Obama having resolved the festering Saddam problem (none too soon, according to the Duelfer Report), revitalized international enforcement in the defining international enforcement of the post-Cold War, and proved the mettle of American leadership and devastated the terrorists with the Counterinsurgency "Surge". The emerging pluralistic, liberalizing post-Saddam Iraq provided the US with a keystone "strategic partner" to reform the region.
To wit, in May 2011, President Obama marked Iraq's "promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy ... poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress":
"Indeed, one of the broader lessons to be drawn from this period is that sectarian divides need not lead to conflict. In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy. The Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence in favor of a democratic process, even as they’ve taken full responsibility for their own security. Of course, like all new democracies, they will face setbacks. But Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress. And as they do, we will be proud to stand with them as a steadfast partner."
America was winning the War on Terror when Bush handed off to Obama. Obama should have simply stayed the course from Bush like Eisenhower stayed the course from Truman.
Instead, what is happening now is due to Obama's catastrophic error of changing course from Bush, thus reversing our critical hard-won gains in Iraq that Obama described in May 2011.
President Bush was right to enforce the Gulf War ceasefire and then stay in Iraq to secure the peace the same way the US stayed to secure the peace in Europe and Asia after World War 2. When Bush left office, the Iraq mission was a success.
President Obama was wrong to leave Iraq prematurely. America's protection was needed for the continued progression of Iraq’s pluralistic liberal reform and constructive role in the Middle East and the welfare of the Iraqi people. Instead, the feared danger of Obama's feckless 'lead from behind' approach to the Arab Spring and irresponsible exit from Iraq is being realized.
Misinformation and mischaracterization have distorted the public's understanding of the context, stakes, and achievements of the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement that President Bush carried forward from President Clinton and the ground-breaking peace operations by the US military in post-Saddam Iraq. The corrupted public perception of the Iraq mission has enabled Obama's elementary, catastrophic errors, undermined the enforcement of international norms, and curtailed the further development of peace operations.
To set America's mind right for the fight ahead, we must fix the corruption of our social political dialogue.
The first step is your admission that Operation Iraqi Freedom was, in fact, right on the law and justified on the policy.
The second step is calling to task and holding responsible every pundit who championed the compounding-harmful false narrative that the "justifications for the Iraq War were carefully manufactured lies".
For the truth of OIF, see http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2014/05/operation-iraqi-freedom-faq.html . For the basic essentials of the law and policy of OIF, see the primary sources linked in the 'further reading' section therein.
Posted by: Eric | August 28, 2014 at 05:00 PM