by Dish Staff
In Peter Feaver’s view, Obama’s intervention in Iraq disproves what had been a main feature of his foreign policy doctrine: the value of leading from behind. “In authorizing new combat action in Iraq when he did,” he argues, “Obama conceded that his approach of doing less as a way to make others do more was not working — at least not with respect to Iraq”:
President Obama rightly recognized that there was no long-term solution in Iraq until the Iraqi polity picked a less sectarian successor to Maliki. More controversially, Obama rejected multiple appeals for help from the Iraqis (and from our Kurdish partners) earlier in the crisis in the hopes that withholding aid would drive the Iraqis to dump Maliki in a desperate effort to secure American assistance. … Finally, when Obama was staring at a potential catastrophe in Erbil in the Kurdish region that might eclipse the disaster in Benghazi, he decided he could wait no longer and ordered U.S. forces into combat — despite the failure of Iraqis to meet the hitherto stated conditions for U.S. assistance.
Shortly after Obama acted, the Iraqis finally acted themselves, nominating a (hopefully more inclusive) replacement to Maliki. In other words, the Iraqis themselves may have been waiting to see if they could trust Obama’s offers of help. Perhaps it was Obama’s initiative that catalyzed the Iraqi’s action, rather than vice-versa, as Obama had intended. That, at least, is how the Bush administration would have interpreted the strategic dynamic.
James Jeffrey worries that Obama’s aversion to direct military action makes him reluctant to use one of his most potent tools:
Given Obama’s ambivalent views on the efficacy of military force, and America’s tortured history in Iraq, he downplays his strategy’s second element: direct U.S. military actions. Despite the president’s oft-stated belief that there is never any military solution to, well, almost anything, IS’s advances into Kurdish and Shiite Arab areas of Iraq are not a political or social phenomenon but a military achievement. And one cannot confront a classic military strategy with diplomatic niceties. …
Do military actions of this sort open the door to a “slippery slope” that could lead to new Iraqs and Vietnams? In theory, yes. But Barack Obama is the least likely president to make a mistake of this sort. Moreover, the reality doesn’t equal the fear: Over scores of deployments and combat operations since 1945, the United States has rarely headed down the slippery slope. And let’s be clear: The Iraq adventure under President George W. Bush was not a slippery slope but an intentional regime-change strategy gone wrong. What the president thus must do is to convince first himself and then the American people that our key interests — oil supply, protecting the homeland and allies from terrorism — are at stake so long as the Islamic State is rampant. Americans need to understand that if the United States does not stop them, no one will.
And Nabeel Khoury believes that we have no choice but to take the lead in defeating ISIS or concede hegemony in the Arab heartland to Iran:
There are no good options for the U.S. administration at this point, only bad and worse ones. Any counter-offensive to dislodge ISIS would have to include large forces on the ground, something the president has ruled out. This leaves two options for Washington: Take a deep breath, hunker down, and focus on a long term project to arm and train Kurdish forces, hopefully in collaboration with what’s left of the Iraqi army. The long delayed adoption of the FSA would be a natural part of this strategy. Washington’s failure to lead in these efforts will leave only one other option, which is to step aside and let Iran and Hezbollah take the responsibility for ousting ISIS, and therefore take credit and full control of Iraq after the fight is done.
The Dish 