Several readers respond to my initial reaction to Obama’s address. One simply sends the above image. Another writes:
You seem to touch upon but never explicitly articulate the inherent contradiction in the president’s ISIS strategy. On the one hand, the president appears to acknowledge that only Iraq’s Sunnis can defeat ISIS. While commendable, it’s frankly difficult to reach any other conclusion: not only was Iraq’s army absurdly ineffective in fighting ISIS, but 100,000 U.S. ground troops couldn’t defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq. Only the Sunnis could.
The president’s strategy however is tailor made to prevent another Sunni awakening. As demonstrated in Iraq and Syria, ISIS thrives in (and only in) environments where Sunnis perceive themselves to be under attack by hostile outsiders (the Alawites in Syria and Shi’a in Iraq). The president’s strategy is for the U.S. to serve as the air force for the the Kurdish and Shia Iraqi troops in hopes that this will help them retake the Sunni parts of Iraq. It was the Shia Iraqi government’s control over Sunni territory that facilitated ISIS’s reemergence in Iraq in the first place. Being bombed by the most capable military power in the world is also unlikely to persuade the Sunnis that they are not under attack by outside forces.
I fear our reader is correct. There is no real integration of the Sunnis into the Iraqi government – and no real guarantee that they ever will be. If the US is seen as an ally of the Iranians and the Iraqi Shiites, it will help ISIS, not hurt it. Another dissents:
Look, this is not a defense of Obama or of the wisdom of any policy he is pursuing here. But everybody, including you, has to cut out the non-stop fiction that we are talking about a “war” here, much less a new, defining war decision.
Obama wasn’t asking for a war before and didn’t ask for a war tonight. No one is asking for a draft, a tax increase, ground troops or anything remotely resembling what – for hundreds of years – would be a “war.” That whole narrative framing is disingenuous, misleading, and hyperbolic.
Yes, Obama wants to expand air strikes against ISIS … and couple it with (no doubt futile) efforts to “fix” the broken Iraqi government. Did anyone for a moment doubt that we were going to try expanded airstrikes against ISIS? And, wake up – did anyone doubt that some military reaction would come when a group like ISIS threatened massive, untapped oil fields? (Oh, is that rude to say? Please.)
I am not saying that there aren’t all sorts of good, valid questions … but the hysteria and ridiculous demands for some sort of specific strategy, “end-game” and plan to “destroy” ISIS? C’mon. Again, I think we can debate the wisdom of the entire U.S. “war on terror.” But right now what I see are a bunch of journalists and bloggers who so egregiously fucked up the Iraq War under George W. Bush that they are now running around trying to overcompensate for past failures. And it clouds the debate, not informs it. Too many hyperventilating about a “war” include not only neocons, but also pundits desperate for some re-do of prior mistakes.
Zing! Look: the United States just announced it would begin airstrikes to back a ground campaign in Syria, a whole new theater of combat. It is only by the dangerous and corrupting process of the open-ended war on Islamist terrorism that we no longer think of that as a “war.” If another power started air-strikes on US soil, somehow, I think we’d think of it as a war. That this is now regarded as routine police work, which needs no Congressional authorization after 60 days, merely reveals the state of affairs we elected Obama to change. Another:
Try as I might, I just can’t see how you still maintain that this fight against the Islamic State is an inter-Islam fight. I mean, check out this article, which I append only because it’s the most recent one I’ve read on the spread is IS. You’ve been gone, but articles like this have been coming out every day. IS has insinuated itself possibly as far as Egypt and Libya. And, of course, they made a grand attempt to exterminate the non-Islamic Yazidi last month, to say nothing of what they do to your fellow Christians.
These people are pure millenarians, Andrew, and they don’t give the slightest shit about the concept of “over here” and “over there”. I’m all for discussing the intelligence of an intervention, but we can’t have that discussion properly if we assume, from the outset, that they’re containable, or that anything we do would automatically make things worse by the very fact of our having done them.
And as for that singular success you mention, about the chemical weapons removal in Syria, two things: 1. That was a last-ditch success for the Obama administration; it was in no wise a success for anyone living in Syria because… 2. The direct consequence of that forced maneuver was to cripple the chances of the FSA in Syria and to cede the field of battle entirely to the Islamists. You can’t not have noticed this, but I don’t see you saying much about it. That “victory” came at a price that we’re still paying, and will go on paying for some time to come.
Try reading some of the Islamic State’s literature, like their irregular broadsheet Dabiq. It’s as clear as can be. The whole world will be brought face-to-face with Armageddon, not just moderate Muslims or the Shia. My view is: ignore this or laugh it off at your peril. Welcome back, but don’t stretch the lessons of your break too far: the Islamic State is here, and it is spreading. If you don’t see that as a danger, then I think you need to take another look.
I would ask our reader to think of what our situation would be like if Assad’s WMDs were still at large – and within reach of ISIS. Then I’d favor intervention. But we avoided that true nightmare scenario only to enter into yet another one voluntarily. And the notion that the FSA was poised to win anything in Syria seems to me a fantasy. And another:
I hope you’re right about Obama’s true motives regarding our new intervention in Iraq. I really wanted him to say that he was doing this reluctantly, that this is an exercise in containment, that this is an Iraqi fight and that our role would be absolutely minimal, that we’re doing this so that the Kurds – who seem to have their act together – don’t get overrun and so the rest of Iraq can get back to fighting amongst themselves rather than dealing with an unwanted invading force, that he was more interested in rebuilding America than waging Iraq War III. I hope he has good reason to believe that ISIS in Iraq can be broken fairly easily and compelled to retire to Syria and that we won’t follow them there so that they become Assad and Putin’s problem rather than ours.
I suppose, however, that Obama had to act all commander-in-chiefy for a missile-happy American public and assure the people that we remain exceptional and tough. Therefore, we can’t contain; we can only “destroy.” With any luck, ISIS might roll back into Syria and a new story will arise to distract us so that Obama can scale this all back. I hope that’s the game he’s playing with us.
One thing that has been overlooked in all this is the domestic politics in play: we’re two months away from a second-term mid-term election. Obama’s popularity is as low as it’s ever been, dragged down it seems by the public’s sense that he is not a strong leader in foreign policy. At the same time, a GOP wave has not yet fully formed; Senate races for Democratic-held seats in Alaska, Louisiana, Arkansas, Iowa, and North Carolina remain close. Should Obama drop some bombs and ISIS ends up in retreat, the public could rally around the commander-in-chief, his poll numbers could rise, and some Republicans may even praise him for his foreign policy. That might be enough to save the Senate for the Democrats. It’s a gamble and a despicable way to play politics, but not out of the realm of possibility.
Last night’s speech also probably marks the demise of Rand Paul as a serious presidential contender. The GOP will never embrace a non-interventionist, and if Paul morphs into an interventionist, his credibility as a man of principle (which is what his candidacy would be built around, and far more so in his case than others) is shot. Count the votes his dad received in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2012; that’s how many Rand will receive in those states in 2016. That other Paul – Paul Ryan – is the future of the Republican Party.
We’ll see, won’t we? If this feckless campaign does lead to the unintended consequences I fear, it could be one way for Paul to win the nomination. It’s a long way to 2016. Think of the changes between now and this time last year.
The Dish 