Tag: ISIS

ISIS’s War Games

Murtaza Hussain introduces the jihadists’ latest propaganda innovation, which looks to court fans of the Grand Theft Auto video game series:

A new video purportedly released by supporters of the group to Arabic language news media appears to show Islamic State, or ISIS, propaganda mocked up in the style of the popular “Grand Theft Auto” franchise. The video shows footage of explosions, sniper rifle attacks and drive-by shootings all rendered in the style of the GTA series. Arabic commentary included as subtitles contain quotes along the lines of targeting U.S. forces and “the Safavid Army”, a reference to Iranian or pro-Iranian forces. They also show images of an assault rifle riddling a police car full of bullet holes — a scene that would not be altogether unfamiliar to Grand Theft Auto players. …

Though the new video appears to constitute a trailer, there’s no indication yet that a real, playable game is in the offing anytime soon. Nonetheless, coupled with the group’s release yesterday of a new propaganda trailer directed at the United States, it appears that the ISIS media war is continuing to evolve in new and weird directions.

But the viewer is clearly meant to understand that the “real, playable game” is available only in Iraq and Syria. At least, that’s what Jay Caspian Kang suspects:

The similarities between ISIS recruitment films and first-person-shooter games are likely intentional. Back in June, an ISIS fighter told the BBC that his new life was “better than that game Call of Duty.” Video-game-themed memes traced back to ISIS have been floating around the Internet for months, including one that reads, “THIS IS OUR CALL OF DUTY AND WE RESPAWN IN JANNAH.” (“Respawn” is the gamer word for reincarnate.) Another ISIS video, as the Intercept notes, looks like a deliberate homage to Grand Theft Auto. Audio clips that sound much like ones in Call of Duty have been spliced into other ISIS videos. Many of the ISIS recruitment videos are dedicated to showcasing rocket launchers, mines, and assault rifles, as if to say, “If you join us, you’ll get to shoot these things.” …

In their recruitment of Western jihadis, ISIS has used a broad, pop-culture-laden campaign that seems to be aimed at turning what once might have been a radical religious message into something more worldly. During the World Cup, an ISIS Twitter account posted an image of a decapitated head with the message “This is our football, it’s made of skin #WorldCup.” That ISIS would try to access Western kids through such avenues speaks to a deep cynicism that discards the religious and the political for adrenaline and gore.

An ISIS Plot Down Under?

Australian police today arrested 15 people in connection with a terror plot, allegedly ordered by an Australian member of ISIS, to behead random citizens on video in the manner of Foley, Sotloff, and Haines. Some 800 police officers reportedly took part in the raid, the largest anti-terrorist operation in the country’s history:

Mohammad Ali Baryalei, a former Kings Cross bouncer and part-time actor, is understood to have made the instruction to kidnap people in Brisbane and Sydney and have them executed on camera. That video was then to be sent back to IS’s media unit, where it would be publicly released. Omarjan Azari, 22, from the western Sydney suburb of Guildford, was one of 15 people detained during the operation in Sydney and is accused of conspiring with Baryalei and others to act in preparation or plan a terrorist act or acts, court documents show. Commonwealth prosecutor Michael Allnutt told Sydney’s Central Local Court the alleged offence was “clearly designed to shock, horrify and terrify the community”.

Ishaan Tharoor puts the news in context:

The Soufan Group, a terrorism monitor, estimates that roughly 250 Australian nationals have joined the conflict in Syria. That number may be on the high end, though. Whatever the figure, a considerable proportion of the Australians jihadists are likely in the ranks of the Islamic State. The Herald Sun “unmasks” the identity of more than a dozen of them, including a former kickboxer and TV star. There are half a million Muslims in Australia and only the tiniest of minorities have anything to do with the networks connecting disaffected Muslims in the Antipodes to jihadist causes in the Middle East. Terror experts say the “jihadist scene” in the country is still very small. The worst attack suffered by Australia was in 2002: a set of coordinated bombings in the Indonesian island of Bali, linked to al-Qaeda, that killed hundreds, including 88 Australians.

Ed Morrissey reacts:

This is one reason why the rise of a terrorist state is not just a local issue, or a regional issue. Terrorist states do not want to just be “left alone,” but will spread their terror and destruction until stopped. There is plenty of room for rational and legitimate debate on the most effective way to deal with ISIS and its genocidal army, but ignoring it or shrugging it off as a problem for the Arabs to solve won’t do anything but make our options much more limited and much more costly when we finally do deal with the problem.

Jon Emont takes a look at ISIS’s recruitment efforts in nearby Indonesia:

As IS battles for territory in the Middle East, the group is also fighting for hearts and minds in Indonesia. In recent months, IS propaganda, urging Indonesians to support the militants’ cause in the Middle East, has spread throughout the archipelago via social media and local radical groups. The government has responded decisively. In early August, Jakarta enlisted Indonesia’s most respected Muslim authorities to denounce the organization, and has banned Youtube videos that endorse the jihadis. Outgoing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been outspoken in rejecting the group — he banned it, called it “embarrassing” to Islam, and arrested Indonesians suspected of providing support for IS.

In late August, the government tightened security around Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist monument, after intelligence suggested that militants linked to IS were targeting it. On Sept. 13, Indonesian police arrested seven suspected militants, including four foreigners, on suspicion that they were linked to IS. So far, the government’s efforts seem to have been surprisingly effective: Jakarta estimates that there are only 60 Indonesian fighters for IS.

Iraqi Militias Don’t Want To Be Our Frenemies

A day after Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi ruled out allowing the US to re-station ground forces in his country, Juan Cole observes that the country’s Shiite militias, widely considered proxies of Iran, are also warning against American intervention:

Hamza Mustafa reports from Baghdad that Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Iran-backed Badr Corps, warned that the American plan is to take credit for the victories of the Iraqi armed forces and the popular militias. He called for a rejection of the plan and dependence solely on Iraqi military and paramilitary to defeat ISIL. … The Bloc of the Free (al-Ahrar) led by Shiite cleric Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr called on al-Abadi to reject the US plan. Muqtada al-Sadr warned the US against trying to reoccupy Iraq and threatened, “If you return, we will return.” This was a reference to his Mahdi Army, which had subsided in importance after the US withdrawal. Muqtada boasted that the militia had inflicted heavy casualties on US troops and forced the US out. He also said that if the Mahdi Army “Peace Brigades” discovered an American presence in any province where they were fighting ISIL, they should immediately withdraw from the fight.

His conclusion:

It is difficult to tell how serious these militia leaders’ pronouncements are, since they might be attempting to save face with their followers even as they benefit from the US air cover. On the other hand, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq actually did in the past kidnap US troops, and the Mahdi Army fought them tooth and nail in spring of 2004, inflicting high casualties on them. Since President Obama’s air campaign requires Special Ops forces like Navy Seals or Green Berets to be on the ground with the Iraqi Army, they should apparently watch their backs. The people they are trying to help against ISIL don’t seem to appreciate their being there. And many of them seem to prefer Iran’s help.

So there are indigenous forces against ISIS that are telling us: we’ve got this. And we’re over-ruling them. Eli Lake, on the other hand, interprets these statements as evidence that Iran is working against us, noting that Tehran itself opposes US involvement in the conflict on the ground:

[Mohammad] Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday evening that Iran provides the militias with help organizing, some weapons, and military advisers. He also stressed they were disorganized. Nonetheless, Zarif said that any U.S. ground presence in Iraq would likely spur opposition. “The problem also when it comes to the United States is that the presence of foreign forces in any setting creates domestic opposition and domestic resentment,” he said. “And it is best, whether we support this or not—and we certainly do not support anybody engaging in anything that would complicate the situation—is to allow the Iraqis to fight this.”

Phillip Smyth profiles the resurgent Shiite militias, which he calls “highly ideological, anti-American, and rabidly sectarian organizations” and nearly as much of a security problem as ISIS itself:

Shiite militias have embedded themselves within the structures of the Iraqi government, which has become far too reliant on their power to contemplate cracking down on them. Together, they have committed horrifying human rights abuses: In early June, Shiite militias along with Iraqi security forces reportedly executed around 255 prisoners, including children. An Amnesty International report from June detailed how Shiite militias regularly carried out extrajudicial summary executions, and reported that dozens of Sunni prisoners were killed in government buildings. …

The growing power of these militias is a sign that, despite Maliki’s removal as prime minister, the Iraqi government remains beholden to deeply sectarian forces. These militias have generally retained their operational independence from Baghdad, even as they exploit the country’s nascent democratic system to gain support through their domination of official bodies. They are not simply addendums to the state — they are the state, and do not answer to any authority in Baghdad, but only to their own clerical leaders or Tehran.

All the same, Ben Fernandes argues that cooperating with Iran against ISIS carries fewer risks than not cooperating with Iran:

The current U.S. strategy to defeat ISIS unintentionally incentivizes Iran to build a nuclear weapon by increasing Iran’s perception of external threats and a need for the protection afforded by the possession of nuclear weaponry.  The U.S. intent to arm “moderate” Sunni groups in Syria to fight ISIS will simultaneously (if inadvertently) increase the “Sunni threat” to Iran and Iranian allies like the Assad regime.  Iran perceives all Sunni groups in the Levant as threatening regardless of a Sunni group’s views of the United States as the enemy.  Just as Saddam Hussein prioritized potential threats from Iran and internal dissidents far above the threat of external attack from the United States, Iran acts similarly towards internal dissidents, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni groups vis-à-vis the United States.

ISIS credibly threatens regional stability, Iranian interests, U.S. interests, Iraq, and many others.  As such, there may be a way to find common ground with Iran in the fight against ISIS.  Iran will not become a reliable U.S. partner, but can be a transactional partner for specific issues of mutual interest just as the U.S. partnered with the Soviets in World War II.  A grand U.S.-Iran bargain over Syrian governance, ISIS, Iranian nuclear weapons, and sanctions may be more practical than dealing with each of these issues in sequence, per the current “ISIS first” approach discussed in GEN Dempsey’s testimony.

This Is What Passes For A War Authorization These Days

Yesterday, the House voted 273-156 to let the president arm the “moderate” Syrian rebels to help fight ISIS:

The administration’s request was an amendment to a must-pass, stopgap measure to keep the government running through mid-December. Although the amendment had the early support of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi D-Calif., a number of lawmakers in both parties began defecting, prompting a last-minute push by party leaders to build support.

New York’s Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said a range of top Democrats worked to the last minute to gather votes for the president’s plan, which would train some 5,000 Syrian rebels in the first year at facilities in Saudi Arabia. … Having secured approval in the House, the bill now moves to the Senate, where it may receive a skeptical reception. In testimony Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State John Kerry came under intense questioning about the White House’s plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels.

The idea is as doomed now as it long has been. The US trained the entire Iraqi army in country for years – and they still scarpered. The problem is political; almost certainly unsolvable except in the long run by the parties themselves; and made utterly solvable by US intervention. The Senate is set to vote on the measure today. Weigel notes who voted “aye”:

Everybody in competitive races. Georgia Rep. John Barrow, Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, and West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall are among the very last Democrats in districts that voted for the Romney-Ryan ticket in 2012. They went “aye.” So did Iowa Rep. Bruce Braley and Michigan Rep. Gary Peters, both Senate candidates in tough races. On the Republican side, Senate candidates Tom Cotton and Steve Daines voted “aye,” as did Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman and Florida Rep. Steve Southerland. They’re the only two Republicans in seats that appear now to be toss-ups, with strong Democratic challengers cutting through the headwind.

Most Democratic leaders. The top three Democrats in the House — Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Jim Clyburn — were ayes, as was DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The only leadership figure to break with the president was Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen.

Every Republican leader. From John Boehner to the deputy whip team, the GOP was on board.

And Alex Rogers relays what the “nays” had to say:

Lawmakers who opposed the bill said the President’s strategy to arm so-called moderate Syrian rebels is misguided. The Obama Administration is hoping these fighters can help beat back the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). “I’ve never been satisfied that we’re not going to end up fighting people that we’ve armed at some point in the future,” Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Caroline, said. “No one ever defined victory to me that made any sense whatsoever.”

The bill even lost the support of Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, a top Democratic leader. “I support the President’s overall strategy; I support what he’s doing in providing air support for the Iraqi forces and the Kurdish rebels,” Van Hollen said. “I have misgivings about this piece because the priority of the so-called Syrian rebels is to defeat [Syrian strongman Bashar] Assad. And I understand that, but it’s hard at this point to see how defeating Assad strengthens the mission against ISIS.”

To Allahpundit, the vote doesn’t look like such a ringing endorsement:

Here’s the roll. Obama ended up getting many more Republican votes than Democratic ones (159 versus 114), including Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, and Paul Ryan. It was tea partiers like Justin Amash, Michele Bachmann, and Louie Gohmert who ended up in the opposition. Truth be told, though, no faction within the House is keen on O’s train-the-rebels strategy; this resolution, in fact, will expire on December 11th, the same day that the new continuing resolution would expire. What the two sides are doing here is simply punting the issue until after the midterms, when the GOP won’t have to worry about any electoral blowback if they try to block O on a war effort that’s surprisingly popular for the moment.

Ryan Grim and Sam Stein pick up chatter in Washington that the CIA, which already tried arming the rebels, is not too sanguine about trying again:

One Democratic member of Congress said that the CIA has made it clear that it doubts the possibility that the administration’s strategy could succeed. “I have heard it expressed, outside of classified contexts, that what you heard from your intelligence sources is correct, because the CIA regards the effort as doomed to failure,” the congressman said in an email. “Specifically (again without referring to classified information), the CIA thinks that it is impossible to train and equip a force of pro-Western Syrian nationals that can fight and defeat Assad, al-Nusra and ISIS, regardless of whatever air support that force may receive.”

He added that, as the CIA sees it, the ramped-up backing of rebels is an expansion of a strategy that is already not working. “The CIA also believes that its previous assignment to accomplish this was basically a fool’s errand, and they are well aware of the fact that many of the arms that they provided ended up in the wrong hands,” the congressman said, echoing intelligence sources.

Francine Kiefer notes that the procedure the House followed allowed a fair amount of debate over the amendment:

For surer passage, the White House wanted the Syria authorization and the spending bill, known as continuing resolution, to be one piece of legislation. No one would want to shut down the government, and so Syria would pass. But House members strenuously objected: Because of its seriousness, Syria deserved to be debated and voted on separately. Leadership listened. Members got six hours of debate and a vote, passing the amendment 273 to 156. Then the amendment was attached to the spending bill and voted on as a package. It passed 319 to 108.

Alas, for procedural reasons, senators will not have that option and will have to vote on the welded package sent from the House. Some senators plan to vote no, but it is expected to pass.

By the way, Senator Tim Kaine has drafted an actual war authorization, but Waldman doubts it will go anywhere:

[E]verything Obama says he is committed to is incorporated in Kaine’s proposal. It even leaves the 2001 AUMF in place, which is either a sensible choice allowing for flexibility in fighting terrorism or a loophole you could drive a truck through, so long as the White House maintains that ISIS and al Qaeda are allied. Will it go anywhere? It may be too soon to know, but I’m guessing that the White House will say, privately if not publicly, that they don’t want to “tie the president’s hands.” Democrats will be responsive to that pressure (if it comes) from the White House, while Republicans will probably be uneasy about anything that could constrain the war-making ability of this president or a future one.

And the beat goes on …

Haters Be Calling This War A “War” Ctd

Looking at how the Obama administration has hemmed and hawed over whether this campaign against ISIS counts as a “war”, Dave Uberti ponders the meaning of the word today:

In the past, nations typically fought wars against other nations or enjoyed peace, providing a dichotomy that was easy for politicians to communicate, the media to relay, and the public to understand. Wars ended and, perhaps as importantly, the concept of victory or defeat was unambiguous. But that era is long over, said Martin J. Medhurst, a Baylor University professor of rhetoric and communication. “War, in the American experience, has not been a simple question since the end of World War II,” he said. “The whole nature of what is a war, how to conduct warfare, and how to know whether you win or lose has become very murky in the past half century.”

The administration’s capitulation on the word choice is notable, Medhurst added, as it represents a starting point for the evolution of political discourse surrounding the war. “Once you invoke the term ‘war’ — whether it’s literally, as was the case with Vietnam, or not, as was the case with the War on Poverty — once you invoke that metaphor, you’ve put all of those marbles in the game,” he said. “There’s almost no going back.”

Tanisha Fazal brings up some other reasons why the nomenclature matters:

A major reason states do not declare war upon non-state actors is because doing so would accord these actors the very legitimacy, rights and status that states are fighting to keep them from gaining. We observe this most easily in civil wars, where rebel groups might declare war upon states, but states tend not to reciprocate, instead labeling rebels as criminals or terrorists.

There are other reasons not to expect a US declaration of war against ISIS. As I have shown, all states have pretty much stopped declaring war. The US is no exception – Congress has not declared war since World War II. This decline is not due to a decline in war – there have been plenty of wars and armed conflicts since the Second World War, and the US participated in many of them. Rather, once states issue a formal declaration of war they unequivocally oblige themselves to comply with international humanitarian law. And as the standards of complying with international humanitarian law have risen over time, states appear to be increasingly reluctant to step over the bright line of issuing a formal declaration of war.

But Friedersdorf, responding to Ambinder’s contention that this really isn’t a war, insists that it is, and that Obama must get permission from Congress to wage it:

Yes, the War on Terrorism is different from other conflicts in various ways. But why does the number of troops needed as compared to Iraq matter? Why does the cost, which is only “negligible” in terms of the rest of a gargantuan military budget, matter? Why must Obama be graded on a curve set by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney?

If American war planes are firing missiles at a foreign nation or militia, that is war. Everyone understands as much with respect to foreign countries. Imagine an Iranian drone carried out a single targeted missile strike on an Israeli settlement. Would that be an act of war? Or not so much, because it’s merely part of “a balance of measures—political, military, legal, and otherwise,” to degrade Zionism? What if Russia stationed, in a foreign country, just a tiny fraction of the troops that Bush mobilized for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan?

And Ilya Somin takes on what he considers “the strongest of the newer arguments for Obama’s decision”, i.e. that there’s no need to declare war because ISIS itself has already initiated it:

The self-defense theory has several virtues. It does not rely on a strained interpretation of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or the 2002 Iraq AUMF. And unlike John Yoo’s theory of executive war powers, it does not give the president blanket authority to initiate new wars on his own.

But the idea nonetheless has some real flaws. ISIS’ atrocities in beheading two American journalists and holding a few other Americans hostage are horrendous. But it’s hard to argue they are an attack against the US on a large enough scale to count as a war. Serial murderers such as Ted Bundy and the Unabomber probably killed as many or more Americans than ISIS did before Obama ordered air strikes against it (like ISIS, the Unabomber even did it for political reasons). The same is true of quite a few pre-9/11 foreign terrorists. Yet few claim that their actions amount to initiating a war against the United States.

An Actual War On Women

Aki Peritz and Tara Maller want to know why ISIS’s use of rape and sexual slavery as weapons of war isn’t getting more press:

The Islamic State’s (IS) fighters are committing horrific sexual violence on a seemingly industrial scale: For example, the United Nations last month estimated that IS has forced some 1,500 women, teenage girls, and boys into sexual slavery. Amnesty International released a blistering document noting that IS abducts whole families in northern Iraq for sexual assault and worse. Even in the first few days following the fall of Mosul in June, women’s rights activists reported multiple incidents of IS fighters going door to door, kidnapping and raping Mosul’s women.

IS claims to be a religious organization, dedicated to re-establishing the caliphate and enforcing codes of modesty and behavior from the time of Muhammad and his followers. But this is rape, not religious conservatism. IS may dress up its sexual violence in religious justifications, saying its victims violated Islamic law, or were infidels, but their leaders are not fools. This is just another form of warfare.

Even women and girls who escape these horrors still face sexual exploitation in refugee camps. Chandra Kellison reports on what she observed while working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon this summer:

Three-quarters of those displaced in Lebanon are women and children who have lost a family member to war and remain vulnerable inside and outside of their new community. A generation of Syrian kids have the far-away gazes of battle-hardened soldiers returning from war. Displaced girls, especially, face the triple jeopardy of war, domestic violence and attacks from neighboring men. Only the immediate threat of war diminishes during the journey from Damascus to Beirut. Their new normal is neighbors, single women, engaging in survival sex with a series of resourceful men and widows pretending to call husbands who are really dead, all in a bid to seem less vulnerable to kidnappers, harassers, and attackers in their Lebanon. …

Not even the most fertile imagination could have conjured a better monster-in-the-dark than IS. The Brothers Grimm could not compete with stories spreading from city to city of savages that force children to use severed heads as soccer balls. By comparison, the terror caused by IS had reduced the perceived danger of a few opportunists who punch down the dignity and emotional integrity of refugee women and girls through offers that cannot be refused, because the needs of their families are too dire.

War Will Keep Them Together

https://twitter.com/Khaleed1949/statuses/511845817125044224

Remember that schism between al Qaeda and ISIS? Well, there’s nothing like a new war with the Great Satan to help patch that up. Adam Taylor passes along some salient news and poses a troubling question:

In a two-page message posted to Twitter accounts that represent both groups, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) asked their “brothers” in Iraq and Syria to “stop killing each other and unite against the American campaign and its evil coalition that threatens us all.” It’s an unusual move. The two groups are perhaps the most notorious of the al-Qaeda-linked groups: AQAP operates in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and it has been described as the “most lethal Qaeda franchise” by the Council on Foreign Relations, while AQIM operates in Northern Africa, in particular Algeria, Mali and Libya. Analysts say a joint statement from the two is unprecedented. …

[T]he statement calls on all jihadist groups to unite against a common enemy: “crusader America” and the alliance of states backing the U.S. plan to strike the Islamic State. This language echoes the Islamic State’s own language and presents a bigger concern: Might U.S. strikes against the Islamic State cause it to reunite with al-Qaeda and other extremist groups it opposes?

Aymenn al-Tamimi translates and analyzes the statement. In his view, the answer to that question is “not necessarily”:

This statement does not mean AQAP and AQIM are getting closer to IS or warming to the idea of pledging allegiance to IS. Indeed, they have firmly rejected IS’ Caliphate declaration, and have maintained their loyalty to al-Qa’ida Central (AQC). For comparison, note that members and supporters of Jamaat Ansar al-Islam- an Iraqi jihadi group (with a Syrian branch) which like al-Qa’ida does not accept IS’ claim to be a state or caliphate- have also denounced the U.S. airstrikes etc. targeting IS as constituting war against Islam, and like al-Qa’ida would want an ideal situation where all jihadis having the end-goal of a Caliphate unite against a common enemy, while rejecting IS’ assumption of supreme authority.

Meanwhile, much though Obama takes pains to deny that there is anything religious or civilizational about this war, that’s not how ISIS sees it:

[N]o matter how delicately the White House wants to frame renewed military operations in the region, it’s serving up rich propaganda fodder for the militant group in Washington’s crosshairs. As Morning Mix’s Terrence McCoy notes, the Islamic State is all too happy to paint the coming battle as a civilizational conflict. In its own glossy publication, Dabiq, the terror organization hails its plans to fight the “crusaders in Washington” and sees its rise amid the chaos of the Middle East as an evocation of history. …

In any event, it’s all dubious propaganda for the Islamic State, which as Obama noted, spends most of its time killing fellow Muslims and faces a constellation of largely Muslim factions — Kurdish militias, Syria’s Assad regime, the Iraqi government, Iran, and the Sunni Gulf states — arrayed against it. And, given Obama’s caution, the Islamic State can’t count on the same slip of the tongue of the president’s predecessor. Just days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush warned that “this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.”

Counterterrorism, Containment, Or Conquest?

Juan Cole argues that containment is the superior strategy for answering the challenge posed by ISIS, noting that “the most effective campaigns in which the US air force has been involved have been more or less defensive”:

A minimalist, defensible position for the US could have been to say that the US will intervene aerially to ensure that Erbil and Baghdad don’t fall, but that recovering the Sunni Arab areas that Nouri al-Maliki had alienated was up to Iraqi politicans and forces. And a minimalist strategy could have simply ignored the Syrian side of the border. It is true that ISIL has a big base in Raqqah and uses its Syrian assets to support its operations in Iraq. But ISIL successes in Iraq were in any case not mainly military but rather political. Since this is so, the military position of ISIL in Syria isn’t really so central to its taking of Mosul, Tikrit, etc. Nor would holding Raqqah help it to hold Mosul if Mosul turned against it.

The US was very good in the Cold War at containing Stalinism but very bad at defeating a guerrilla group like the Vietcong. It was the former that mattered in the end.

He’s right. And I say that not from any ideological position, but simply by observing US policy failure this past decade. To try and do the same thing again when it didn’t work before is the mark of insanity.

Meanwhile, former congresswoman Jane Harman wants to go to war with the ideology of extremism rather than the terror groups themselves:

What’s much more challenging is to confront—and defuse—the ideologies that underpin these groups. The jargon for this is “countering violent extremism” (CVE), a crucial part of the strategy that’s underfunded and hard as all get-out to accomplish. If we lump both al Qaeda and ISIL into one bucket labeled “terror,” we’ll never pull it off.

An example: The State Department recently put out an exceptionally violent video that used some of ISIL’s own promotional materials. The point was to highlight that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s thugs kill Muslims—which is an important point to make. Osama Bin Laden cautioned ISIL’s ancestor, al Qaeda in Iraq, that its slaughter of fellow Muslims made for bad optics. But what might have worked against al Qaeda won’t necessarily work against this new enemy. ISIL glamourizes violence, the notion that its caliphate is worth dying and killing for. The group celebrates death. We need to undermine that pitch with a positive narrative, not amplify its negatives.

Paul Pillar cautions against returning to “war on terror” rhetoric:

Names matter, even if it is not so much the term itself but associated concepts that dominate public discourse and thinking. To the extent that efforts to curb the expansion of ISIS are thought of as War on Terror II, this has unfortunate effects, including the mistaken belief that seizure of territory in the Middle East constitutes a terrorist threat to the United States, and insensitivity to counterproductive effects of the use of military force.

The Obama administration isn’t calling its effort War on Terror II, because it does not want to be seen as copying the approach and the mistakes of its predecessor. Whatever the administration’s motives, eschewing the war metaphor is good for public understanding. What the United States is doing against ISIL is a continuation—albeit more intensively for right now, because of the public alarm—of counterterrorism that has been going on for a long time and, unlike wars, will not end.

And J.M. Berger and Jessica Stern find it “hard to escape the feeling that our policies still come from the gut, rather than the head”:

Bin Laden once said, “All that we have to do is to send two mujahideen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there.” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir of ISIL, may be counting on just that response, and for the same reason—to draw the United States into a war of supreme costs, political, economic and human.

A limited counterterrorism campaign may insulate us from those costs, but it is not likely to be sufficient to accomplish the goals laid out by the president. ISIL is a different enemy from al Qaeda. It has not earned statehood, but it is an army and a culture, and more than a traditional terrorist organization. Limited measures are unlikely to destroy it and might not be enough to end its genocidal ambitions. Our stated goals do not match our intended methods. Something has to give—and it’s probably the goals.

Obama vs The Obama Administration On War

Could the messaging get any worse? Eli Lake and Josh Rogin wonder how the president will maintain his light-touch approach to fighting ISIS when his people, specifically his top military brass, keep hinting that they favor a more direct intervention:

The internal dissent is likely to intensify with Obama’s choice of John Allen to lead the international campaign to persuade U.S. allies to pony up troops, money, and arms for his new war. Allen, a retired general beloved by Washington’s neoconservatives, has called for a robust U.S. war against ISIS since June. Obama and Allen sat down together Tuesday at the White House. Soon after he retired in 2013, Allen took a veiled shot at his old and now new boss, observing that in the wake of Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq, “the body count is going up, the bloodletting is going up.”

As the details of the president’s new war plan leak out this week, many of Allen’s former colleagues and lawmakers wonder whether the president’s new special envoy will be able to convince Arab and European states to get behind a strategy they see as amounting to a half-measure.

Friedersdorf points out that if Obama didn’t want his administration going off-message and calling for more war, he shouldn’t have staffed it with hawks:

That momentum would build behind war is no fluke. What else did Obama expect when he staffed his entire administration with hawkish Iraq War proponents? Any attempt to measure the momentum for war must include Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel calling ISIS “beyond anything we’ve ever seen,” heated rhetoric from Secretary of State John Kerry, and Vice President Joe Biden vowing that the United States will follow ISIS “to the gates of hell.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also been a prominent hawk. This is not a surprise. Obama elevated a faction of hawkish Democrats, despite purporting to believe that they all favored a “stupid” war. Little wonder that elites seem so overwhelmingly in favor of intervention.

Mark Thompson thinks Dempsey’s statement yesterday was telling:

[W]hile he caveated what he told the panel about the escalating fight with the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria, his message was clear: if the U.S.-led effort to defeat ISIS and oust it from its self-proclaimed Islamic State straddling the Syrian-Iraq border falls short, Dempsey will go back to the Oval Office and ask Obama for a green light to send at least a limited number of American ground-combat forces to help get the job done.

What was striking was how he delivered the message. Pentagon officials are forever saying they won’t speak in “hypotheticals”—things that might happen in the future—yet Dempsey dropped an atomic what-if into his opening statement. “If we reach the point where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraq troops on attacks against specific ISIL targets,” he said, “I’ll recommend that to the President.”

And to Zack Beauchamp, it indicates that our commitment in Iraq and Syria could easily snowball:

Obama has final say on America’s Iraq policy and is free to reject Dempsey’s “recommendation” to send troops into combat. Given the president’s wariness about ground wars after George W. Bush’s Iraq War and Afghanistan, and his own consistent promise to the American public, he might reject any plan to send US troops into a direct combat mission. But here’s the third thing: this war is escalating quickly. We went from a targeted mission to protect American citizens in Kurdistan and save Iraqi Yazidis from genocide to a full-scale mission to destroy ISIS in both Iraq and Syria in the span of, roughly, a month. Despite his promises, Obama did indeed consider sending ground troops into combat to rescue Yazidis trapped on a mountain.

Internal pressure from leading advisers like Dempsey could very well push the president towards even larger escalations. So, too, could the internal logic of war.

And Obama appears as if he is a spectator to this dangerous escalation – not someone strongly tamping it down. I fear he has lost control of events – by attempting to appease them.

Americans Support Strategy They Know Won’t Work, Ctd

Aaron Blake highlights a Pew poll that shows Americans are united in their support for military action against ISIS:

9-15-2014_01But that unity is only a few inches deep. That’s because it’s becoming clear that Republicans are angling for a more active role in combating the Islamic State, while Democrats are very much concerned about so-called “mission creep” — i.e. getting too involved and not being able to go back. Pew asked people whether they were more concerned about going too far in Iraq and Syria or not going far enough. Republicans and conservatives both say overwhelmingly that they worry about not going far enough; Democrats and liberals worry more about doing too much. It’s basically Iraq 2004 — 10 years later.

And who was right then? Waldman entertains the possibility that the public isn’t being hysterical after all:

Only 18 percent of Americans overall — 23 percent of Republicans and 15 percent of Democrats — think the new military campaign will decrease the chances of a terrorist attack here at home. You can slice these data a couple of ways, of course, but around two-thirds to three-quarters of every group believes that the campaign will either increase the odds of a terrorist attack or not make much difference. Yet a majority supports it anyway.

I don’t think there’s necessarily anything confused about that; in fact, it might be a mature, sober judgment. People may believe that ISIS is primarily focused on what it’s doing in the Middle East, and going after them could, in the short run, lead them to try to retaliate against us with a terrorist attack here. But the public might also believe that despite that risk it’s the right thing to do. If that’s so, it would indicate a public reluctantly going along with a limited military action, not one driven by fear and chanting for blood.

So the public wants to launch a war on terrorism that it doesn’t think will decrease terrorism. That leaves those who believe it is “the right thing to do.” Does that mean right as in ISIS is “identical” to the Nazis, as O’Reilly has it? Or as in: it’s so despicable we should attack it even though it won’t work? That does not encourage me about the future of American foreign policy. Drum picks up on the same theme:

Only 18 percent of Americans think that fighting ISIS will reduce the odds of a terrorist attack on US soil. And there’s not a big difference between the parties. Even among Republicans, only 23 percent think a military campaign against ISIS will make us safer at home. That’s a refreshingly realistic appraisal.

But why? Is it because the Republican fear campaign is so transparently unhinged? Or is it because of President Obama’s unusually low-key approach to the ISIS campaign? I’d like to think it’s at least partly the latter. I’m not very excited about any kind of campaign against ISIS at the moment, but as a second-best alternative, it’s at least nice to see it being sold to the public as a case of having to eat our vegetables rather than as yet another exciting bomb-dropping adventure in defense of our national honor. It’s a step in the right direction, anyway.

James Lindsay flags another new poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that illustrates Americans’ contradictory foreign policy tendencies in general:

At first blush the Chicago Council’s poll numbers reaffirm the current conventional wisdom that Americans are more skeptical toward foreign engagements. While a majority of Americans (58 percent) say the United States should take an “active part” in world affairs, the percentage who favor “staying out” (41 percent) is the highest since pollsters first began asking the question back in 1947. (The Chicago Council has been conducting its periodic foreign policy surveys since 1974.) As a result the gap between Americans favoring “active part” over “staying out” has shrunk to its smallest ever, just 17 percentage points.

But the public’s response to other questions in the poll suggest that an increased wariness about foreign policy is not the same as a sharp turn inward. More than eight in ten Americans say that strong U.S. leadership in world affairs is desirable, in line with previous responses to the question. Just as important, even those who want the United States to “stay out” of world affairs think that strong US leadership is either “very desirable” (19 percent) or “somewhat desirable” (50 percent).

But that’s such a vague question it’s had to know what to make of the answer. I mean: who would want the US not to exercise strong leadership? The question is: to what ends? And is it prudent? And can it be controlled?