Pressure on the White House to escalate the Syria/Iraq war has no doubt intensified post-Paris. Should Islamic State strike an American civilian target, President Barack Obama would be all but forced to “do something more.” What might that “something” look like, and what would be the consequences?
For an Obama already wary of deeper involvement in Syria/Iraq, a ramping up of the air campaign may be enough to tamp down the current post-Paris pressure. France may also find the short and sharp set of revenge attacks already underway enough for the near term, as Jordan did at the beginning of this year, after the horrific burning alive of one its pilots by Islamic State.… Seguir leyendo »
Last week President Obama approved an additional 450 troops to join the roughly 3,000 already in Iraq. Living inside secure bases nicknamed “lily pads,” they will train Iraqi soldiers for a few weeks via lecture and drill instruction. The graduates will then be sent outside the wire to fight the Islamic State.
This strategy is no more resolute than a lily pad, and our generals know it. It is tokenism that reflects confusion at the top, and it will fail.
Mr. Obama has declared that advisers are not combat troops. But in fact, to influence battlefield performance, the adviser’s first job is to set the example in combat.… Seguir leyendo »
Recent gains by Islamic State in Iraq have raised questions about the viability of the Obama administration’s strategy to degrade and ultimately defeat it. Thus far, President Barack Obama has ruled out the use of U.S. ground forces and opted for a mix of air strikes and arming elements in Iraq that have a vested interest in fighting Islamic State. The results of this approach have been mixed. What has become clear, though, is that to defeat Islamic State, the Obama administration must engage with elements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are increasingly on the front lines battling Islamic State alongside motivated Iraqi forces.… Seguir leyendo »
Earlier this month, U.S. President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice was questioned on NBC television about the American administration’s war strategy concerning the Islamic State, the aggressive and messianic self-proclaimed New Islamic Caliphate. Does a strategy exist? she was initially asked, since there are, to put it mildly, doubters among the crowd.
She firmly replied that there is indeed a strategy, which was stated by the president, which is to deter and ultimately “destroy” the Islamic State.
However, to destroy the Islamic State is not a strategy; it is an objective. The strategy is what gets the new international coalition (a doubtful quantity thus far) formed by the U.S.… Seguir leyendo »
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has forced America to return to the battlefield in Iraq. Earlier this month, President Barack Obama ordered airstrikes against ISIS fighters nearing Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region, while insisting that he wouldn’t allow the United States to be “dragged” back into Iraq. If Mr. Obama really wants to ensure no boots on the ground, he will have to rethink America’s policy toward Kurdish nationalism, and recognize the Kurds, and not only Iraqi ones, are his main ally against ISIS.
Mr. Obama, like previous presidents, has divided Kurdish interests by borders and subsumed Kurdish needs to the demands of states in the region.… Seguir leyendo »
When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria poured out from the eastern deserts of Syria into Iraq’s second-largest city last month, it was an image out of the eighth century: bearded Islamist marauders summarily executing unbelievers, pillaging as they went. But underneath that grisly exterior lurks something more modern and more insidious. As ISIS’s most recent annual report shows, the group is sophisticated, strategic, financially savvy and building structures that could survive for years to come. ISIS currently brings in more than $1 million a day in revenue and is now the richest terrorist group on the planet.
Despite the recent calls from hawks in Congress for a broader offensive, there are few meaningful options available to the United States.… Seguir leyendo »
Over the past few days, politicians and experts have been debating the merits of the Obama administration's strategy in Iraq -- or whether there is in fact a strategy.
The debate generally ignores a key underlying fact: The United States no longer has the ability or the will to shape the outcome in Iraq to the degree that American policy makers would like.
At the same time, politicians on both sides of the aisle appear constrained in their ability to talk candidly about U.S. foreign policy objectives and strategy because of concerns about domestic public opinion and so they often default to partisan sound bites.… Seguir leyendo »
It would be wrong to view President Obama’s decision to order airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and to give weapons to Kurdish fighters as a continuation of the war in Iraq. It is more accurate to see it as a mission to prevent a repetition of the war in Afghanistan. We have a chance to stop the Islamic State before it creates a sanctuary in Iraq and Syria that it could use to strike the United States, just as al-Qaeda used its sanctuary in Afghanistan to kill thousands of Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. That, to his credit, is what the president has begun to do.… Seguir leyendo »
President Obama's decision to target militants from ISIS -- which is now calling itself the "Islamic State" or "IS" -- operating in Iraq comes as a huge relief to the Iranians. Officials in Tehran have been panic stricken since ISIS forces overran the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on June 10.
All political factions in Tehran would like to see ISIS suffer and its latest advances rolled back. At the same time, contradictory statements made in Tehran make it clear that the Iranian authorities are divided about the implications of the American military's return to Iraq.
The moderates, the group of people associated with President Hassan Rouhani's presidential administration, are nudging toward an open admission that American military operations in Iraq compliment Tehran's policy goals.… Seguir leyendo »
While the world’s attention has been mainly focused on the war in Gaza, the deteriorating situation in eastern Ukraine, and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Islamic State’s campaign of terror in both Syria and Iraq has continued. In Syria, fighting between ISIS and Bashar Assad’s forces has led to some of the bloodiest days of the conflict so far.
In Iraq, things seemed to have reached a stalemate, with ISIS’s rapid advance through the country stopped short of Baghdad and the predominantly Shiite areas of southern Iraq. All the same, more than 1,700 Iraqis were killed in July, making it one of the deadliest months since the height of the Iraq war.… Seguir leyendo »
From a moral perspective, President Obama's response to the plight of Iraqi minorities targeted for extinction by vicious Islamists is justifiable and even commendable. Yet the resumption of American military action in Iraq — bombs for the wicked, bundles for the innocent — cannot disguise the overall disarray of U.S. policy in the region.
The moral sensibilities that have apparently moved the Obama administration to renew the Iraq war are, to put it mildly, selective. Elsewhere in the immediate region, Washington has hesitated to confront wickedness and has stood by while innocents have been subjected to the cruelest treatment. Whatever the factors that have shaped the U.S.… Seguir leyendo »
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