Thinking Clearly about ISIS

This week, while America’s media obsess over Roger Goodell’s increasingly shaky tenure as NFL Commissioner, President Obama is preparing - with the superficial support of a gun-shy Congress - to involve this country in yet another misadventure in the Middle East.

Having finally woken to the fact that ISIS – or ISIL, or IS, or CIS – represents a clear and present danger to the U.S, Mr. Obama has reluctantly decided to act.  The pity is that it took him so long.   

Not only is ISIS dangerous, it’s almost certainly Mr. Obama’s fault that it has become so.  In the spring of 2011, when Syria’s civil war began, it quickly became apparent that the rebels America preferred to deal with – the “good guys” – lacked what it took to overthrow the ruthless Assad regime.  

Good guys seldom win revolutions.  Moderate, educated, democratically-inclined people – nice, middle-class types – too often lack the passion, the grit, and, let’s face it, the willingness to kill or die in a righteous cause.  Revolutions are often started by moderates, but when they succeed, it is usually because they fall into the hands of fiery-eyed, ruthless extremists.

Study the great revolutions – French, Bolshevik, Chinese, etc.   Or just read Les Miserables.  The lesson appears again and again.  Nice guys make poor revolutionaries.  Bloodthirsty fanatics do rather better - at least, in the near term.

The problem is that Mr. Obama, like most Americans, doesn’t know much about history.  In Syria, he tried an ineffectual strategy of arming and providing advice to moderates, while rejecting, absolutely, the one strategy which would have toppled Assad without allowing power to shift to a group such as ISIS.

He refused to put American “boots on the ground.”

Inevitably, the Syrian revolution passed into the hands of fanatical warriors, willing to die for their cause – ISIS.

Now that ISIS has overrun large parts of northern, Sunni-majority Mesopotamia – “Iraq,” for those who still believe in that fiction – Mr. Obama has decided to act.  But once again, he has instinctively decided against the one thing that might succeed – American “boots on the ground.”

Instead, the President wants to combine a few hundred military advisors with the liberal use of American air power.

Our advisors are supposed to reorganize and put some spine into the Iraqi army, whose initial reaction to a few thousand lightly-armed ISIS warriors was, as Monty Python would put it, “Run away!”

Other American advisors are supposed to do the same thing for the moderate Syrian rebels – the “nice” folks whose ineffectual efforts made ISIS possible in the first place.

The President’s plan is that – aided by American air power – a revived, moderate rebel force will defeat both ISIS and Assad in Syria, while a revived Iraqi Army, aided by Kurdish militia and anti-ISIS, Sunni tribal chiefs, will do the same in “Iraq”.  

Talk about the audacity of hope.

For thirteen years, now, American policy in the Middle East has suffered from a complete lack of rational thinking.  Mr. Bush’s faith-based approach has yielded to Mr. Obama’s hope-based alternative, but the shift has not represented an improvement.

Americans must insist that those who govern us start looking at the Middle East clearly, coolly, and rationally.  Such an approach might begin by recognizing one basic reality:  “Iraq” does not exist.

“Iraq” was an artificial, post-World War I creation of British politicians, who gathered Sunni and Shi’ite Arabs and tossed in a substantial population of Muslim, non-Arab Kurds, in order to create a kingdom worthy of a favored Arab ally.  

“Iraq” was initially held together by British force – later, by ruthless Ba’athist dictators, the last of whom was Saddam Hussein,

When President Bush decided to topple Saddam, “Iraq” shattered into its component pieces.  Most of the American lives – and nearly all of the American billions – expended since our relatively bloodless invasion were devoted to reconstructing the fiction of “Iraq.”

As soon as Mr. Obama withdrew our last significant forces, “Iraq” began falling apart again.  ISIS merely accelerated the process.

As of now, the Kurds have largely withstood ISIS.  A relatively progressive, warlike people, the Kurds regard the U.S. with favor.  With U.S. support, they could create a tidy, independent, pro-American nation – perhaps even one which would welcome permanent American military bases, thus transforming the balance of power in that part of the world.  

But the Kurds cannot liberate ISIS-held portions of “Iraq.”  The Sunnis who live there fear and loathe ISIS, but they have a long-term rivalry with the Kurds over key cities and oil fields located along their common population boundary.  A Kurdish “liberation” would inevitably appear, to Sunni Arabs, as an act of aggression.

Nor can the Iraqi Army liberate ISIS-held territory.  The post-Saddam central government – and its army – have been dominated by “Iraq’s” Shi’ite majority.  Local Sunni tribal and religious leaders might fear ISIS, but its fanatics are, at least, Sunni – and therefore, preferable to the tyranny of their sectarian enemies.

Thus, the inevitable reality that no in-country forces are in a position to rally the local support essential to defeating ISIS at an acceptable cost.  The only power capable of pulling that off would be American “boots on the ground” – and even a substantial American army would be insufficient without a coordinated diplomatic strategy.

To defeat ISIS, Mr. Obama must offer the local Sunni leadership the only thing ISIS cannot – their own, independent state - without the terrors of religious extremism.  

But this would require Mr. Obama to acknowledge that “Iraq” no longer exists.  

By adopting this view, Mr. Obama might actually achieve something like victory.  But it would require him to admit to over five years of chasing a phantom - something our President, intent on creating an historical "legacy", is unlikely to do.

The alternative - continuing to pretend that "Iraq" is real - can only lead to futility, frustration, and horror.  Almost certainly, over time, we will witness the beheading of downed American pilots and captured American military advisors.

It's not impossible that we will even suffer the sort of 9-11 style retribution which only a terrorist group, securely in control of its own territory, can plan and launch.

For certain, we will not see victory.

“Iraq” is a myth.  A sane policy in Mesopotamia can only be built on reality.  

What a shame no one will tell the President.