America Alone Against the Jihadis

America may bear the most responsibility for the splintering of Iraq, but others must also try to extinguish the jihadi flame.

Having ordered the withdrawal of American troops in 2011, Barack Obama thought he had drawn a line under the war in Iraq. Yet the astonishing advance of Islamic State [of the Levant] jihadis toward Kurdistan has forced him to unleash air strikes to avoid a humanitarian disaster or even genocide.

The Democratic president, encouraged by the opinion of a public weary after a decade of war, was perhaps a little too hasty in assuming that it was enough for America to turn away from an unresolved problem so as to assure resources for other causes. Republicans are now accusing him of acting too slowly against the Islamic State [of the Levant], whose tentacles extend from Syria to Iraq via Lebanon. They are convinced that the current problems are a result of the White House’s decision to withdraw from Iraq, against the wishes of the government in Baghdad.

Yet while some see Obama as behaving too cautiously, in reality it is simply that he understands the implications of military intervention. Use of American force, abused by a strategy-less ideological war which can be largely blamed for the current chaos in Iraq, is now more complicated for Obama to wield. To those who urged him to bomb ISIL some months ago, the president retorted that American forces didn’t have the necessary intelligence for an effective intervention. To those who assert now that a fresh war will put an end to the nihilistic actions of the jihadis, he replies that only a political and diplomatic solution can wake the Iraqi people from their nightmare. Yet given the serious security and humanitarian issues at stake, the U.S. is in real danger of getting trapped in a spiral of intervention.

America may bear the most responsibility for the splintering of Iraq, but others must also try to extinguish the jihadi flame. The hope of peace in the Middle East will not survive the establishment of a lasting Islamic state. The Russians, the Chinese and all Europeans should share the Americans’ concern.