The Same Old Mistakes

In his eagerly awaited speech on U.S. strategy against the Islamic State (IS), Obama sounded much like George W. Bush: Radicalization in the region can only continue.

That’s not a strategy. What President Obama described in his televised address to the nation Wednesday evening might best be described as a package of ad hoc measures. He wants to expand aerial attacks on Islamic State targets, doesn’t want to return to Iraq but does want to add Syria to his list of targets, then he plans to build a broad alliance against the Islamic State, and finally, he wants to train and equip the Iraqi army, the Kurdish peshmerga and the Free Syrian Army to take the lead in the ground war against the Islamic State.

All that is best suited to stop the advancing Islamic State troops, perhaps even — as Obama put it — to destroy the structure of the Islamic State militia over the medium term. It’s a legitimate goal, given the brutality displayed by the Islamic State thus far. But not even that is certain.

Hasn’t the U.S. been training the Iraqi army for a long time already? Why should that plan suddenly be crowned with success? And will the brand new, not yet fleshed out Iraqi government really be in a position to dissolve the Shiite dominance that in the past was the breeding ground for the Islamic State in Iraq? And finally, Obama couched his entire speech in “war on terror” language that he acquired from his predecessor. Just as George W. Bush once said, now Obama promises that terrorists will never find a safe haven because America’s strength will root them out, no matter where they are.

The Same Old Song

Anyone following the political infighting in the U.S. for the past few weeks knows that Obama recognized the necessity of showing some testosterone. But anyone watching events in the 13 years following the 9/11 attacks has seen the almost unstoppable advance of militant radical Islam in ever-evolving forms, not its destruction.

There is no reason to believe that more military intervention will produce different results. Western governments all agree — and Obama said it in his speech — that there have as yet been no signs that the Islamic State threat is expanding to other regions. But the argument is that many of the foreign combatants could enter Europe and/or the United States and carry out terrorist acts there. That seems a realistic assessment, but Obama’s “new strategy” would likely make it inevitable.

As a blueprint for his Islamic State strategy, Obama cited the effective drone war in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, which has been a success insofar as destroying the command structure of terrorist organizations is concerned. Even if one ignores the questionable legitimacy of waging this kind of war — many human rights experts define war by unmanned drone as extrajudicial execution — there are numerous reports out of Yemen that the many civilian victims of drone attacks have resulted in a further radicalization of the population and stirred up more hatred.

The short-term military successes will become a long-term boomerang. Admittedly, there are no quick and easy solutions. Allowing the Islamic State to continue as it has is not an option. And the observation that the Bush administration’s criminal war in Iraq made the current catastrophe inevitable, while right on target, doesn’t help solve it.

An American political scientist recently postulated that the first mistake was invading Iraq, and the second mistake was withdrawing from Iraq. The situation has deteriorated to the point that only additional mistakes will now be possible, and the only winner has already been decided: the international — especially the American — defense industry.