The Man Who Leads from Behind Facing the World

On Wednesday evening, three hours before the 13th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the United States was attacked by the deranged jihadi al-Qaida network, President Barack Obama made a solemn speech about his plans to weaken and ultimately destroy the Islamic State, another wave of crazed jihadi whose methods make al-Qaida look like a Boy Scout troop. It was a good speech for a president who, two weeks ago, confessed he still did not have a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State.

On Wednesday, in front of America and the world was Obama, the president who leads from behind; at least, this is what he would have liked it to be. But he cannot (no, he can’t!). It was the illusion of disengagement, after the exhaustion from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which resulted from the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the case of Iraq, it was the product of an off-kilter misreading by the Bush administration, an ignorant reading that things could be changed (in the flash of an eye) swiftly in the Middle East. The change was for the worse, with the strengthening of Iran and the ayatollahs and the mutation of Sunni terror into something more horrible in the form of the Islamic State, which migrated to Iraq from Syria and now has created a monster named Syraq.

With his excessive caution, Obama has proved himself until now to be a bad reader of the oscillations of the state of mind of Americans. He is a bad leader. In the words of Robert Kagen, Obama delivered to Americans the foreign policy they wanted, and the Americans did not like it. Ironically, the Islamic State demonstrated itself a better reader of Americans’ minds.

The barbaric artifice of delivering the decapitated heads of two American journalists freed the Americans from their torpor, from their ostrich mentality. The beasts of the Islamic State, like the al-Qaida network, want to attract Americans and other Westerners to their land. They are delirious with the idea of their caliphate combating infidel crusaders (and eventually committing various barbarities on the infidels’ land, Europe and the U.S.).

The game is savage and tricky. Obama, after his torpor, promises a more intelligent reaction than that of Bush, nothing of the style of the Iraq War; without combat troops, and with the promise of gaining Arab allies to do the heavy work. And without illusions. Someone will need to dispatch troops, and the American Special Forces will be increasingly needed on the ground, both in Iraq and Syria, the theater of operations and barbarity of the Islamic State. Obviously, it won’t be easy in the face of the rivalry between the allies and the lack of confidence in the Americans in the Middle East. For the real, heavy work, the Americans now seem to be counting on traditional allies, the Kurds.

There are complaints about the diminished role of the United States in the region and a clamor for leadership. However, Americans always lose in that we get frustrated when they send in the cavalry, frustrated when they send in drones, and frustrated when they vacillate. In the evaluation of Lebanese Rami Khouri, who is a good antenna for the Arab world, the combination of Western militarism (even when cautious) and the actions of pro-Western autocratic regimes nourishes terror.

However, Rami Khouri anticipated things. Obama, a man who led from behind, arrived late and rattled. It was over a year ago that he almost launched military action against the dictator Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against civilians in the Syrian civil war. Assad’s barbarity did not move public opinion in America or in the dysfunctional Congress. Now, yes, there is a commotion with the decapitation of two American journalists by the jihadi.

However, the game is wild and tricky. It’s not going to work to attack the Islamic State and at the same time cut Assad some slack. Eventually there will be aerial bombardment against the Islamic State in Syria. But, to my relief, in the speech on Wednesday, the president distanced himself from the butcher Assad, who, like the Islamic State, terrorizes the public. Obama wants, now three years late, to help those trustworthy rebels who survived in the Syrian civil war.

In the cold assessment of Richard Haass, of the Council of Foreign Relations, this is the Achilles heel of the strategy. How can one count on these trustworthy rebels at this stage of the battle? At the same time he hopes that allies such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey let the jihadi of their choice help, who are not affiliated with the Islamic State. Symptomatic of this is that hours before Obama’s solemn speech, he had telephoned King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the champion nation of Islamic fundamentalism. It is on a Saudi base that moderate Syrian “rebels” will be trained. The doctrine of squaring a circle.

It is very subtle for the heads of the American electorate (and probably for many of my readers). The Americans want action against the decapitators. Begrudgingly, Obama is dragged into endless trouble. He thought he would benefit by pulling out of the quagmires of the Middle East. And, in fact, Obama won two elections with, among other things, the promise of disengagement from Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, the game has changed and two-thirds of Americans now disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy. According to a Wall Street Journal opinion poll, 58 percent of the electorate trust the Republicans more to deal with the challenges of national security and defense. Only 16 percent trust the Democrats. Nevertheless, this new activist enthusiasm for impatient Americans could evaporate rapidly, if Obama expands action in the Middle East without showing relatively rapid results or if things unravel (something which often happens quickly in the region).

In this political scenario and with a vacuum of leadership in the Middle East (at the time of the greatest struggle, there is an outcry from the Americans), it won’t work anymore for Obama to lead from behind. Neither will it help to whine. My guru, Jeffrey Goldberg, an Obama fan, observes that the chaos and collapse in the Middle East cannot be only, or even in many situations, attributed in great part to the strategies, speeches and ill-conceived or equivocating ideas of the American president. However, there is the burden of being a superpower and Obama, in the end, will need to carry it.

And Goldberg has one more observation: The Obama presidency will be judged as weak in the area of national security if al-Qaida, the Islamic State, and other jihadi groups are able to maintain sanctuary in the Middle East and nearby territories when he leaves the White House in January 2017, and if Iran stays on course to being on the threshold of making an atomic bomb.

In the specific case of this expansion of fighting Islamic terror in Syraq (Syria and Iraq), the challenge is to go ahead without giving oxygen to Iranian allies such as the dictator Bashar Assad and without heating up the Shiites in Iraq. From behind or in front, Barack Obama’s mission is painful.