On Freedom’s Side … Again

One wants to do something — one must do something — to combat the self-styled Islamic State that has driven hundreds of thousands out of Iraq and Syria and established terror regimes in the areas it has conquered. According to the U.S. Iraq mission, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul the Islamic State tortured and murdered human rights activist Samira Salih al-Nuaimi in September. Eyewitnesses report arbitrary mass executions and rape.

When they say “do something,” Western governments automatically think of military solutions. But decades of war have already created the foundation for the current horrors. The U.S. and allied air forces attack with combat aircraft and unmanned drones. The latest development is that Syria has become the seventh predominantly Islamic nation to be bombarded since the start of Obama’s administration. These American aircraft squadrons aren’t Red Cross workers being deployed for humanitarian reasons; nations go to war for their own interests. That means airstrikes may slow the Islamic State, and in some places even reverse or destroy it, but these merely camouflage the fact that over the past 25 years, they have resulted in no long-term solutions in the Arab world and have certainly not brought peace. The Islamic State thrives on the rubble and trash heaps of the Iraq war after the United States overthrew a dictator and shattered an entire society, supposedly for humanitarian reasons and ostensibly to protect against weapons of mass destruction. This jihad grew on the fertile soil of reactionary Sunni monarchies allied with the United States — among them Saudi Arabia — which now hope their “big brother” will be able to contain the now out-of-control radicalism of the Islamic State.

No one knows how many combatants have joined Islamic State contingents, but the warning flags are already being waved in the United States. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham stated on a television talk show that Obama had to wipe out the danger “before we all get killed here at home.” Contrast this war-mongering with a year earlier, when Obama wanted to attack Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who had crossed a “red line” when he employed chemical weapons. At that time, many Republicans opined it wasn’t America’s responsibility to jump into new Middle East conflicts.

When a way was found to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons with Russia’s help, many proponents of peace thought the “myth of war” as a solution had finally self-destructed. That seems such a long time ago. The Washington elites decided the U.S. had to actively intervene. War skeptics aren’t welcomed in this debate; and mention is scarcely ever made of diplomatic efforts with the assistance of Iran, which has close ties to Baghdad, or with Russia, which also has ties to Damascus. Why should it be when war has become the new normal?

In the Same Trench

The strategists are unable to show any solution to how the twisted and blood-soaked constellation of rival interests could find common ground. There is no sign in Iraq that the four-week old, mainly Shiite government will oppress the Sunni minority any less than former Premier Nouri al-Maliki’s government did. Despite years of U.S. training and logistical support, the national armed forces cut and ran in the face of Islamic State attacks, and now they are expected to become a combat-ready force.

The Syrian civil war has raged for over three years. The so-called Free Syrian Army, supposedly a moderate anti-Assad force that was practically rubbed out by Islamic State troops, are supposed to be welded into a cohesive, combat-ready force within several months, possibly in Saudi Arabia. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says they need “anywhere from 12,000 to 15,000” troops to take back lost ground in eastern Syria. Supposedly, the combatants are to be vetted for their ideological and religious attitudes prior to being trained. But the aerial attacks on Islamic State fortifications help the Syrian dictator Obama sought to overthrow a year ago. The Damascus newspaper al-Watan crowed recently that the United States military was “now fighting in the same trenches as the Syrian generals. They’re all fighting the war on terror.”

No boots on the ground. Politicians in the United States cling fast to a principle which is at best totally illogical. If the Islamic State threat is so powerful that it represents a threat to the American homeland itself, why are ground troops excluded from the fight to defeat this so-called network of death? Approximately 1,500 U.S. troops are already in place between the Tigris and the Euphrates, ostensibly as trainers and to protect U.S. installations; one could assume that Army Special Forces units are on their way to combat zones in northern and eastern Syria. General Dempsey has confirmed that ground troops may finally be necessary but that they needn’t necessarily be American troops. That would probably suit the Islamic State: From its point of view, true Muslims would be fighting a powerful enemy trying to prevent the caliphate. There needn’t be a winner in this fight — for the Islamic State, living to fight another day would be success enough.

It was the gruesome beheading of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff that dispelled many doubts in the United States. People who could kill so cruelly are only capable of understanding the language of violence, as Obama put it in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly. But the outrage over the beheadings just illustrated how selective outrage can be. The Islamic State doesn’t really have a monopoly on brutality. In a CNN interview, Steven Sotloff’s relatives said the journalist was sold off to the Islamic State by so-called “moderate Syrian rebels” for “between $25,000 and $50,000.”

At the end of August, the New York Times reported the first American casualty in the fight against the jihad — 33-year-old Douglas McArthur: “The rebels who killed him were fighting for the Free Syrian Army, a rival group backed by the United States, and they went on to behead six ISIS fighters — but not Mr. McCain — and then posted the photographs on Facebook.” Thus, even the inhumanity from person to person never ceases.

On August 5, a Saudi man named Mohammed bin-Bakur al-Alawi was publicly decapitated for the crime of sorcery in the northern Saudi-Arabian city of Qurayyat. Al-Alawi confessed and the supreme court upheld the death penalty, according to the Saudi Gazette in Jeddah. According to the organization Human Rights Watch, the Saudi Arabian monarchy beheaded 19 people between August 4 and August 21, as reported in local newspapers. Eight of the executions were for drug smuggling and similar crimes.

In his U.N. address, President Obama said the world stands at a crossroads “between war and peace; between disorder and integration; between fear and hope.” The United States will stand on the side of freedom along with those same Saudis, who are needed for realpolitik reasons. And he will stand apparently without any concept of how to change the conditions that led up to this crossroads.