Obama Bombs Syria

The United States started bombing Islamic State positions in Syrian territory with the help of a few other countries. Arab governments are signaling a substantial military scale-up by Washington in a region that Barack Obama has resisted intervening in for three years. The United States is going back to war with Iraq and Syria, although its president is avoiding calling it that at all costs.

Little is known about the aerial attacks against the Islamic terrorists, except for their strength and their range. The forceful American invasion ends its passivity against the barbaric Sunni insurgence in Syria, whose tens of thousands of combatants and bureaucratic hierarchy is capable of keeping millions of Syrians and Iraqis under its thumb.

The war against the Islamic State is not going to be won from the air. Military and political combat against the new and formidable fundamentalist threat will be long; its ending will be decided on the ground and will be reserved for the Arab allies of the United States, once Obama has discarded the idea of sending more troops to the region again. The defeat of the Islamic State, however, will require tough compromise by both Arab and Western participants, beyond what was seen in the first air attacks. Washington’s dependence on circumstantial and ambiguous partners like Saudi Arabia or the Gulf countries, or, even more so, the two failed states of Syria and Iraq that are the stage of the war, calls into question the outcome of the enterprise. In broken-down Iraq there is no army capable of going up against the Islamic State, and there won’t be for some time. And Baghdad seems like a game compared to Syria, where Bashar al-Assad, a man who commits genocide, enjoys the military and diplomatic protection of Iran and Russia.

Washington cannot end the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites. But its late decision to act against a sinister power that threatens us all should be welcomed and supported, even though the effort will be full of unknown risks.