Ted Cruz says we don’t have a dog in the Syr­i­an civ­il war.  He nev­er­the­less wants to car­pet bomb the civ­il war’s lead­ing bel­liger­ent, the Islam­ic State (IS).  Which just might kill some dogs.

To be fair, Cruz doesn’t seem to know what car­pet bomb­ing involves, assert­ing that he wouldn’t car­pet bomb a city.  The Ency­clo­pe­dia of War defines it as “drop­ping mas­sive amounts of bombs on an ene­my’s indus­tri­al and pop­u­la­tion cen­ters [to] over­whelm their abil­i­ty to resist, break their morale, and force them to sur­ren­der.”  The notion that bomb­ing alone could van­quish a deter­mined ene­my has been dis­cred­it­ed since the 1970s. To suc­ceed, an air cam­paign requires ground troops. “Sat­u­ra­tion bomb­ing failed to inde­pen­dent­ly destroy an ene­my’s will or means to resist,” accord­ing to the work, “despite the best efforts of pilots and gen­er­als, and politicians.”

Politi­cians like Cruz fan­ta­size about dis­patch­ing an ene­my from a safe dis­tance.  His vow to find out “if sand can glow in the dark” – sug­gest­ing he would nuke the IS – packs rhetor­i­cal mus­cle onto a frail strate­gic frame.

Cruz’s bel­li­cos­i­ty seems like pure polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion, an exer­cise in Clin­ton­ian tri­an­gu­la­tion. He wants us to believe that he is chan­nel­ing Ronald Rea­gan (and for­mer Rea­gan advis­er Jeanne Kirk­patrick) and that he is nei­ther a neo­con­ser­v­a­tive like Mar­co Rubio nor a revi­sion­ist lib­er­tar­i­an like Rand Paul.  He goes to great lengths to dis­tance him­self from both, tout­ing his tough­ness with­out detail­ing his own posi­tion, and hop­ing we don’t notice that he wants both to stay out of a civ­il war and anni­hi­late one of its factions.

His cam­paign web­site makes only a pass­ing ref­er­ence to the Islam­ic State, while ignor­ing al Qae­da, Syr­ia and Iraq entire­ly.  It focus­es instead on Iran (which he doesn’t like) and Israel (which he does).

In pub­lic state­ments, includ­ing a recent speech at the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, Cruz tells us that he, like Rubio (and Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, for that mat­ter), wants to “hunt down and kill the ter­ror­ists” and “utter­ly destroy” the Islam­ic State.  He parts com­pa­ny with Rubio when it comes to Amer­i­can-inspired regime change in Iraq, Libya and Syr­ia (though he has declared him­self in favor of regime change in Iran).  Cruz believes that “under­min­ing gov­ern­ments in the Mid­dle East [has] helped rad­i­cal Islamist terrorists.”

With the excep­tion of the surge, vir­tu­al­ly every­thing we’ve tried – from inva­sions and assas­si­na­tions to bomb­ing sor­ties and drone strikes — seems to have helped rad­i­cal Islamist ter­ror­ists.  The Tal­iban has sur­vived 14 years of war, recent­ly killing six Amer­i­cans in Afghanistan.  Despite Pres­i­dent Obama’s boast, al Qae­da has not been destroyed or the IS con­tained.  Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram ter­ror­ize Africa, Hezbol­lah effec­tive­ly rules Lebanon and has expand­ed its oper­a­tions in Syr­ia, Hamas still afflicts Israel, the PKK is alive and well in Turkey, and ter­ror­ists have car­ried out attacks in Amer­i­can and Euro­pean cities.

All of which calls for reflec­tion on what our inter­ests are in the region and how best to advance them.  Instead, Cruz prof­fers a com­ic book ver­sion of U.S. mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, in which he can car­pet bomb the IS with­out dam­ag­ing cities and irra­di­ate deserts with­out killing civilians.

He went fur­ther in the Her­itage Foun­da­tion speech, say­ing that he would con­sid­er “using what­ev­er ground troops are nec­es­sary to kill the [IS] ter­ror­ists and then come home.” Such wish­ful think­ing could be excused in 2001, when we believed that U.S. ground forces, backed by airstrikes, could quick­ly extin­guish the Tal­iban.  Years of bit­ter expe­ri­ence should have rid us of that illu­sion and taught us to think clear­ly about the chal­lenges our sol­diers will con­front and the poten­tial unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of mil­i­tary suc­cess.  (“Mis­sion accomplished.”)

That begins with a clear-eyed assess­ment of the facts on the ground.  Syr­ia and Iraq are now legal fic­tions.  Dam­as­cus and Bagh­dad con­trol only por­tions of the land with­in their bor­ders, which are pock­marked by enclaves con­trolled by al Qae­da and its off­shoots, IS, the Army of Islam, Kurds, Turk­men and oth­ers who reject the legit­i­ma­cy of their respec­tive cen­tral gov­ern­ments.  Both Assad and Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Haider al Aba­di are despised by vast seg­ments of their own pop­u­la­tion.  Nei­ther can field an army of even min­i­mal com­pe­tence.  Both lean heav­i­ly on for­eign pow­ers – Iran, Rus­sia and the U.S. – and Shi­ite fanat­ics to do their fighting.

The Ira­ni­ans are back­ing Assad (with Russ­ian help), desta­bi­liz­ing Iraq, arm­ing Hezbol­lah and stir­ring eth­nic strife.  It’s been a good year for the aya­tol­lahs.  The U.S. has agreed to lift eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against them and legit­imize their nuclear enrich­ment pro­gram. Amer­i­can and Russ­ian jets are bomb­ing Iran’s Sun­ni foes, help­ing the Quds Force, Shi­ite mili­tias and Hezbol­lah secure pock­ets of ter­ri­to­ry with­in Syr­ia and Iraq.  Tehran is now far along in build­ing an arc of Shi­ite con­trol that runs from Per­sia through Bagh­dad and Dam­as­cus and on to Beirut.  Iran, with U.S. acqui­es­cence, is now at the nego­ti­at­ing table with world lead­ers, and has every rea­son to expect that the “inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty” will legit­imize its new acquisitions.

Iran’s ascen­dan­cy has pro­voked and inten­si­fied the Sun­ni reac­tion.  The Islam­ic State itself is part of that reac­tion to Iran’s region­al ambi­tions, some­thing that seems lost on the Pres­i­dent and his would-be suc­ces­sors.  Mar­co Rubio, for exam­ple, would have us imag­ine into exis­tence an army of Sun­ni Arabs that will rise up at our insti­ga­tion and van­quish their core­li­gion­ists in the Islam­ic State.

But the Islam­ic State — along with al Qae­da, al Nus­ra and a dozen oth­er jihadist enti­ties – is the Arab Sun­ni army.

The extent to which this “army” draws fund­ing from Saud­is and oth­er Gulf States is dif­fi­cult to assess.  But it is under­stand­able that Sun­ni rulers, though they may find the IS threat­en­ing, are less trou­bled by it than we are. They, like the Israelis, fear the Shi­ite theoc­ra­cy of Iran more than they do the Islam­ic State.  That’s why the Saud­is have gone to war against Tehran-backed Houthis in Yemen, while con­tribut­ing only a token effort to the U.S.-led “coali­tion” against the Islam­ic State.   Like all the play­ers in this tox­ic caul­dron of eth­nic and reli­gious tur­moil, each fac­tion has its own aims and none of them shares ours.

It would help if we could artic­u­late our aims.  Destroy­ing ISIS has become a meme that every Pres­i­den­tial hope­ful from Rand Paul to Bernie Sanders feels oblig­ed to repeat.  Rarely does a can­di­date hon­est­ly address what it will take to achieve that objec­tive, much less about what new malig­nan­cy might arise in the Islam­ic State’s place.  If the IS were to van­ish tomor­row, it wouldn’t be replaced by a mul­ti-eth­nic, reli­gious­ly plu­ral­is­tic com­mu­ni­ty devot­ed to tol­er­ance and com­mit­ted to peace.  Nor is it clear that the new enti­ty would be con­ge­nial to U.S. interests.

Cruz’s for­eign pol­i­cy has been hailed in some con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles as a return to Rea­ganesque prin­ci­ples.  Per­haps it is.  But we won’t know that until he spells out his views with clar­i­ty and can­dor.  Until then, Cruz appears to be engag­ing less in an exer­cise of prin­ci­ple than of politics.

NOTE: This post has been mod­i­fied to include ref­er­ences to Sen­a­tor Cruz’s Decem­ber 10, 2015 speech at the Her­itage Foundation.