The black flag of jihad flies over much of the coun­try.  City after city has fall­en to islamist insur­gents.  Mil­i­tants burn hous­es and attack eth­nic minori­ties and jour­nal­ists.   The pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment, pow­er­less to stop the onslaught, appeals for out­side help.  Fear­ing that the coun­try is fast becom­ing a “ter­ror­ist hub,” a West­ern gov­ern­ment this week sought to “mobi­lize the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty” to launch a war against the jihadists.

Iraq?  No.  Libya, a coun­try where we con­duct­ed airstrikes in 2011 in sup­port of an odd assort­ment of ground forces that includ­ed more than its share of mis­fits and fanatics.

If that strat­e­gy pro­duced such a mis­er­able result in Libya, can we rea­son­ably expect it to work in Iraq and Syria?

The after­math of Pres­i­dent Obama’s Libya air cam­paign is night­mar­ish.  Less than a year after the country’s “lib­er­a­tion,” a fac­tion for whom we’d pro­vid­ed air sup­port attacked our diplo­mat­ic facil­i­ty in Beng­hazi, killing four Amer­i­cans, includ­ing our ambas­sador.  Things went down­hill from there, with the US and oth­er nations evac­u­at­ing their diplo­mat­ic per­son­nel ear­li­er this sum­mer and Libya’s par­lia­ment (or what’s left of it) tak­ing refuge aboard a Greek fer­ry off the country’s coast.  France, mean­while, is try­ing to assem­ble a coali­tion of the will­ing to return to war in Libya.  Its defense min­is­ter this week “sound[ed] the alarm about the seri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion in Libya,” which he termed “the gate­way both to Europe and the Sahara.”

In lay­ing out his strat­e­gy for destroy­ing the Islam­ic State (IS), the Pres­i­dent under­stand­ably neglect­ed to men­tion Libya.  The com­par­isons are uncom­fort­able. The strat­e­gy for both con­sists in con­duct­ing an air war while out­sourc­ing ground com­bat to some rather dis­rep­utable groups.  Vice Pres­i­dent Biden boast­ed in 2011 that this was “the pre­scrip­tion for how to deal with the world.”  Hardly.

In Iraq, that pre­scrip­tion involves rely­ing on Kurds, Shi­ite mili­tia, Iraq’s reg­u­lar army and Iran­ian sol­diers, though Tehran, in Putin-like fash­ion, denies that it has dis­patched troops across the bor­der.  With our sup­port, those groups fend­ed off an IS attack on the city of Amer­li in east­ern Iraq, arguably our great­est mil­i­tary suc­cess so far.  Our Shi­ite mili­tia allies on the ground cel­e­brat­ed the vic­to­ry by burn­ing the hous­es of the city’s Sun­ni res­i­dents and behead­ing a 21-year-old whom they accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the IS.  “There is no way back for them,” a Shi­ite mili­tia com­man­der said of Amerli’s Sun­ni res­i­dents.  “We will raze their homes to the ground.”

The Shi­ite militia’s ground move­ments in Amer­li were report­ed­ly mas­ter­mind­ed by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps’ Qods Force.  Suleimani’s pres­ence in Amer­li was announced on a web­site oper­at­ed by Hezbol­lah.  Such are the ear­ly fruits of our air campaign.

But if our offen­sives in Iraq empow­er some sin­is­ter char­ac­ters, one can only imag­ine what will hap­pen when the pyrotech­nics extend into Syr­ia, a bloody four-way con­flict involv­ing the forces of Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad, al-Qae­da, the IS, and the group that we’ve decid­ed are the good guys, the Free Syr­i­an Army.  Even one of Pres­i­dent Obama’s for­mer mil­i­tary advis­ers won­ders how this is all sup­posed to work.  “Fig­ur­ing out where we can strike [the IS] so that it weak­ens them and empow­ers a more mod­er­ate Sun­ni group instead of the gov­ern­ment — you have to think that one through,” for­mer Under­sec­re­tary of Defense Michele Flournoy recent­ly told the Wash­ing­ton Post.  “I’m not sure we know yet how to pull that off.”

Nor is it clear, exact­ly, why we plan to use our mil­i­tary pow­er to advance the for­tunes of the Free Syr­i­an Army (FSA).  Just last month, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma dis­missed as “fan­ta­sy” the idea that US assis­tance could help the FSA’s “farm­ers and den­tists and folks” pre­vail.   Now they are our ground forces in Syr­ia.  He will use our air pow­er to their ben­e­fit and has asked Con­gress to give them half a bil­lion dol­lars in mil­i­tary aid.

Per­haps that com­bi­na­tion of bombs and mon­ey will trans­form the FSA from sim­ple mem­bers of the bour­geosie into the strong men of Syr­ia.  But are we cer­tain that would serve our inter­ests?  The fam­i­ly of Steven Sot­loff, behead­ed ear­li­er this month by the IS, says that the Free Syr­i­an Army accept­ed mon­ey from the ter­ror­ist group in exchange for facil­i­tat­ing Sotloff’s cap­ture. Asked about the alle­ga­tion, the President’s spokesman issued a lawyer­ly non-denial.  “Based on the infor­ma­tion that has been pro­vid­ed to me, I don’t believe that is accu­rate,” White House Press Sec­re­tary Josh Earnest said of the Sot­loff family’s alle­ga­tion. The fam­i­ly’s charge will become more cred­i­ble if reports that the FSA has reached a non-aggres­sion pact with the IS prove accurate.

Thus begins the Third Iraq War, amid pop­u­lar sup­port fueled by out­rage over the gris­ly exe­cu­tions of Sot­loff and fel­low jour­nal­ist James Foley.  The President’s speech, deliv­ered on the eve of the 9/11 anniver­sary, well suit­ed the nation’s mood.  It had the res­o­nance and tone of the speech­es of for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush.  The Pres­i­dent unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly used the word “ter­ror­ism” or its cog­nates 23 times in a speech of few­er than 2,000 words.  He vowed to destroy the IS with­out send­ing a sin­gle Amer­i­can into ground combat.

How­ev­er long this war lasts and how­ev­er it is con­duct­ed, this much is almost cer­tain: it will not achieve its objec­tive of destroy­ing the Islam­ic State.  It may degrade it, espe­cial­ly since the capa­bil­i­ties of the IS may well be vast­ly over­stat­ed. But we haven’t real­ly learned yet how to destroy jihadist orga­ni­za­tions.  The Tal­iban and al Qae­da have sur­vived years of war­fare.  Nor has Israel found a way to elim­i­nate Hezbol­lah or Hamas.

The President’s plan to rely on bombs, time and dodgy prox­ies on the ground is more aspi­ra­tion than strat­e­gy.  His options were stark and unat­trac­tive: engage in a mas­sive coun­terin­sur­gency like the one Pres­i­dent Bush launched in 2007 (some­thing that nei­ther Con­gress nor the pub­lic would tol­er­ate) or stand aside as the Ira­ni­ans, the Iraqi army, Shi­ite and Sun­ni fac­tions, Assad, the Kurds, the IS and the region’s oth­er assort­ed loonies set­tled mat­ters in their own way.

Revers­ing his long­stand­ing pol­i­cy of leav­ing Iraq to the Iraqis, he chose the least painful way to avoid doing noth­ing.  His actions give the pub­lic what it wants: retal­i­a­tion for the bar­bar­ic mur­ders of two Amer­i­can reporters cou­pled with a promise that US casu­al­ties will be few. Such inter­ven­tion, like our bomb­ing of Libya and our inva­sion of Iraq, will have unfore­seen results.  Iran, the Shi­ite mili­tia and the Kurds are its ear­ly ben­e­fi­cia­ries.  IS no doubt believes that pro­vok­ing US attacks will attract jihadists from around the world to its cause.  For us, the bomb­ing feels like a safe and low-cost response to unspeak­able acts of barbarism.

There’s some­thing for every­one in the short run, but it is hard to escape the sense that this reprise of our Libya strat­e­gy won’t end well.