Tag Archives: Kurds

Winning By Not Winning In Iraq and Syria

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U.S. airstrikes have slowed the progress of Islamic State fighters, but the war may drag on for years. Why that's good for us. [Credit: Telegraph]

U.S. airstrikes have slowed the progress of Islam­ic State fight­ers, but the war may drag on for years. Why that’s good for us. [Cred­it: Telegraph]

The Pres­i­dent was asked a sim­ple ques­tion a few weeks ago: are we win­ning the war against the Islam­ic State?

He wouldn’t answer the ques­tion direct­ly, so I will.  We’re win­ning in Iraq and Syr­ia by not win­ning.  The net effect of our actions has so far been to keep extrem­ist Mus­lims of var­i­ous eth­nic­i­ties and sec­tar­i­an pas­sions engaged in war against … each oth­er.  And that may be the best pos­si­ble out­come in the cir­cum­stances. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

President’s Iraq Strategy Avoids Doing Nothing … But How Will It End?

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A Libyan rebel for whom we provided air support celebrates in 2011. Today those same rebels have reduced the country to bloody chaos. Will our bombing in Iraq and Syria produce a better result? [Credit: The Guardian]

A Libyan rebel for whom we pro­vid­ed air sup­port cel­e­brates in 2011. Today those same rebels have reduced the coun­try to bloody chaos. Will our bomb­ing in Iraq and Syr­ia pro­duce a bet­ter result? [Cred­it: The Guardian]

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? Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Why We Won’t Destroy The Islamic State

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Our Shiite allies in the war against the terrorist Islamic State [IS] also have a taste for terror, which is one reason why we probably won't destroy the IS. [Credit: Getty Images]

Our Shi­ite allies in the war against the ter­ror­ist Islam­ic State [IS] also have a taste for ter­ror, which is one rea­son why we prob­a­bly won’t destroy the IS. [Cred­it: Get­ty Images]

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma seems to have found his inner neocon.

This past week, he called on the world to unite behind a “com­mon effort to extract this can­cer,” as he char­ac­ter­ized the Islam­ic State [IS].  Our ever-bel­li­cose chief diplo­mat shunned metaphors and spoke more direct­ly.  The IS, Ker­ry said, “and the wicked­ness it rep­re­sents must be destroyed.”

Thus did our lat­est incur­sion into Iraq, which began as a mis­sion to res­cue Yazidis trapped on a moun­tain, become some­thing more.  But words are cheap.  War is cost­ly.  The Pres­i­dent lacks the resolve to make good on his threat to extract the can­cer that is the Islam­ic State.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →