Tag Archives: Sunni

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 →

President Bush Not To Blame For This Iraq Crisis

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Iraq appears on the verge of civil war and some blame former President George W. Bush. Here's why they're wrong. [Credit: al Jazeera America]

Iraq appears on the verge of civ­il war and some blame for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. Here’s why they’re wrong. [Cred­it: al Jazeera America]

The Iraq civ­il war did not start under Oba­ma, it start­ed when Bush, Cheney and the neo­cons pulled the trig­ger to invade Iraq … . It was [the] sta­tus of force agree­ment, signed by Bush, that pledged to with­draw all US forces … Giv­en the stag­ger­ing cost of expense and lives we could not stay there “maybe a hun­dred years” as McCain said. Nor could we bleed hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars there every year. Oba­ma promised to get us out of there, and he right­ly did so … To attempt to blame any­one but Bush, Cheney and the neo­cons for the Iraq dis­as­ter is sim­ply revi­sion­ism at its finest. —  Excerpt­ed from a comment on my recent post on Iraq.

The Oba­ma presidency’s lead­ing malfea­sance lies in its belief that find­ing some­one to blame for a prob­lem is as good as solv­ing it.  So it is lit­tle sur­prise that my recent post on Iraq, in which I argued against US mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, would spur com­ments that for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush is to blame for the renewed fight­ing. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Have We Bungled Our Way To Success In Iraq?

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A radical Islamist group called ISIS made major advances this week in Iraq. President Obama is reviewing his options. Is the best bet to let Sunni and Shiite radicals fight it out? [Credit: AP]

A rad­i­cal Islamist group called ISIS made major advances this week in Iraq. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is review­ing his options. Is the best bet to let Sun­ni and Shi­ite rad­i­cals fight it out? [Cred­it: AP]

“We’re leav­ing behind a sov­er­eign, sta­ble and self-reliant Iraq, with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment that was elect­ed by its peo­ple.” – Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Decem­ber 15, 2011

The Pres­i­den­t’s illu­sion that we accom­plished our mis­sion in Iraq evap­o­rat­ed this past week, when Sun­ni mil­i­tants call­ing them­selves the Islam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS) and fly­ing the black flag of Islamism over­ran Mosul and Tikrit. The embat­tled Iraqi gov­ern­ment still holds Bagh­dad, but its sov­er­eign­ty, sta­bil­i­ty and self-reliance have been exposed for the arti­fice they long have been.

The truth is that things began to unrav­el in Iraq two and a half years ago, when we declared vic­to­ry and with­drew our troops. “This is the start of the Iraqi civ­il war that was so obvi­ous­ly going to break out after we washed our hands of it,” Ken­neth M. Pol­lack of the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion told the Wash­ing­ton Post.

Yet this lat­est in a series of for­eign pol­i­cy fail­ures may actu­al­ly work to our advan­tage.  Hav­ing Sun­ni and Shi­ite mil­i­tants and the Iran­ian Army cross­ing swords in Iraq may not be the worst thing from the per­spec­tive of US interests.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →