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.

This is not the President’s aim.  Try as he might, he strug­gles to give a con­vinc­ing account of how he will man­age to destroy the Islam­ic State (IS) or to pro­vide a clear assess­ment of whether he’s suc­ceed­ing.  His ram­bling answer to the ques­tion of whether we are win­ning was reveal­ing.  He droned on (no pun intend­ed) for near­ly four and one-half min­utes, inform­ing us that things were “messy,” “hard,” “com­pli­cat­ed” and “dif­fi­cult” (twice, actually).

Though he repeat­ed­ly used the word “focus,” his appears fit the diag­no­sis of ADD – hyper­ac­tive, attempt­ing to do sev­er­al things at once, bounc­ing from one activ­i­ty to the next.  The Pres­i­dent wants to “solid­i­fy” Iraq’s gov­ern­ment and its army, “have a strong inter­na­tion­al coali­tion,” “sup­port the Kurds in Kobani,” “push ISIL back from some of the ter­ri­to­ries they had tak­en,” and “get a mod­er­ate oppo­si­tion in Syr­ia … a core group that we can work with, that we can have con­fi­dence in.”

Even our focus is unfo­cused: “our focus in Syr­ia is not to solve the entire Syr­i­an sit­u­a­tion.”  Huh?

So are we win­ning, Mr. Pres­i­dent?  “I think it’s too ear­ly to say.”

But as the Pres­i­dent tries to fig­ure out whether we are win­ning and what win­ning might mean, oth­ers are putting our airstrikes and mil­i­tary largesse to use in pur­suit of their own agendas.

Start with the Kurds.  The Kur­dis­tan Work­ers Par­ty (PKK) is one of five ter­ror­ist groups who serve as our cobel­liger­ents in the war against the Islam­ic State. The PKK doesn’t espe­cial­ly care for the U.S. and like­ly resents its 2012 des­ig­na­tion by our State Depart­ment as the “dead­liest” ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion in Europe.   But, hey, this is Asia, so the fact that they, along with Pesh Mer­ga, are ben­e­fit­ing from our mil­i­tary engage­ment is just fine by us.  They were among the “Kurds in Kobani” whose suc­cess against the IS the Pres­i­dent laud­ed.  They are cur­rent­ly engaged in bat­tles against the IS for con­trol of oil­fields in Syr­ia   This is all part of the PKK’s plan for an inde­pen­dent Kur­dis­tan that would com­prise areas cur­rent­ly with­in the bound­aries of Syr­ia, Turkey and Iraq. Tech­ni­cal­ly, we oppose that, but in real­i­ty, we are abet­ting it.

Then there is the Hezbol­lah Brigade, an orga­ni­za­tion direct­ly linked to Iran’s Qods force,   which took part in the suc­cess­ful U.S.-supported defense of Amer­li from the IS.  The Brigade is among the sketchy Shi­ite mili­tia units that have been pros­per­ing on the ground with our help and support.

Which has made things a bit rough for the Sun­ni tribes­men.  They are threat­ened by the IS and the Shi­ite mili­tia, resent­ful of us for hav­ing aban­doned them to the ten­der­mer­cies of the Mali­ki regime and its Iran­ian patrons, and mis­trust­ful of the Shi­ite-dom­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment in Bagh­dad.  We are try­ing to put them at ease by offer­ing truck­loads of AK-47s, body armor and hel­mets, mor­tar rounds and grenades.  The Admin­is­tra­tion jus­ti­fies its request for arm­ing the tribes­men direct­ly rather than through the Iraqi gov­ern­ment by gen­tly explain­ing that the Iraqi army “is not par­tic­u­lar­ly wel­come in Anbar and oth­er major­i­ty Sun­ni areas because of past excess­es and sec­tar­i­an activ­i­ties, and a poor com­bat per­for­mance.”  So we are arm­ing the tribes­men and trust­ing that they will train the weapons on the IS, not on our friends in the Iraqi gov­ern­ment forces, whom they despise.

And speak­ing of the Iraqi gov­ern­ment, we appear to have made a hash of things there as well.  We con­di­tioned esca­lat­ing mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion against the IS on their dump­ing Nouri al-Mali­ki, whose Dawa par­ty fin­ished first in last April’s elec­tion.  More than three months after Mali­ki relin­quished pow­er, the gov­ern­ment remains inef­fec­tu­al and cor­rupt.  Many of the weapons that we’ve sup­plied Bagh­dad, the New York Times recent­ly report­ed, have been sold by mil­i­tary com­man­ders on the black mar­ket.  Some have found their way into the hands of the IS.  This graft is hob­bling our attempt to revive the Iraqi army and imped­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s efforts to win the con­fi­dence of frac­tious constituencies.

In sum, we are direct­ly or indi­rect­ly arm­ing every side in a metasta­t­ic eth­nic and sec­tar­i­an war and hop­ing it all ends “in even­tu­al polit­i­cal nego­ti­a­tions that are prob­a­bly some ways off in the future,” as the Pres­i­dent has put it.

Nego­ti­a­tion, how­ev­er remote the pos­si­bil­i­ty and what­ev­er the out­come, is the President’s idea of suc­cess.  So long as he can imag­ine some peo­ple sit­ting around some table some­day, he is com­fort­able drop­ping bombs on one fac­tion while arm­ing oth­ers, and pre­tend­ing not to notice that those weapons aren’t being used to achieve our fuzzy objec­tives but the clear aims of those who wield them.  We are sup­ply­ing the ingre­di­ents for a long and chaot­ic war.

And yet, in an inad­ver­tent sort of way, those ingre­di­ents might pro­duce just the right recipe.  Islam­ic jihadism pos­es an exis­ten­tial threat to the West as fas­cism and com­mu­nism did dur­ing the last cen­tu­ry.  The for­mer was destroyed by the blood­i­est war in world his­to­ry; the lat­ter by a cold war that last­ed near­ly half a cen­tu­ry and was marked by proxy wars and assas­si­na­tions, fueled by enor­mous mil­i­tary expen­di­tures, and con­duct­ed under the threat of mutu­al extinction.

We don’t have the stom­ach to com­mit to efforts on that scale against rad­i­cal Islamism. That is a major rea­son why a series of Pres­i­dents has failed to devise a polit­i­cal­ly palat­able strat­e­gy to defeat it.  Pres­i­dent Clin­ton did not respond effec­tive­ly to an esca­lat­ing series of al Qae­da attacks, cul­mi­nat­ing in the atroc­i­ties of 9/11 ear­ly in the term of his suc­ces­sor.  Pres­i­dent Bush respond­ed with mil­i­tary engage­ment and nation-build­ing, hop­ing that Mus­lims would pre­fer self-gov­er­nance and democ­ra­cy to rule by loopy theocrats, thugs and despots.  The cost in blood and trea­sure of such inter­ven­tion led to its rejec­tion by the Amer­i­can pub­lic. The hope of Mus­lim democ­ra­cy soured when Arab Spring turned to jihadist win­ter.  Pres­i­dent Oba­ma promised to be the anti-Bush, end­ing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and retreat­ing from the Mid­dle East.  Instead he report­ed­ly will leave more troops in Afghanistan than he’d pre­vi­ous­ly promised, may resume con­tro­ver­sial “night raids” in our seem­ing­ly end­less war with the Tal­iban, and has launched the Third Iraq War.

His con­duct of that war, so half-baked and half-heart­ed, makes the U.S. not an occu­pi­er but a provo­ca­teur, egging var­i­ous groups on to fight against fac­tions that we regard as more mani­a­cal and bru­tal than they.  The Pres­i­dent, wit­ting­ly or oth­er­wise, is sail­ing along the course urged by Cana­di­an com­men­ta­tor Con­rad Black, who sug­gests that we leave Iraq and Syr­ia “to the coun­tries and fac­tions, sects and tribes in situ to sort it out, even if it is a sun-drenched ver­sion of the Thir­ty Years War.”

Giv­en the dimin­ished capa­bil­i­ties of our lead­ers and the revul­sion that most Amer­i­cans bear toward the prospect of anoth­er ground war, our options for con­fronting Islamist extrem­ism are few.  Keep­ing all vari­ety of fanat­ics in a per­pet­u­al state of war against one anoth­er may not be opti­mal, but it may be our best option in the circumstances.

So long as they are fight­ing each oth­er, per­haps we’re win­ning after all.