Seven questions that I've asked myself and tried to answer honestly:
Q.) Should President Obama have gotten fresh authorization from Congress for the air campaign against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq, or does the authorization granted more than a decade ago to President Bush suffice?
A.) Obama should have gotten fresh authorization for what amounts to a new campaign against a new threat, as required by the Constitution and by the War Powers Act. And no, the post-9/11 authorizations from 2001 and 2002 are not, or should not be, sufficient. But it's a sad commentary on the state of American politics that rather than take a vote on going to war, Congress chose to recess so it could tend to more important matters, such as its own re-election.
Under those circumstances, Obama is doing what any president would do. His alternative would be to sit in Washington and do nothing while waiting for a congressional authorization that won't come until December at the earliest, if it comes at all. In the meantime, ISIS would expand its territory, terrorize millions and further destabilize the Middle East.
In short, if Congress won't protect its own institutional authority, you can't expect the executive branch to respect them either. That's not how power works. And this whole string of events is all the more remarkable when you remember the lawsuit that was filed by House Republicans accusing the president of habitually exceeding his constitutional powers at the expense of Congress. Obama's defense against those charges amounts to a claim that he has had no choice but to fill a governing vacuum left by a Congress unwilling or unable to perform basic legislative functions. It's hard to conceive of a more dramatic way for Congress to prove his point.
Q.) Is the strategy laid out by Obama a winning strategy? Is it capable of dismantling ISIS, as he suggests, or will combat troops be needed?
A.) I have no idea, but if forced to offer a guess, I would say no, the current strategy will not prove to be sufficient.
However, from the president's point of view, I suspect he sees it as the only option available to him. He can get away with mounting an aerial campaign in which the odds of US casualties are slim, but putting combat troops on the ground to fight and die is inconceivable without direct support from a Congress that has run away squealing in fear over air attacks. A lot of Washington politicians are talking in vague terms about wanting a more muscular approach; very few dare to advocate ground combat, which is the only step likely to change things.
Likewise, even with all of its problems, Iraq is not going to allow a reinsertion of US troops onto their soil. Listen to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani last week, because it's a sure bet that Iraq's leaders did:
""All political leaders of the country must be aware and awake to prevent the external assistance against the Islamic State from becoming an entrance to breach Iraq's independence. Cooperation with the international effort shall not be taken as a pretext to impose foreign decisions on events in Iraq, especially military events."
Q.) Even if domestic and Iraqi opposition to a combat commitment could be overcome, would it solve the problem?
A.) Probably not. U.S. ground troops could take over the fighting from the Iraqi army and beat back ISIS in a matter of months. Then what? You've still got an Iraqi army that has proved itself incapable of defending its own territory, an Iraqi leadership more concerned with sectarian feuds than national unity, and a joint revulsion among the Iraqi people and American people against a permanent U.S. military presence in that country.
And then there's Syria. Theoretically, I suppose, we could "solve" that problem too by invading the country and installing a government of our own devising, but as I recall, we've traveled that road before and it didn't turn out so well. The bottom line is that the US military cannot be the solution. It can at best be only part of the solution, and in the end probably a small part as well.
Q.) So is U.S. military action even necessary?
Yes. If we had failed to launch previous air strikes against ISIS, the Yazidi trapped on Mount Sinjar probably would have been wiped out, the Kurdish peshmerga would probably be retreating and the Iraqi army, such as it is, might be in total rather than relative collapse. We can still be of use there, and while I opposed the decision to invade Iraq, I also recognize that having invaded and destabilized that region, we have a moral and humanitarian obligation not to leave them in total chaos and abandon them to the depraved and cruel.
Q.) Is this mess destined to go on and on and on for years?
Uh huh. Although measuring it in decades will probably be more apt, and it may get worse before it gets better.
If you look at what's happening in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, the Emirates, Pakistan and elsewhere, it becomes pretty clear that what we're witnessing is a crisis of pan-Islamic civilization that has truly historic proportions. Political structures based on kings and other feudal trappings can't survive in this modern world. Immense wealth derived from oil has proved as detrimental to progress in some countries as immense poverty has proved in others. The many unresolved, intertwined tensions within the Islamic world, and the many complex, unresolved tensions between that world and a rapidly transforming global economy, have simply become too great to be contained.
Even here in the United States, the nation that gave birth to that transformation, we're having trouble coming to grips with its cultural, economic, social and technological implications. The dislocation that it is causing within Islam is far more profound and fundamental. And while historians will probably conclude that the immediate catalyst for this crisis was the US invasion of Iraq, a nation that in some form had been the keystone state of the Arab world for a millenium, those historians will also likely conclude that this was coming, sooner or later.
And again, we cannot resolve it. Obama took heat a few weeks ago for suggesting that this was a problem to be managed rather than fixed, and he quickly abandoned that rhetoric. But the fact remains that he was right. We can't cordon off the Islamic world from the rest of the planet, and we can't impose a solution on them at gunpoint. The very idea is ludicrous. This is their struggle; they have to decide how and when it ends.
As outsiders, we can and must try to make sure that it is contained as much as possible, that we don't become its victims as well. We also should offer as much support as possible for those who want to move their communities forward rather than backward. And of course, without the global dependence on oil, all that would be easier. Without the presence and threatened presence of nuclear weapons, it would be less risky. But those are realities.
This is not the Cold War. This is not "us vs. them", it is "them vs. them", and if not used wisely, our power may end up harming those whom we most want to help. That bit of humility may be the most critical point of all to keep in mind. And unfortunately, we Americans don't do humility well.
Q.) Is that really the best you got? No clearcut answers? We're supposed to just "manage" and "contain" this mess for years to come, if not decades? Really?
A.) Yes. Really. It will take other forms and appear in other places -- but for now it's ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Q.) OK. But why did you put "war" in quotations in your headline? If we're bombing and killing people, isn't that war? Shouldn't we just call it what it is?
A.) I get your point. And calling things by their right name is important. But if you call it a war, the implication is that it's something we can win, and it's something that we can win by applying ever larger doses of military force. Neither is true, and I'm leery of terminology that might lead us to think otherwise.
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