Who cares about ISIL? Not Clinton, Johnson or Trump
If a fragile Syrian cease-fire that began Monday were to take hold, U.S. diplomatic and military leaders might be in a better position to deal with the Islamic State terrorist group. But with Barack Obama leaving office in January, the presidential candidates don’t look ready to seize the opportunity.
The rise of ISIL, also known as ISIS, has arguably been Obama’s single biggest failure as president. He looked on helplessly as it captured huge swaths of Iraq in 2014 then took advantage of the Syrian civil war to spread there. More recently, it has encouraged terror attacks on civilian targets in Europe and America while branching into parts of Libya.
Now is the opportunity for candidates vying to take Obama’s place to put forward aggressive plans to deal with this threat. Instead, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Gary Johnson are broadcasting their lack of seriousness.
Clinton is closest to a credible approach. But at a national security forum last week, she said, “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again. And we’re not putting ground troops into Syria. We’re going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops.”
While no one is pining to return to the 170,000 troops deployed to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, there could be circumstances when a much smaller number is called for. In fact, even the Obama administration has quietly been adding to a contingent of U.S. troops on the ground there, now numbering about 5,000. And hundreds of special forces troops are already in northern Syria.
Clinton’s categorical statement leaves little wiggle room to adapt to changing circumstances. It also gives ISIL valuable information on what U.S. strategy in the region will be.
Trump, meanwhile, has even less of a plan. His stock answer through much of his campaign has been to bomb the “s---” out of ISIL. This approach ignores the fact that ISIL presents few hard targets.
More recently, Trump has said that he’d give his generals 30 days to devise a plan to defeat ISIL — as if they hadn’t been giving the matter some thought already.
That leaves Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, who appears poised to take more votes than any third-party candidate since Ross Perot.
Asked how he’d approach the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo, a key battleground in the fighting between rebel groups and the Russian-backed Syrian military, Johnson responded by asking: “What’s Aleppo?”
There is no silver bullet in dealing with ISIL. The best answer may well be a more aggressive and urgent version of what Obama is up to, which involves assisting Iraqi and Kurdish troops in their efforts to retake strategically important cities.
But we are not even hearing that from the presidential nominees. The lack of seriousness is appalling. ISIL is a major threat to a critical region of the world and has designs on further attacks like those unleashed in Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino.
Voters have come to expect little from this year’s candidates. But they deserve more on ISIL than they are getting.