Don’t give up now
Islamic State swept into northern Iraq in 2014, but the door opened for it three years earlier, when the U.S. withdrew its troops from the Middle East country.
Left on their own, Iraqi troops dropped their guns and fled the onslaught. Islamic State militants then ruled the northern city of Mosul and a host of other cities and towns with nihilistic brutality that entailed public beheadings and the use of women as sex slaves. It took three years for Iraqi troops to regroup.
Today, Mosul slowly rebuilds. The remnants of Islamic State have scattered into the desert. Game over? Hardly.
The U.S. and Baghdad are stepping up talks about maintaining a U.S. military presence in the country. It’s not known how large an American contingent would be involved, but its role would likely mirror that of U.S. troops in the bid to defeat Islamic State—advising Iraqi commanders and providing surveillance and intelligence help. James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and now a foreign affairs analyst, told USA Today that the new contingent probably would be smaller than the current force of 5,500 soldiers.
Keeping American boots on the ground in a part of the world as unstable as Iraq is never an easy decision, but it behooves both Iraq and the U.S. to hammer out a deal.
Iraq’s peace is desperately fragile. And consider this: Islamic State doesn’t need a caliphate to maintain its online appeal to lone wolves, like the Uzbek immigrant who killed eight people in Manhattan in a truck attack on Halloween, or the Bangladeshi who tried to blow himself up in a crowded New York subway station Dec. 11.
An American military intelligence presence is needed in Iraq to ferret out and neutralize whatever Islamic State is up to, whether that be web propaganda or suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad. Though Islamic State is beaten in Iraq, “the fight is not over,” Defense Secretary James Mattis said in November. “Even without a physical caliphate, ISIS remains a threat to stability in the recently liberated areas, as well as in our homelands.”
Just as important: A continued American military presence in Iraq, even if smaller than the force there now, also serves as a counterpoint to Iran.
Neither the U.S. nor Iraq can afford to again underestimate Islamic State and its bloodlust determination to sow destruction and chaos. A small, focused contingent of American troops can help serve as a firewall to that determination.