Commitment a must against ISIL
President Barack Obama has an unfortunate tendency to lay down seemingly firm deadlines and red lines that often seem to blur or slip. This week, in a nationally televised address, he was unequivocal: The United States with our friends and allies will “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.”
Whether we do will largely determine whether the last two years of Obama’s presidency are deemed a success. Talk in the national security community is of a three-year process, meaning that he would bequeath to his successor, as happened to him, an unfinished war.
Crushing ISIL, or ISIS or the Islamic State as it is sometimes known, should not take that long in a properly waged war, but that would require Obama to shed some of his fastidious wartime scruples.
ISIL would very much like to make this a contest between themselves, as self-styled flag bearers of a worldwide Muslim caliphate, and the evil, infidel, Muslim-killing Americans, even though ISIL has methodically slaughtered thousands of Muslims as it swept across parts of Iraq and Syria. To counter this, the United States needs Arab allies. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and the Gulf States say they are willing to “do their share” as part of “a coordinated military campaign” against ISIL. Obama will also have to retrain the salvageable remnants of the Iraqi regular army and push them into the fight.
Reading between the lines that means Obama, to hold his embryonic coalition together, will have to commit a visible U.S. military presence to the fighting force. That means far beyond the additional 475 troops he plans to send, perhaps as much as a combat brigade. Touse a Wall Streett erm, our Arab allies want to see that the United States has skin in the game. Air power is nice, probably even more effective now that the United States plans strikes against ISIL havens in Syria, but there’s no coalition builder like “boots on the ground.”
Belatedly, the United States will train and equip the Syrian opposition. They can help oust ISIL and resume the fight to oust Syria’s murderous strongman, Bashar Assad, who has used the recent turmoil to try to regain a grip on his country. Unfortunately, one of Obama’s more uncertain allies in this fight is the U.S. Congress, which may settle, as a halfhearted gesture of support, on providing money for the free Syrians before adjourning to go home and campaign.
Critics have argued that ISIL does not pose a direct threat to the United States. Ignore them, and they’ll be well on their way to it. America must act decisively. Obama’s end goal is the right one. But will he — and Congress— have the will to back it up with sustained commitment?