ISIS/ISIL/IS are major bad guys. They're among the worst in the world. But they don't stand alone there: North Korea, Boko Haram, Seleka in the Central African Republic, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Plenty of bad guys, but we don't fight them all.
And we don't lack for unstable allies to bolster - Libya is a weak successor to a regime destroyed with NATO assistance, Ukraine's Western influences are at the heart of its war.
But, the President says, we're called to fight this one. I'm trying to process why he's chosen it.
The question I have, before this war, before any war, is how the President believes that it's going to make the world a better place when it's over. Obama barely even attempted to make that case.
First of all, do we even understand the conflict? Obama said "ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple." That's bullshit. ISIS uses terrorism to be sure, but this isn't a reclusive band hiding in caves. It's not quite a state, but it has an army. It controls territory and cities. We can't just rely on thwarting plots to overcome it, or on bombing compounds or droning ringleaders. There will be battles, sieges, and conquests. There will be house-to-house fighting in cities the size of Pittsburgh or St. Louis. Bombs will kill innocent children, and hundreds of thousands may be displaced. Even if we're not the ground troops, there will be ground troops, and we need to be ready for that.
The terrorism, the president admits, is entirely theoretical, at least against us. The fighting will not be counterterrorism, it will be war.
Thus my skepticism at:
Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.
So, it's troubling that we generally seem to have a strategy at odds with the conflict. Specifically, it's not much better:
First, we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists
Will that work? Israel conducted a systematic campaign of airstrikes against Gaza in 2004. And 2006. And 2008. And 2009. And 2012. And in 2014, Hamas was still there, for yet another systematic campaign of airstrikes. Note that Gaza is under 150 square miles. ISIS's territory is about 500 times bigger.
Second, we will increase our support to forces fighting these terrorists on the ground.
In Iraq? We spent a decade doing that, and ended up with an army that melted the first time it got hit. Cost us $25 billion, too. How is this going to be better than before?
[W]e have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition. Tonight, I again call on Congress to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters.
The Free Syrian Army? We've been doing that already, and it hasn't earned us much. And the FSA is literally allied with Al Qaeda in Syria. What could go wrong? And what are we doing with Bashir Assad these days?
we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people; a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL
Fair. But we're now arming a side in a three-way civil war. It may not go well.
Third, we will continue to draw on our substantial counterterrorism capabilities to prevent ISIL attacks.
Important. But that's not going to retake Mosul.
Fourth, we will continue providing humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians who have been displaced by this terrorist organization
This, I like. Ultimately, though, we're just doing what we're already doing - intelligence, humanitarian aid, arming factions, adding air strikes. Obama is arguing that ISIS is winning because of a matter of degree, not a matter of kind.
Which is really what he's saying here:
This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.
Don't put "success" and "Somalia" in the same sentence. Those aren't stable, thriving democracies. Those are precarious states held up by foreign powers. Al-Shabaab is weakened, but not defeated. And we've been fighting them for 7 years.
Yemen faces two Islamist insurgencies, and we've been droning them for five years.
So given that plan, and those comparisons, I'm not convinced that Obama plans to fight the war he's promising. If it's airstrikes and support, like Yemen and Somalia, we will never degrade and destroy ISIL. We will contain it, halt its expansion, and interrupt attempts to strike at the U.S. That might not be a terrible strategy. It might be better than not acting. It might not be. Either way, it's going to go on through the foreseeable future, because those policies don't have an exit strategy.
But it raises a very important question: why is the president lying about the mission's objectives? Why is he promising a dead-or-alive, gates-of-hell-and-back war that he's not going to commit to?
And, an altogether separate problem, why is he doing it without Congressional authority? The AUMF after 9/11 plainly does not apply. It's not good.
Ultimately, my conclusion is this: we are not going to war for oil. We're not going to war for Israel. We're not going to war for military interests.
We're going to war because American politics now requires us to use force when a foreign conflict enters the public imagination. That's just what American presidents do, because they've lost the ability to abstain. Obama basically says it:
Trained and battle-hardened, these fighters could try to return to their home countries and carry out deadly attacks. I know many Americans are concerned about these threats. Tonight, I want you to know that the United States of America is meeting them with strength and resolve.
Americans hear about a theoretical risk, that COULD happen, and get scared and demand action. So we flex strength and resolve.
This is American leadership at its best: we stand with people who fight for their own freedom; and we rally other nations on behalf of our common security and common humanity.
The international community defaults to putting us in charge, again, because nobody wants to do anything and everybody wants something to be done. So we act like we were out in front.
My Administration has also secured bipartisan support for this approach here at home.
Divided political parties will always stand together on foreign conflicts, and those out of power will be the first to demand their opponents do SOMETHING about the CRISIS (yes, you, Mr. McCain). So co-opt them and move forward.
America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead.
Bottom line, our job is to do something, even if it's not a good idea. Because we've forgotten how not to do something. And we are afraid that the world will say we did nothing in a crisis, even when we shouldn't have. Even when there was nothing to do.
So what do we get? We do what we do. We launch air strikes, we meet with allies, we send money and arms. We push the risks of failure onto our allies (or co-belligerents) and prepare to blame them when things go wrong. The conflicts become background noise except for occasional flare-ups, and life goes on back here across the ocean.
It's what we do.