Here’s a pungent analysis of the situation in Iraq from the ‘XX Committee’ blog. (Hat tip to the indefatigable JK.)
Key excerpt:
The U.S. military is quite capable of defeating almost any adversary on the battlefield, even Da’ish, though that is not the same thing as producing lasting political outcomes that Americans will like. This is particularly true in the Greater Middle East, where the politico-cultural barriers to Westernization delivered by the barrel of a gun are steep and strong. Over the last decade, multiple approaches have been tried: in Afghanistan and Iraq, a U.S. “heavy’ footprint was applied while in Libya a “lead from behind’ air coalition employing locals as the ground force (not unlike what we hope to do in Iraq now) sufficed to overthrow the Qaddafi regime. All these countries are violent basket-cases now.
On the essential fraudulence of the “counterinsurgency’ myth that was peddled to the American public during George W. Bush’s second term I don’t have much to add to what other scholars have already said. The “COIN’ agenda proved effective at promoting the careers and fortunes of some U.S. Army officers and their think-tank hangers-on, yet quite ineffective at producing strategic victory. It is now time, indeed long overdue, to dispense with magical thinking about what the application of American military power might achieve in any lasting strategic or political sense in the Middle East.
To be blunt, we kill very effectively but we have precious little understanding of how to transform Muslim societies by force. Indeed, our efforts in that direction usually produce opposite outcomes, which should be easily predictable were we not besotted by lies about how others view us and what we seek to achieve. It is dangerously easy, when ensconced in the Pentagon or White House bubble of endless PowerPoints and meetings, to believe entirely untrue things. This is a strategic deception that is painful because it is entirely self-inflicted.
Simply put, we have no ability to change Muslim societies unless we are willing to stay the long haul and are eager to kill staggering numbers of people, many of them civilians, in horrible ways. And even then, lasting victory is far from certain. In the 1950”²s, France crushed the Algerian insurgency tactically through methods that no Western state would approve today ”” massive internment of civilians, indiscriminate killings, and torture on an industrial scale ”” and still failed to strategically defeat the local resistance, thanks in no small part to global disgust at what France was doing in Algeria. And this was a country that France had occupied for well over a century and its military knew intimately. (One of the more ridiculous facets of the Petraeus-led COIN mafia was their citation of France’s 1954-62 war in Algeria as a model of any sort to emulate, but how they out-cherry-picked Cheney to make their ahistorical arguments is, alas, another story.)
Confronted with the fact that we simply will not defeat ISIS without actually going to war with them ourselves, we are now, it seems, about to escalate.
Suppose we ‘win’, and reconquer the territory that thousands of our military already bled and died for. Then what? We will face an endless insurgency, as we did before. If we leave, chaos will erupt again, just as it has this time. Do we then stay, forever, draining the blood of our best, and money we haven’t got, into the sands of Mesopotamia?
It would be refreshing if our leaders would at least make it clear to the American people that this is the choice we face: rule this snakepit forever, at measureless cost, or look after our own dying nation, and let the parties to these ancient and alien hatreds settle them amongst themselves.
11 Comments
The latter.
If it stayed in the middle east, I’d be willing to wash our hands of the whole mess. But the problem is that what starts in the middle east doesn’t *stay* in the middle east.
Then Eric, what is, five simple butlletpoints’d suffice – your suggested *strategy?”
Eric, you wrote:
This is why I think Western nations ought to declare an immediate moratorium on Muslim immigration, and start thinking of ways to encourage non-assimilating Muslims who are already here to depart.
Do you agree that we are limited to the two choices I gave?
Offhand, I’d say that our best solution is to pick a local despot, elevate him to dictator, and let him deal with the issues.
However, such a solution is likely infeasible because of domestic politics.
The alternative is simply to stand well back, and the locals will pick a despot all on their own.
As you say, due to domestic politics, we don’t do a very good job at standing by the despots we pick. We had a very good one, for example, in Libya; he was all bought and paid for, and he had made his country one of the most prosperous nations in Africa. But of course he was, after all, a dictator — and so as soon as some of those “Arab Spring” types showed a little ankle, our wandering eye got the better of us.
ISIL/ISIS/IS is a threat to US interests, but I believe the threat is overhyped. These horrific snuff videos that IS produces to draw us in has worked like a charm. Now, how to say this diplomatically – so far the hostages they have are Americans who chose to go to war-torn Syria for their own personal humanitarian reasons, ignoring State Department warnings that this was unsafe. That is not meant to justify the beheadings, but to point out that they put themselves at risk. The IS threat to Americans at home and abroad outside of the Mid-East is much lower.
Why we jumped into the middle of this IS battle, I don’t know. We have no strategic goals other than “degrade and defeat ISIL”, where the CINC already took the best options off of the table to achieve that. And as far as realistic political solutions – we don’t have any and it’s obvious that the tribes, factions and even state actors in the Muslim world don’t have any clear political ideas either. IS declared a caliphate (state) without a clue how to put together a government. I don’t know why we want to crush IS so quickly, when strategically that strengthens Assad and the Iranian sponsored militias in Iraq. And, finally, where the American national interest falls in this, I haven’t heard clearly articulated – except they always fall back on how stability in the Mid-East is vital, but we plod along century to century with no stability there and we still manage. Sorry for rambling.
No need to apologize, libertybelle. I wouldn’t call that rambling, and I agree with nearly everything you’ve said here.
Why bother with a despot when there already exists a bona fide Western, Judeo-Christian nation that is ready, willing, and more than able to represent the interests of Western civilization: Israel.
Let’s get rid of our Jew-hating PO
TUS and acknowledge the fact that Israel’s best interests have always paralleled America’s and Europe’s, and give them the logistical support they need to do the job.Now, that I agree with 100% BigHenry!
I’m glad someone finally brought up Israel and their status as a friend and ally.