Osler's Razor

The first Gulf war was requested by and almost entirely funded by nations from the surrounding region. Saddam's regime and army were left intact.

The American war that followed was funded by future generations of Americans. President Bush destroyed the regime and disbanded Saddam's army. He also created the conditions and timetable for our departure before leaving office. The video describes the result.

We now have two historical paths to follow. It will be a middle eastern war or an American war. Isis and the Republican candidates want it to be an American war. They both feel they will benefit from all the fears and threats.

I believe Isis will be destroyed with our patience, regional world wide response to their outreaches of terrorism, their incompetence and their internal strife. The thoughts that emerged in the Republican debate will hopefully have the same fate.

We will be best served by a rational and informed Administration that will resist knee jerk reactions to the Isis threats.




 

A lot of people (mostly Republicans who are anti-Obama on the spot) keep saying we need to do more to defeat ISIS, but when asked what more should be done, have no real concrete proposals. The fact is what we are doing is working. Maybe not as fast as some would like, but it is working.

One of the problems with a ground invasion option to defeat ISIS is that at some point the ground force has to leave, and we're back to square one. That's what happened post-US pullout in Iraq and is why even Republicans are starting to admit that yes Hussein was a really bad guy, but maybe it is to our advantage to leave those really bad guys alone.

I think it was Ted Cruz that argued in the debate that we launched 11,000 airstrikes a day in the first Gulf War, and we're only launching a handful a day against ISIS now. Sen. Cruz cited that as evidence we aren't going after ISIS as much as we should. It's a false equivalency argument. Iraq had the fourth or fifth largest standing army in the world before the first Gulf War. It was a target rich environment. ISIS is significantly smaller without the major infrastructure and equipment to hit. It's just not the same. The war against ISIS is being fought differently, and it's working.
 

I watched the video with great interest (and I found it quite accurate in relation to what I think I know). And I love someone who can offer a helpful history in six minutes.

A few reactions:

1. Mark, you say US airstrikes have been effective in reducing ISIS-held territory by 1/3. The Vox video does not make that claim as far as I can tell; rather, the video says 1/5 and does not attribute credit to the airstrikes (not sure if that discrepancy matters). The video also mentions Kurds--and, from what I hear, they are the element that represents the big losses of territory for ISIS (much more so than our airstrikes).

2. Moreover, the video does something else a bit unusual, at the end of the narrative, the voice of authority turns completely speculative, predicting the spectacular demise of ISIS (a prediction I agree with and have registered in this space a couple of times). But it is a bit unorthodox as the visual timeline continues to show 2015 and leads to the impression that the defeat of ISIS may be much more advanced that it really is in the present (which may led some casual observers to some overly optimistic conclusions about where we are where we have been).

3. I liked the brief history of AQI and ISIS and found it most helpful (although I was a bit surprised that Vox was willing to admit that Zarqawi and AQI were in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion; most folks on the Vox side of the ideological divide have trouble choking that one down). I also give the video credit for acknowledging the dramatic turnaround (downturn) in Iraq between 2008 and 2011 (which leads inexorably to a consideration of President Obama's foreign policy decisions).

4. Apart from this post, I was thinking about this earlier this morning: fifteen years of really bad presidential decisions and policy regarding the Middle East (most of which were well-intentioned) leaves the next president with a horrible mess (perhaps ISIS being the least horrific problem) in which the solutions seem wholly out of reach.

Of course, 1980 looked pretty awful as well. To regain our footing it will probably take eight years of really smart and undramatic efforts and rebuilding and rethinking.
 

Oh! I love the idea of "eight years of really smart and undramatic efforts and rebuilding and rethinking." I think that is exactly right. But who is propounding that on the campaign trail?

As you know, I am not an interventionist at all-- I still am unclear why Iraq or Afghanistan are places we need to be engaged with at all. There are conflicts elsewhere that we ignore, such as the trouble in Burundi right now that may lead to genocide, but we seem to be obsessed with picking the right side on interminable conflicts in the Middle East (and we aren't very good at it).
 

Oh, and you were right about the 1/5th (I fixed that). The connection between air strikes and the loss of territory is at 5:25.
 

Actually, I think we probably agree on why the Middle East is important: it is the crossroads of the industrialized world because of oil. As I have said before, all the wars in the Middle East are "wars about oil"--just not in the way the sign-carriers suppose when they are sloganeering.

Post-WWII History: the USA made a commitment to keeping the peace in the Middle East and keeping it open as a free zone of exchange so the West and the West-lite (Japan, Indian, China, and whoever else wants to join the party) could fuel their modern economies rather than fight regional wars over energy resources (as they had done so often during the first half of the century).

When the West becomes energy independent (and that has actually become a realistic goal in the last decade or so), the Middle East will recede in importance perhaps even to the status of Burundi to a point where most of us can totally ignore the rampant episodes of misery and butchery most of time.

As for getting back on a path to sanity and stability in the Middle East, I take your point that no candidate really seems to be articulating that policy in my terms. As in 1980, we are going to have to get lucky. And I don't know how many times one can count on "lucking out."

In re picking sides, here is something obvious and urgent: we definitely need a POTUS who will not cede hegemony in the Middle East to Vladimir Putin and the Iranians. And the obvious complement to that necessary point is reestablishing relationships with our traditional allies. That doesn't take "boots on the ground" or even an air presence. Just some honest assessment and reassessment and patience and commitment.
 

"The connection between air strikes and the loss of territory is at 5:25."

Not to get too technical, but I would continue to assert that the video does not necessarily confirm your assertion that "President Obama's air strikes against ISIS succeeded in weakening it, and led to the loss of 1/5 of the ISIS-held territory."

Here is the quote (5:05-5:30):

"ISIS quickly overreaches. That August it invades Kurdish territory in Iraq and Syria, sparking counter-attacks from better-organized Kurdish forces, launches a genocide against Iraqi Yazidis, and murders the American journalist, James Foley, on camera, outraging the world and provoking an American-led air campaign against it. ISIS cannot withstand the onslaught and loses more than a fifth of its territory."

Again, I am not sure the video makes that claim exactly. I suppose it depends on how weakly I construe "succeeded in weakening [ISIS]." Surely, our fairly unimpressive airstrikes did not strengthen ISIS, and we have killed some key people (as the President happily cataloged the other day), but I continue to argue that the Kurds have done the lion's share of the "succeeding" and "weakening." To imply that US actions made up the better part of the "onslaught" continues to strike me as misleading.

I suppose we would have to talk to Vox to see what they really meant. If they meant what you think they meant, I would have to disagree with them. But, considering how precise and carefully they constructed this narrative, my guess is that they would NOT give our air campaign as much credit as you do and would agree that the air campaign did not the make up anywhere near the majority of the "onslaught" against ISIS.
 

I think the brilliance of our military is summed up in in WF's perception that the Kurds have done the lion's share of the winning. The victories hopefully will never be credited to us or Iran. Success in Syria and Iraq will never come because someone bombs the **** out of them. Our air forces are very good and very effective. So are the French and our other allies. They must continue to be quietly effective. We do not need to see the images on TV we saw in the previous wars. If this leaves the impression that we are not in charge, so be it.



 

Mopping Up:

I admire President Obama, and, as I indicated above, I believe all of his mistakes have been and continue to be made with the best of intentions. Like President Bush, President Obama represents a great American story, and he surely wants the best for the nation. The presidency is a hard job that gets more difficult (maybe even impossible) with each passing day.

George Bush launched an ambitious program of reform and rejuvenation in the Middle East. It might have worked if he had been more diligent and if the ball bounced his way a few more times--but he wasn't and it didn't--and the autopsies of tragedies are often sprinkled with myriad "ifs" and "buts." President Bush acted out of some timeless American principles including Wilsonian Idealism, and I believe with all my heart that his heart was in the right place. He also reacted to a cataclysmic event through the prism of a pretty strong ideology, surrounded by advisers also in the thrall of the same worldview.

Like President Bush, President Obama reacted to a cataclysm (the failure of the Bush initiative) steeped in ideology and mostly listening to advisers dedicated to not only unwinding the Bush mistakes but also unwinding American centrality in world affairs as a pathway to a more peaceful and just world. Like the Bush policy, it was noble in its own way and heartfelt and not necessarily ridiculously foolhardy.

Having said that, my sense is that both experiments failed. What comes next is hard to say. Back to the drawing board and what I called undramatic foreign policy and lots of studied reassessment and a return to basic fundamentals.