President
Obama, the reluctant warrior, showed flexibility in using military force when
US interests and overwhelming humanitarian needs were at stake and he
authorized air strikes against ISIS in northern Iraq. His critics, the
same who had urged him to take more military action in nearly every crisis, are
left to whine that he does not have a consistent overall foreign policy. News
flash: He does. The more pertinent questions should be is this
action too little, too late, or will it work?
First, does President Obama even have a foreign policy?
Yes. It is just not the one hawks like, but it is one for which he
was elected. The list: Avoid more ground wars and withdraw from
Iraq and Afghanistan. Use diplomatic engagement and other means to forward
American interests, provide humanitarian aid, or to protect national security,
with military engagement a last resort. Bring in neighbors, allies, and
others. Promote self-governance that is inclusive, effective, and no
springboard for terrorists to attack the West. Much of this was restated
in his interview with Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times on August 8.
Are Obama’s strategy and tactics consistent with that
policy? Obama did not wait for a slaughter to happen first as
President Clinton did in Bosnia. Instead, he used military action to head
off ethnic cleansing of minority Christians, Kurds, and others. He has involved
the UK and France to deliver humanitarian aid.
Should he have intervened in Syria to cripple ISIS’s rise?
If the US had supplied weapons to Syrian rebels, they most likely would
have found their way to ISIS, which was also a major part of the rebel force.
Sometimes no action is wiser than action.
He is pressuring Baghdad regime change to promote an inclusive
and effective Baghdad. It is a work in progress. Prime Minister al-Maliki
had laid the seeds for ISIS when he became a Shia despot, persecuting and
excluding Sunnis from government. The result: ISIS was welcomed by Sunni
villages and Sunni members of the Iraq military, enabling the rapid advance
nearly to the gates of Baghdad.
Obama has forsworn a ground war while he was decisive in
ordering air strikes. The old truism, air strikes alone do not win wars,
holds water if there are no boots on the ground to fight. Air superiority
has worked before when there were other armed forces fighting the ground
war. In the early 1990s in Bosnia and in Kosovo, President Clinton
belatedly authorized US airpower through NATO to give support to Muslims fighting
the Bosnian Serbs and Serbian Kosovars, bent on establishing a greater
Serbia cleansed of Muslims. It resulted in a diplomatic resolution.
The Kurds are the best fighters in Iraq. With US weapons,
training, and air support, the plan is for Kurds to get time to gather strength
and slow down ISIS’s advance to Baghdad, giving an opportunity for Baghdad
to get its act and resolve together and fight its own war.
A version of this blog appears as a column in the August 14, 15 various editions of the www.skyhidailynews.com
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