Yesterday, the United States began bombing targets in Syria initiating its campaign to “degrade” and “destroy” ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). In addition to bombing, the US strategy for combatting ISIS is to locate, train and arm “moderate” fighters to enable those fighters to resist and repel the Islamic State. It is hard to believe that these methods will produce the outcome the US claims it is seeking.
For one thing, the US has spent nearly a decade arming and training the Iraqi army. Despite the fact that we were working with the Iraqi government and could effect training in the open, ISIS was able to capture and control large swaths of Iraq in a few weeks, scattering the army and seizing their weapons. It is hard to understand how the same approach, without a sponsor, will create an army capable of destroying the Islamic State.
Thirty years ago, after the USSR invaded Afghanistan, US policy focused on arming and covertly training the Mujahadeen — that is creating a local force to resist and disrupt the Soviet occupation. It is widely accepted that the remnants of that resistance force became Al Qaeda and the Taliban — forces with whom we are at war today. Similarly, ISIS is the bastard child of the illegitimate US invasion of Iraq. Tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims were largely contained by the authoritarian government of Saddam Hussein (and the authoritarian rule in neighboring Iran and Syria). When the US invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam sectarian tensions escalated into near civil war. In a few years, ISIS emerged and began its attempt to form an Islamic caliphate in the region.
At this point, the most visible component of the US “War on Terror” is the execution of dangerous, terrorist masterminds by unleashing hellfire missiles from the drones that seek and locate them. Even if I believed that this sort of warfare is proper and that these human beings are best disposed of in this way, I would still question the corollary practice of returning to the scene in a short while to fire another missile at people who are trying to retrieve bodies from the wreckage. It seems unlikely that other dangerous terrorists in the vicinity would rush to the scene to facilitate proper burial of the dead.
Given the above — none of which is particularly controversial — it is no wonder that a number of bloggers wonder whether the drone war produces more terrorists than it consumes. It’s not surprising that bloggers are asking “Hasn’t the US learned anything in the last decade or so?”
We who were raised and schooled in the US are predisposed to think that the US is a force for good in the world, that we never initiate a war that isn’t necessary (except, perhaps, through error or faulty intelligence), and that we always win. Certainly, I believed this when I was in school. Even jaded as we are from US adventures over the last 10 or 15 years (and perhaps all the way back to the end of World War II), the narrative that we cling to is that the US is a good nation and tries to accomplish good things.
In light of US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Syria, Yemen, Somalia, etc.), perhaps it’s time to reframe the obvious questions. Instead of asking whether US policy exacerbates rather than quells the problem of terrorism, instead of asking if the US has learned nothing from its recent history, perhaps it’s time to ask what, in fact, are the outcomes that our government is trying to effect. It’s an uncomfortable question because we are not apt to like the answer.