The president announced a broader policy to take on Islamic State (IS) last night. I personally don’t think it was broad enough, but it is an improvement over the status quo.
Here are the good points:
- Stronger policy against IS itself: The idea of defensive air strikes is gone. The Administration is publicly taking the fight to IS, with words and air sorties.
- Nothing (yet) for Tehran and its Syrian puppet: The mullahcracy will be looking to use this to increase its influence and power in the region. Nothing would help better than Washington’s blessing. It didn’t come. That’s a good thing.
- The Free Syrian Army will get more help and attention: The FSA has long been the best of a bad bunch in Syria. One could argue they’re also the only real enemy Assad has [1]. They shouldn’t be forgotten, and they weren’t.
That said, this isn’t a perfect policy, Here are the bad points:
- Ruling out ground forces: Given how much blood and treasure we shed dethroning Saddam Hussein and blocking al Qaeda and Tehran in Iraq, the idea that no ground forces are coming back will be seen as a sign of weakness and/or faintness of heart. It’s not entirely fair, but keeping redeployment open as an option would have dealt with this.
- Relying on the Saudis to help coordinate aid to the FSA: No one is saying the FSA is perfect, but we’ve worked with less-than-perfect before. The Reagan Administration worked with Marxist rebels in Ethiopia [2] to defeat a Communist regime, and said opposition gradually shed its Marxism as it worked closer with us. I am sure a similar result can be achieved with the FSA…but it’s a lot harder with the Saudis in the room.
Overall, as I said, this policy is an improvement over the status quo. As such, it has my support. However, I would prefer something stronger and more American-driven, and we have to remain a player in the region post-IS. We cannot simply declare victory and disappear as we tried to do in Libya. We won World War II in 1945. Seventy years later, we still have a presence in Europe and East Asia. These are the responsibilities of a superpower.