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United States should think twice before engaging with ISIS

Milam's Musings

After the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) beheaded two American journalists, James Foley and Steve Sotloff, a familiar, bipartisan cacophony can be heard from "sea to shining sea": The beating of the war drums.

Note, the United Nations, the United States State Department and President Obama use ISIL to refer to ISIS, meaning the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. For the purposes of this article, I will use the more common parlance of ISIS.

The main takeaway is this Islamic extremist group wants to restore an Islamic state, or caliphate, to the entire region stretching from southern Turkey through Syria to Egypt (which includes Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan), according to the Associated Press.

According to a NBC News report, ISIS's extremist version of a caliphate differs greatly from history. In the eighth century A.D., the Abbasid Caliphate is generally considered the "Golden Age of Islam," which fostered progress in science and philosophy. Bagdad used to be the "intellectual center of the world."

The beheadings of Foley and Sotloff are without question disturbing and worthy of condemnation. However, I would caution against the rush to go to war in Syria or put boots back on the ground in Iraq.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham argued in a New York Times op-ed that "we need a military plan to defeat ISIS, wherever it is."

Make no mistake, much like how the Iraq War in 2003 was a bipartisan affair, it also seems like the push to destroy ISIS at any cost is a bipartisan one.

Senator Dianne Feinstein on Meet the Press said Obama was "very cautious, maybe in this instance, too cautious." Vice President Joe Biden said we have to follow ISIS to the "gates of hell."

And two-thirds of Americans polled by Pew Research backed this bipartisan drum beating, saying ISIS poses a "major threat" to the United States. More importantly, the beheadings of Foley and Sotloff completely altered the desire to "do something."

Last year when considerations were given to bombing Syria, only 20 percent of Americans supported that action. After the beheadings, 63 percent said to bomb Syria. The script flipped.

So, too, did our foreign policy. A year ago, those bombings would have been directed at Syrian dictator, Bashard al-Assad, in alliance with the rebel forces. Today's bombings would be against an outgrowth of some of those rebel forces - ISIS - and with, incidentally, al-Assad.

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Such is the folly of U.S. interventionist foreign policy. Even war-weary-minded people say the oft-used phrase to justify the next war against the new enemy, "this time is different."

That's because the next enemy is always the gravest of threats. Political commentators along both sides have cited as such, as well as top government officials.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said ISIS is "beyond anything we've seen." U.S. State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk said ISIS has "matched and exceeded" the threat al-Qaeda poses to the United States.

But let's set the record straight. ISIS does not pose a threat to the United States homeland. ISIS is barbaric and horrendous enough without the war-mongering hyperbole.

Matthew Olsen, the departing director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said ISIS is not comparable to al-Qaeda pre-9/11.

"There is no credible information that [Isis] is planning to attack the United States," he said, adding that there are no foreign fighters operating within the United States.

A head-in-the-sand approach to ISIS is clearly not wise, but neither is a gut-reaction (to the beheadings, mostly), open-ended war with ISIS, especially if it means involving ourselves in a complex, bloody civil war in Syria.

Fret not, McCain and Graham brush aside the complex nature of Syria's civil war by suggesting one way to topple ISIS "requires an end to the conflict in Syria." I'm glad that is such an easy task. They, of course, provide no way to do that.

For a better understanding of the folly of intervention, look no further than the easily-forgotten Libyan intervention from 2011.

After the West toppled Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, NATO leader, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said, "Together, we have succeeded. Libya is finally free." McCain even gave Obama credit for his Libyan intervention. Obama to this day still thinks it was the right decision.

Three years later, Libya is in disarray, to put it mildly. Militant forces have seized Tripoli, Libya's capital.

"The country is coming undone. Relentless factional fighting in Tripoli and in the eastern city of Benghazi has left dozens of people dead. Well-known political activists have been killed, diplomats have been kidnapped, and ordinary citizens fear bandits on the roads," The New York Times reported.

But Americans are amnesic about history and hide behind the innocence of our good intentions.

Certainly, I can not bash the interventionists without offering what I would do about ISIS. First, stop funding and giving weapons to groups and countries, especially one of our closest allies, Saudi Arabia, also a fan of beheadings (they've carried out 19 just in the first half of August).

It leads to situations where we bomb our own weapons, like we're doing in our bombing campaign against ISIS in Iraq.

Which is yet another laughable, if it wasn't so sad, example of the woes of U.S. intervention. We armed the Kurds to battle ISIS because ISIS outgunned them because they had our guns, which we had given to the Iraqi military after our 2003 invasion.

Secondly, since ISIS is a regional threat, let the regional countries deal with it. We can still offer humanitarian aid and assistance where needed, but bombings and worse, "boots on the ground," only serve to exacerbate the problem.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and others all have strong enough militaries, mostly from our funding, to deal with ISIS.

Avoid the familiarly hypnotic drum beat to war. History is littered with its folly, even recent history.

milambc@miamioh.edu

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