We Should Be Careful What We Do About ISIS

We Already Have Too Many Useless Deaths

We should be very careful in deciding what to do about ISIS.  The murder of two Americans in Syria is appalling, but in responding to it, we should be careful not to cause the useless deaths of thousands more Americans. I use the word “useless” deliberately because in my lifetime, too many Americans have died uselessly.

In Vietnam, tens of thousands of Americans died, and their sacrifice produced no benefit for the United States or for Vietnam. The outcome of the war was that the Vietnamese communists took over the country, and we could have obtained that outcome without a single American death in 1945, in 1954 or in 1965.

In Iraq, more than 4000 Americans died, and the main outcomes of that war were:

·         An increase in the power of the Shi’ites in Iraq.

·         An increase in the power of Iran as the patron of the Iraqi Shi’ites.

·         An increase in the power of Sunni Islamic terrorists in reaction to the actions of the Shi’ite government of Iraq.

All of these outcomes are contrary to the interests of the United States. So, the American deaths in Iraq actually made the Middle East more hostile and dangerous for our country. We do not want the same thing to happen in Syria.

We Will Have American "Boots on the Ground"

President Obama has said that we will hunt down ISIS, degrade it and ultimately destroy it. He has said that we will use air strikes, but that the “boots on the ground” will not be American. Allies like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan will do the fighting there, but they have shown little enthusiasm for that role. In the meantime, a senior US Air Force commander is quoted in today’s USA Today as saying that the our pilots will need American spotters on the ground in Iraq and Syria to verify that the targets of air strikes are real and legitimate. What will happen when those spotters come under attack, as inevitably they will? Will we abandon them, or will we send in “boots on the ground” to defend and support them?

What Will Happen if we Train and Equip the Moderate Opposition?

President Obama has said that we will work to train and support the moderate opponents of the Assad regime, but the moderate opposition to Assad is fragmented and not very effective. Moreover, the moderate opposition groups are allied with radical Islamist groups like the Nusra Front who oppose ISIS for their own reasons. Will our weapons fall into the hands of those Islamist groups? What will they do with those weapons? Remember that we armed Islamists in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union, and when that war ended, the Taliban used those weapons to take over the country.  When we invaded Afghanistan to drive out the Taliban, our troops found themselves fighting against an enemy that we had armed.  We do not yet know what the outcome of our war in Afghanistan will be, but the situation there does not appear encouraging. We know that the Karzai government and its supporters are spectacularly corrupt. We read reports of renewed attacks by the Taliban in key provinces, and we read that the government’s troops are sometimes being overwhelmed there.  In the end, will the more than 2000 American deaths have produced any benefit for our country?

The Price Will Be High

If we decide to remake the political map of Syria and Iraq by eliminating ISIS, we will pay a high price in the lives of the Americans who do the fighting, and it is not clear that eliminating ISIS will produce any real benefit for the United States. The regimes in Iraq and Syria will still be unstable, brutal and corrupt. Other radical Islamist groups will still be there. We cannot change that.

President Bush told us that we would bring democracy to Iraq, and we know what the outcome of that has been. Some people say that if President Obama had not withdrawn our troops from Iraq, the situation would be better there, and perhaps they are right. But how long are they be prepared to stay there? We were there for a decade. Are they prepared to stay for another decade or two?  If we enter the war in Syria, all of its problems will become our problems, and we will not be able to put down that burden once we take it up. So, let us be careful what we do now because we will have to live with the consequences for decades. Let us at least try not to cause more useless deaths.