The capitals of Europe are under attack. There’s nothing new about this, major
terrorist attacks have occurred over the last several years and have included
Spain, England, France, Germany and now Belgium. Although the contagion spread to the U.S.
long before the recent San Bernardino massacre with the first World Trade
Center bombing in 1993 and then the second World Trade Center disaster on
9/11/01, the last seven plus years under the Obama administration have been
characterized by a distressing level of passivity bordering on
indifference.
Although the problem of Islamic terrorism in Europe
is complicated by domestic issues of immigration, non-assimilation, and
economic and social dysfunction, the threats of Islamic violence in both Europe
and the United States share a basic cause. This is the leadership of the
Islamic State and its absurd fantasy of creating a medieval styled “caliphate”
across international borders in the Middle East and beyond.
Despite the various contributing domestic issues
which offer a supply of willing volunteers in Europe, the role of Islamic State
leadership in Syria is primary. It
recruits, encourages, supplies and trains the individual terrorists who do
their bidding. This is an extension of
their military expansion within the nations of Syria and Iraq which could
ultimately spread to Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya.
Thus, the undeniably necessary response from the
nations most directly affected,
including the U.S, is the destruction of the Islamic State at its core. To date, no serious international response
has been forthcoming. The U.S. led
anti-ISIS coalition has never been effective as it has lacked coordination,
commitment and has been limited to military aid and training for rebel forces
mostly engaged with Syria’s government forces and since 2014 to tactical air
strikes encumbered by highly restrictive rules of engagement.
The regional members, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, have
withdrawn their air support, as has the new Liberal government of Canada. This leaves only the U.S., Britain, and
France as the major participants. Drone
strikes on ISIS leaders have had some success but a “strategy” of trying to
kill off the leaders of this forty thousand plus terrorist organization one by
one is not a strategy at all. Obama is locked into a political philosophy of
passivity and seems to have had a long term lack of understanding of the implications
and seriousness of the problem. He is
unwilling to make a major commitment as a starting point to negotiations with
regional states and affected European nations to commence serious operations
against this major source of international terrorism.
Obama’s dismissive attitude towards domestic
terrorist attacks is astounding. He has
said that more people in the U.S. are killed in bath tub accidents and
automobile deer strikes than in terrorist attacks and that the Islamic State is
not an “existential threat” to the U.S.
Thus horrific slaughters of individuals as occurred in San Bernardino,
California are just risks we must accept like slipping in your tub.
Of course ISIS is not an “existential threat” to the
United States. That is a naïve “straw man”
argument to justify largely ignoring the problem. The Islamic terrorist’s attacks and numerous
attempted plots are attacks on the sovereignty of the nation and the lives of
its citizens. These are not to be
discounted or minimized as an inconvenience or domestic criminal matter. The ISIS inspired terrorism in San Bernardino
was an “existential threat” to the
American citizens who were killed and wounded.
Their deaths and others yet to occur should not be simply accepted as
“collateral damage” to Obama’s unwillingness to eliminate the threat.
As Obama entered the final year of his presidency,
he has turned away even more than before from the hard decisions that go with
the office and has let his concern with his “legacy” guide his policy
priorities. Thus he had Secretary of
State Kerry “negotiate” a flawed nuclear weapons agreement with Iran. Desperate to conclude some kind of agreement,
he avoided the tough negotiations that would have been necessary to give the agreement
the longevity of a formal treaty, opting instead on an executive agreement that
is vulnerable to modification or termination by his successors.
The result of his urgency is an agreement which
lifted the economic sanctions on Iran which brought them to the negotiating
table and which provided the strongest card in the U.S. hand to make the
outcome a genuine and long term denial of a nuclear weapons program. He then returned approximately 1.5 billion
dollars in sequestered funds which gave up the next most powerful negotiating
position. The final result included only
a ten year limit on Iran’s nuclear weapons development plan and an agreement
that Iran would “self-inspect” its primary nuclear weapons facility.
The opening of relations with Cuba is another
“legacy” policy. It was time to
establish more normal relations with the island nation just ninety miles from
Florida. But again, Obama gave, but did
not receive. The new relationship will
be much more valuable to Cuba than to the United States as tourism and
investments flow in. This reality could
have provided negotiating incentives for Cuba’s aging leadership to make
concessions on human rights and market based economic policies, but since
Obama’s goal was simply to put “opening Cuba” on his legacy list, those
opportunities were ignored. Cuba’s founding autocrat, Fidel Castro publicly
disparaged the entire process.
Obama’s belief that global warming is a bigger
security threat than international terrorism led to another legacy
chapter. This was the much promoted idea
that the emissions agreement with China and the subsequent international
agreement on the same and finalized in Paris were Obama led “break
throughs”. But the Paris agreement,
while including a more comprehensive list of nations than the previous Kyoto
Agreement, is long on style and short on substance. It is a voluntary agreement. The parties decide on their own what level of reduction
of greenhouse gases they will set as a “goal”.
The agreement contains neither mandatory reporting requirements nor
accountability if violated. Climate experts agree that the expected individual
national “goals” will be inadequate to reduce global warming by the
scientifically agreed critical target of 2 degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile the unwillingness to lead an international
effort to destroy the ISIS army and its occupation of large areas of Syria and
Iraq, is a similar “legacy” driven policy of non-involvement in ground
operations in the Middle East, a political campaign promise related to his
pledge to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq. But ISIS has evolved, both from
that pledge, and from the reluctance of regional states to act without the
support of the United States with its superior military capabilities.
The medium term future is not promising. Intelligence agencies in Belgium and France
have reported that hundreds of Islamic terrorists are in their midst to carry
out future domestic attacks. ISIS has
also openly put the U.S. on its latest target list.
Although the American public would likely not
support a major invasion of Syria on the scale of the 2003 invasion of
Iraq. Such a mission would not be required. The U.S. led coalition in 2003 defeated the large,
highly organized and well equipped army of Saddam Hussein in just seven
weeks. The ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria
are essentially civilian recruits with light weapons, a few captured tanks and
no air capabilities. Their strength against the currently weak opposition of
the Iraqi army and the Syrian government’s forces, has been in urban fighting,
and that has shown recent signs of weakening.
Obama has chosen to pursue a policy that looks as if
he is committed to doing something but without taking any risks. The result
is a U.S. led coalition effort involving tactical air strikes against ISIS
in both Iraq and Syria. The air campaign coalition (Operation Inherent Resolve)
is a smaller part of the larger anti-ISIS coalition (Operation Enduring
Freedom) which is focused on providing aid and training to Iraqi and Kurdish
troops and to rebel forces fighting the Syrian government.
While Inherent Resolve has the participation of several regional
nations plus several more European nations and Australia, their contributions are small in
number. Australia’s six fighter aircraft
and three support aircraft is the second largest foreign contingent after the
U.S. Saudi Arabia has withdrawn its
planes as has Canada. But in spite of flying thousands of sorties (one plane on
a single mission) since beginning in 2014, the territory controlled by ISIS is
essentially the same as it was when the operation began. Obama has said the
Islamic State is “contained” but estimated that the air operations would need
to continue for three years. Retiring Army Chief
of Staff, General Ray Odierno who was
more pessimistic, and not at all worried about his legacy, estimated a period
of “10 to20 years.”
The basic problem with the air operation is that it
is so seriously encumbered by restrictive rules of engagement which have been
imposed by political authorities over a fear of killing even “one civilian” that most valuable targets are
off limits and when pilots report targets of opportunity they must get radio
clearance before making an attack. They
report that this process can take up to an hour or more rendering the request
useless. The result as reported to
Senator John McCain, himself a former Navy attack pilot, in the first year of
the mission, is that pilots were returning to base without dropping their bombs 75% of the time. The commander of the air mission, Lt. General
John Hesterman, confirmed this figure.
The rules have been somewhat loosened in recent
months as ISIS controlled oil facilities have been bombed and the ridiculous
rule prohibiting the attacking of ISIS oil delivery trucks because the drivers
might be civilians, has been revoked.
Still, the majority of targets are empty building, vehicles, storage
facilities and “fighting positions” outside of populated areas. The “capital” of the Islamic State is the city of
Raqqa in Syria, but Isis leaders and combatants, fully aware of the restrictive
rules of engagement intermingle with the civilian population and avoid attack.
Military experts say that victory over ISIS will
never be accomplished with air power alone.
A determined effort by a coalition of professional ground forces from
Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and led by a contingent of American forces
with American battlefield intelligence and air power seems to be the only
answer to the eradication of this otherwise permanent terrorist threat to the
civilian populations of Europe and America and the direct military threat to
regional states.
This is a complicated situation and requires tough
decision making and leadership. Jordan, with a border on Syria, has said it
will not participate in a ground operation without a mandate from the UN and
the forces are “led by the Americans and the British.” Saudi Arabia has discussed participation in
such an operation in cooperation with Turkey.
But Turkey’s participation is complicated by their hostilities with the
Kurds whose territory lies along the northeast border of Syria with Turkey.
The civil war between the Assad government in Syria
and rebel forces is also a complicating factor as a foreign ground invasion
directed at ISIS in the northeast of Syria would help Assad. But a cease fire
between Assad’s government forces and the rebel forces which is under
negotiation could open the door for a separate ground operation against ISIS.
Thus it can be done if the planning starts now, and it
is the only alternative to a generational conflict in the region and a
permanent terrorist threat to Europe and the U.S.
Obama’s concern about his place in history is myopic
and his “legacy” list is flawed. His primary responsibility is to protect the
security and interests of the citizens of the United States at home and abroad.
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