President Obama reminded the nation that the United States is not at war with Islam, but only with violent fundamentalism. Such fundamentalism is not only Islamist — witness the recent shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.

Hawks want to declare World War IV against what they call “Islamic radicalism” and use ground U.S. troops to destroy the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. But I.S.I.S. arose in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and even if we eradicated I.S.I.S., we should expect it to metastasize. Meanwhile, the drain on the nation’s lives and budget would be immense.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Western triumphalists claimed that there henceforth would be no alternative to global capitalism with a veneer of liberal democracy. But our destruction of a secular — if highly imperfect — alternative (namely, Communism and even socialism) left few outlets other than religious extremism. As global climate change and economic globalization put great strains on people, we can expect more violent challenges, unless we make space for truly democratic alternatives to the current economic and military world order.

Yes, the cycles of warfare and despotism in the Middle East have been a breeding ground for beliefs that motivate people to do horrible deeds. But no one seems to have the knowledge or will to take the steps needed to pacify and establish legitimate governments in the region.

Yes, many of the nation’s Governors have warned, and Federal authorities know, resettling refugees from war-torn regions to the United States is risky. But traditions, laws, and humanitarian instincts, here and elsewhere, mean that restrictive immigration policies are not likely to get very far, no matter how much anxious publics want them.

In any case, such policies would create a false sense of security. For the attacks in Paris, as well as those recently in the United States, were largely the work of home-grown extremists, legal residents, part of the societies in which they lived. However, they used the liberal values these countries embrace – freedom of speech, religion, privacy rights, and the like – to pursue decidedly illiberal ends.

Neither military action abroad nor tougher immigration rules at home will prevent that. If they want to avoid a repeat of what happened in Paris, the United States, France and other countries will once again have to confront the challenge of deciding how much freedom more security is worth.

Sources

Bret Stephens, “The Islamist Tantrum,” The Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2015.

Michael Schmidt et. al., “ U. S. Investigators Struggle to Track Homegrown ISIS Suspects,” The New York Times, November 19, 2015.

Biden’s words were directed at the current front runners in both parties. Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio want to send more arms to the “moderate” rebels against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and to establish a no-fly zone that would bar the Syrian air force from controlling part of Syrian air space, in order to protect not only civilians but also armed combatants against the Assad regime.

Clinton and Rubio have the righteousness that is legitimized by the manifest brutality of the Assad regime, which has used chemical weapons against its own people. But so did Iraqi President Saddam Hussein; yet regime change unleashed sectarian strife, including ISIS. Rather than strengthening Syrian moderates, U.S. arms would likely wind up falling into the hands of ISIS and al Qaeda. A no-fly zone could involve a clash with Russia, which is supporting Assad. Rubio and Clinton take a tough tone toward Russian President Vladimir Putin as well, without saying how far they would go. And that invites unpredictable escalation.

A diplomatic solution must involve everyone, friend and foe. It will be far from perfect. Everything else would be much worse.

References

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/us/joe-biden-concludes-theres-no-time-for-a-2016-run.html

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/marco-rubio-russia-no-flyzone_5612e38ae4b0368a1a60ad06

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-calls-no-fly-zones-syria

https://blog.peaceactionwest.org/2015/10/27/peaceful-alternatives-to-war-pick-up-steam-in-congress/

https://fcnl.org/issues/middle_east/34_organizations_urge_administration_to_tackle_root_causes_of_syria_crisis/

Obama is right to condemn the Islamic State’s brutality. But ISIS doesn’t have a monopoly on savagery. Thirteen years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States’ brutal, costly, and counter-productive “war on terror” has enveloped the entire Middle East. Doubling down on his predecessor’s war crimes, Obama’s drone campaign has exacted hundreds of civilian casualties. Taking the lives of innocents by remote control doesn’t make killing any less barbaric.

Adding insult to injury, Obama invoked the names of James Foley and Steven Sotloff – the two American journalists beheaded by ISIS – in a cynical effort to promote perpetual war. Obama’s sympathy for the slain journalists belies his administration’s habitual abuse of the Espionage Act to intimidate whistleblowers and wage war on journalists. So much for Obama’s “principled” defense of journalists and press freedom.

Most galling of all, Obama concluded his speech by quoting a civilian, recently “trapped on a distant mountain,” who praised America’s so-called humanitarian intervention in Northern Iraq. Would that Obama, the war hawks in Washington, and the mainstream media actually listened to civilians – from Yemen and Somalia to Pakistan and Afghanistan – who routinely denounce American exceptionalism, and the brutality that so often accompanies it.

For Speak Your Mind, this is Kevin Howley.

Sources:

Downie, L. Jr. & Rafsky, S. (2013, October 10). Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America. Committee to Protect Journalists.

Ridley, Y. (2012, May 12). Bush convicted of war crimes in absentia. Foreign Policy Journal.

Serle, J. (2014, March 12). Countries must investigate civilian drone death claims, says UN investigator Ben Emmerson. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Solomon, N. (2014, August 4). Journalism groups rally around petition supporting James Risen. Columbia Journalism Review.

Thousands protest US drone war in Pakistan. (2013, November 25). Democracy Now!

Mr. Obama decided not to provide more arms to the moderate Syrian rebels precisely because he was rightly concerned that these weapons might well fall into the hands of ISIS.

The current chaos in Iraq, Syria, and beyond is a consequence of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Hillary Clinton supported and Barack Obama opposed.

In its first decree, the American occupation ordered that all public sector employees affiliated with the Ba’ath Party were to be removed from their positions and to be banned from any future employment in the public sector. This effectively disenfranchised huge numbers of Iraq’s Sunnis, who were the core of the old regime. The new government was Shiite and sectarian. Until these deeper political issues are addressed, ISIS will find support even among those who deplore its brutality.

It is not President Obama, but the Neoconservatives who planned the invasion of Iraq before the September 11th attacks, whom Hillary Clinton should be blaming. She might add a word of remorse for her own role.

Sources:

The Atlantic

The Guardian

Mondoweiss

On De-Ba’athification

Slate

The Nation