The U.S. deployment of a team of special operations forces to Syria comes after the first U.S. combat casualty in Iraq in four years. Just last month, President Obama reversed course in Afghanistan, halting the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. troops fighting in the nation’s longest war. In an escalation of the air war in Syria, the United States has also announced plans to deploy more fighter planes, including 12 F-15s, to the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. On top of the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, the U.S. continues to carry out drone strikes across the globe from Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia. “[Obama’s] policy has been one of mission creep,” says Andrew Bacevich, retired colonel, Vietnam War veteran, and international relations professor at Boston University. “The likelihood that the introduction of a handful of dozen of U.S. soldiers making any meaningful difference in the course of events is just about nil.”
Andrew Bacevich talking:
We have been engaged militarily in an enterprise that, by my telling, has now gone on for 35 years, beginning with the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine back in 1980, a project that assumes that somehow or other the adroit use of American military power can bring order, pacify, democratize, somehow fix large parts of the Islamic world that are increasingly enveloped in turmoil. And yet, when we look at U.S. military actions across this entire span of time, what we see is that however great U.S. military power may be, it does not suffice to achieve those objectives that our leaders claim they seek to achieve. And I think that the present moment in the Obama administration is simply a further affirmation of that larger point.
I hate to agree with the White House press secretary, but I do agree that the introduction of 50 special operations forces really does not constitute a major change in policy, because the policy of the Obama administration, since the rise of ISIS and since we began to involve ourselves in the Syrian civil war, has been one of incrementalism. Earlier you played that clip of the president warning against mission creep. His policy has been one of mission creep. And the likelihood that the introduction of a handful of dozen of U.S. soldiers, regardless of how skillful they are—the likelihood of that making any meaningful difference in the course of events is just about nil.
the point I’m trying to make is that when we focus on these inconsistencies—the president, you know, a year ago said X, and now the policy seems to be Y—that’s an important—it’s important to note the inconsistency, but my argument would be it’s far more important to take stock of the dimensions of this administration’s military efforts in that part of the world, and then to connect them to the military efforts undertaken by his several predecessors. Only then, it seems, do we get an appreciation of the magnitude of our military failure. And only by taking stock of the full magnitude of our military failure can we come to an appreciation of how—of the imperative of beginning to think differently about our approach to the region.
There are two ways to end a war. The one way is to win it. And here is where I’m again taking issue with the president’s incrementalism. If one were to posit—and this is not my view, but if one were to posit that the United States has a vital U.S. national security interest in destroying ISIS and a vital U.S. national security interest in bringing a prompt end to the Syrian civil war, then it would necessarily follow that instead of this minimalist approach to waging the war, which is what we’re doing, then one ought to go all out and win it, make it—make it a big war. And yes, make it a big war, understanding that if we look at the consequences that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a big war will once again, almost assuredly, lead to unintended and undesired consequences. But if this is an important thing, one way you end the war is to go win it.
The alternative, it seems to me, is to recognize that there are some wars that are unwinnable and should not be fought, and where the—if there is a solution to the problem, it has to come from nonmilitary means. The president has repeatedly, as president, argued that he has no desire to see this country perpetually engaged in war. And yet his actions—and you earlier cited many of the different cases—his actions have belied that claim, have instead had the effect of perpetuating the war, but perpetuating them in a sense that they continue to simmer, that they do not result in any kind of a resolution. So the answer to the question, again: Either you win it, or you get out.
Phyllis Bennis talking:
they have sent much of the world—not only the Islamic world, but that’s the part that we’re looking at right now—into far worse than turmoil, into absolute abject tragedy, when we see the results of these wars at the human level, when we see what it’s doing to the social fabric of these societies, that is going to take generations to repair.
I think that one of the things that’s so important, we hear from President Obama, over and over again, there is no military solution. And other times we hear the military side is not enough, it’s not sufficient. That’s where it’s just wrong. The first statement is right: There is no military solution. So when you look at what President Obama is doing militarily, I think it’s important to recognize it’s not just insufficient, it’s making impossible the kinds of diplomatic and negotiated and humanitarian and other kinds of efforts that could have a chance of ending these wars.
So, for example, if you’re in Iraq and the U.S., say, they get it right for one time—this almost never happens, but say they did—they identified a camp of ISIS fighters, there were 20 of them, and they’re really bad guys, they’ve done bad things, they’re going to do more bad things. They send a drone after them. There’s no civilians anywhere in the area. Only those 20 guys get killed. And the response in the U.S. is, “Yeah! We got the bad guys.” The response in Iraq is, “Yes, once again, the U.S. is bombing Sunnis in the interests of the Shia and the Kurds.” And then you have those in the Sunni community that used to be in the military, who lost their positions when the U.S. destroyed the Iraqi military in 2003. You have the leaders of the Sunni militias, who are looking for some way to challenge this incredibly sectarian, Shia-dominated government that the U.S. has now put in power, is paying and arming. So, you have these scenarios where everything the U.S. does militarily is not only insufficient to end the war, it prevents those things that could have a possibility of winding down and ultimately ending this set of interrelated wars.
There are now eight wars being fought in Syria, all to the last Syrian. There are wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia, wars between the U.S. and Russia. There’s a host of wars being fought. But those on the ground—the people of Syria—are the ones paying the price. And all of these U.S. military actions are making it impossible to do the other things that might make possible an end to this war.
Patrick Cockburn talking:
where these U.S. special forces are going is the Syrian Kurdish area. The Syrian Kurds have about 25,000 troops in northern Syria. So, the significance of them being there is that they’re cooperating with the only real available partner for the U.S. in Syria. And in that case, depending on what they do—are they forward airobservers, are there going to be deliveries of arms and ammunition—they have a certain significance.
I mean, the other thing to bear in mind, I think, is that the U.S. and its U.S.-led coalition have had this air campaign that’s delivered 7,000 airstrikes against the Islamic State since August last year, and that campaign has failed. I think all this focus on Russia and the special forces—and one has to keep that in mind, because the Islamic State is still expanding. It took a Christian town near Homs a few days ago, which brings it very close to the crucial north-south highway inside Syria. So I think it’s there—people say, “Does it have any significance?” It has some significance, but it also, I think, too, is a show of action, which is rather masking the failure of the previous major strategic initiative by the U.S., which was to have this air campaign, which has demonstrably failed to achieve its ends.
the dilemma for the U.S. is not just now in Syria and Iraq, but goes right back to 9/11, that the basis for U.S. power in the Middle East is really the Sunni states, like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, but these are the ones that also have been supporting the opposition in Syria and is fairly notorious, have been funding the al-Qaeda affiliate, the al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, which is very similar, and in the past has been accused of sending funds and enabling ISIS, the Islamic State. So I think the U.S. has the same dilemma as before, that it kind of knows this, kind of want to stop it, but doesn’t want to do so at the expense of torpedoing their relationship with countries like Turkey or Saudi Arabia, which, as you said, has just signed this enormous arms deal. So, I don’t think the dilemma has changed, but the response in Washington has always been to find some sort of way of maneuvering, that they can do something, or look as though they’re doing something, against the Islamic State or al-Qaeda, but still keep in with Saudi Arabia and the big Sunni countries of the region.
Syria is five crises wrapped into one—Sunni-Shia, Tehran-Saudi Arabia, Alawite-Sunni. And then you have Russia. I think, yes, because Russia is in a position to exercise some control over its allies, like Assad in Damascus, the U.S. likewise. So, it’s only when you have, so to speak, the great powers getting involved that we have a chance of moving from just basically allowing—whatever the rhetoric—allowing this terrible war—just destroyed Syria, is destroying Iraq—to go on. In the past they’ve said, “Yes, we want to end it, but Assad must go. But why should Assad go, as he controlled most of the population?” So, for the first time, you have serious players seriously involved, and the very fact that you have Russia coming back, a rival of the U.S., I think, makes them take it more seriously. And one can see that already with this meeting in Vienna and the presence of Iran. It has energized the diplomatic process. And, of course, it’s also energized the military activity, as well. But there are positives as well as negatives coming out of this.
Andrew Bacevich talking:
I would be surprised if Russia is able to exercise any serious influence over Syria. And the reason I say that is because of our inability to exercise any serious influence over our putative allies. I think the point that Patrick Cockburn was making about these unsavory partnerships, that in many respects form part of our predicament, we have to go—we need to ask ourselves why those partnerships exist, where did they come from. They came from a perception that the United States is dependent upon Persian Gulf oil. That was an assumption that had some validity back in the late 1970s and 1980s. It has no validity today, as far as the well-being of this country is concerned. And that fact, it seems to me, ought to be one of the things that enables people in Washington to begin to think more creatively than they have been thinking about the actual options available to the United States.
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Patrick Cockburn
Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His latest book is titled The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution.
Andrew Bacevich
retired colonel and Vietnam War veteran. He is professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University. His new book, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, will be published in April. He is the author of several other books, including Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.
Phyllis Bennis
fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She’s written several books, including, most recently, Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror.
— source democracynow.org