The US-led war on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) is another chapter of the unfinished wars that the US has unleashed in Iraq over the last 25 years. In some way, Isil, with its brutal tactics, is the worst possible manifestation of American military interventionism.
In the first Iraq war (1990-91) the US-led coalition seemed determined to achieve the clear goal of driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, and to use that as a starting point to achieve complete US dominance over the Middle East. Back then, president George H.W. Bush had feared that pushing beyond that goal could lead to the kind of consequences that would alter the entire region and empower Iran at the expense of America’s Arab allies. Instead of carrying out regime change in Iraq itself, the US opted to subject Iraq to a decade of economic torment, a suffocating blockade that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. That was the golden age of America’s “containment” policy in the region.
However, US policy in the Middle East, under Bush’s son, George W. Bush, was reinvigorated by new elements that somewhat altered the political landscape leading to the second Iraq war in 2003: The attacks of September 11. Firstly, these were dubiously used to mislead the public into another war by linking Iraqi president Saddam Hussain to Al Qaida; and secondly, there was the rise of the neoconservative political ideology that dominated Washington at the time. The neocons strongly believed in the regime-change doctrine, which has since proven to be a complete failure.
Sadly, it was not just a failure, but rather, a calamity. Today’s rise of Isil is in fact a mere bullet point in a tragic Iraq timeline which started the moment George W. Bush began his “shock and awe campaign,” followed by the fall of Baghdad, the dismantling of the country’s institutions (the de-Baathification of Iraq) and the “mission accomplished” speech. Since then, it has been one adversity after another. The US strategy in Iraq was predicated on destroying Iraqi nationalism and replacing it with a dangerous form of sectarianism using the proverbial “divide and conquer” stratagem of old. But neither the Shiites remained united, nor did the Sunnis accept their new lower status. Also, the Kurds didn’t stay committed to being part of an untied Iraq.
The US has indeed succeeded in dividing Iraq, maybe not territorially but certainly in every other way. The war has in fact brought Al Qaida to Iraq. The group used the atrocities inflicted by the US war and invasion to recruit fighters from Iraq and throughout the Middle East. And like a bull in a china shop, the US wreaked more havoc on Iraq, playing with sectarian and tribal cards to lower the intensity of the resistance and to busy Iraqis with fighting each other.
When the US combat troops allegedly departed Iraq, they left behind a historical calamity: A country in ruins, millions of refugees on the run, deep sectarian divides, a brutal government and an army made mostly of loosely united Shiite militias with a blood-soaked past.
Sharing same ideology
Al Qaida was supposedly weakened in Iraq by then. In actuality, while Al Qaida didn’t exist in Iraq prior to the US invasion, on the eve of the supposed US withdrawal, Al Qaida had branched off into other militant manifestations. They were able to move with greater agility in the region, and when the Syrian uprising was intentionally armed by regional and international powers, Al Qaida resurfaced with incredible power, fighting with prowess and unparalleled influence. Despite the misinformation about the roots of Isil, the group and Al Qaida are the same. They share the same ideology and had only branched off into various groupings in Syria. Their differences are an internal matter, but their objectives are ultimately the same. The reason the above point is often ignored is that such an assertion would be a clear indictment that the Iraq war created Isil, and that the irresponsible handling of the Syria conflict empowered the group to actually form a sectarian state that extends from the north-east of Syria to the heart of Iraq.
Obama knows well that his new war is the same war that was initiated by his predecessors. This is partly why he insists on refusing to put US boots on the ground, which is a serious point of contention between him and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey. Some in the US military leadership strongly believe that an aerial bombing campaign would change little on the ground. Obama knows that counterinsurgency efforts similar to the campaigns his country led in Afghanistan after 2009 and Iraq are unlikely to succeed. There can be no middle ground.
But why is Obama going to war in the first place since the outcome will unlikely affect a major paradigm shift?
One of the reasons is that the US hopes to use the war on Isil as a back-door attempt to get involved in the war on Syria, which is more intricate than ever. The US decision to arm “moderate” Syrian opposition groups is a testament to these efforts.
In his speech on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Obama declared war on Isil. Obama’s tangled foreign policy agenda became even more confused in his 13-minute speech from the White House. He promised to “hunt down” Isil fighters “wherever they are” until the US ultimately destroys the group, as supposedly it has done with Al Qaida.
“That means I will not hesitate to take action against Isil in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven,” Obama said.
But a war on Isil is not the core of Obama’s presidency, and Isil, which is a threat to the region, is hardly a threat to America, at least for now. Only a few days before his speech, Obama was ridiculed for his lack of strategy in Iraq and Syria. He needed to do something, and fast.
Of course, he needed to make such sweeping statements, which reminds one of George W. Bush’s similar statements of past wars. Obama’s Republican rivals have accused him of a lack of decisiveness and his presidency of being weak. His Democratic party could possibly lose control over the Senate in the November elections. His fight against Isil is meant to help rebrand the president as resolute and decisive, and perhaps create some distraction from economic woes at home. Obama is using the same language that his predecessor used, and is appealing to the same fear and trepidation of the foreign menace created by the media and fed to the US public for many years.
The US experience in Iraq also taught us that its effort will only succeed in exacerbating an already difficult situation, yielding yet more disenfranchised groups, political despair and greater violence. If the US war on Iraq and Afghanistan failed so miserably to achieve any long-term political objectives, despite the trillions of dollars spent there and the hundreds of thousands of lives taken, Obama’s chances of success now are close to nil.
Ramzy Baroud is a PhD scholar in People’s History at the University of Exeter. He is the Managing Editor of Middle East Eye. Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
