Opinion | Why Obama’s ISIS Strategy is Incoherent

September 21, 2014

If there is a single word to describe Obama’s campaign against ISIS, it is “incoherent.” It doesn’t hold together even on its own terms. And in the context of a larger strategy for the Middle East it is delusional, even destructive of U.S. interests. The reason is that the U.S. doesn’t control the strategy. Until it does, it will only meet continued confusion, mis-direction, and defeat.

The most important thing to understand about ISIS is that it is a U.S. creation. The first step in its creation was the U.S. destroying the corrupt but stabilizing regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. That gave entre to the Sunni fundamentalist force, al-Qaeda in Iraq, which had not existed prior to the U.S. invasion. Al-Qaeda in Iraq would eventually become ISIS.

The second step in ISIS’s creation was the U.S. campaign to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria. As was Hussein in Iraq, Assad is a secular strong-man who for many years held an eclectic mix of religious sects together in relative peace. That is, until the U.S. started trying to overthrow the Syrian regime, a move that played into the hands of ISIS’ precursors, including the al-Nusra brigade.

The third step in ISIS’s creation came when the U.S. organized Saudi Arabia and Turkey to fund and support the proto-ISIS rebels in Syria. Recall that 15 of the 19 identified 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Their form of Sunni Islam—Wahabiism—is among the most virulent and aggressively anti-Western in the world. Think Osama bin Laden, a former Saudi prince and founder of al Qaeda.

So, destroy the stabilizing, secular regimes while fostering the fundamentalist crazies and you have the recipe for the creation of ISIS. This has been the U.S. strategy to date. It is all but doomed to blowback and failure. But the incoherence of Obama’s position goes further, much further.

ISIS is a Sunni crusade for purification of the religion. Its stunning success in defeating the Iraqi army and the Kurdish Pershmerga militia owes to the fact that the Sunnis living under the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi state would rather have Sunni than Shi’ite masters. That is, they would rather ally with their religious brethren, i.e., ISIS, than with the religious adversaries the U.S. left in power when it was defeated in Iraq.

It is indicative of the incoherence of Obama’s campaign that Turkey, a largely Sunni state which has funded and fostered ISIS, and which shares a 560 mile border with Syria, will not participate in the coalition to defeat ISIS. And neither will Turkey help the Kurdish Peshmerga fight ISIS because it doesn’t want to have to cede territory to them in their pursuit of a new Kurdistan, part of which would have to come from Turkish territory.

It is further indicative of incoherence that the target proxies for U.S. boots on the ground, the mythical “moderate rebels” fighting Assad, have declared publicly that they will not take up arms against ISIS. Since it was these same “moderate rebels” who passed so many U.S.-supplied weapons to ISIS to help in its formation, this should not be surprising. But it hardly bodes well for the stated U.S. strategy.

Further signs of incoherence? The forces most able to defeat ISIS are those of Iran, Syria, and Russia which have the strategic position, manpower, and organization to dispatch ISIS in short order. But Obama cannot ask for their help because the U.S. is engaged in hostilities against all three. So it would rather see ISIS fester than have it defeated by foes of the U.S.

A final sign of U.S. incoherence is the conflicting accounts given by senior U.S. officials concerning whether the conflict will require U.S. boots on the ground. Obama has repeatedly said, “No way.” But hardly were the words out of his mouth than General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was on Capitol Hill warning that such boots would almost assuredly be needed, given that an air campaign alone will not be enough to dislodge ISIS.

The ISIS imbroglio lays bare the embarrassing truth of U.S. policy in the Middle East: that it is controlled by Saudi Arabia and Israel, for their own benefits, and not for that of the U.S.

Saudi Arabia controls the U.S. through its pricing of oil in dollars. If it ceased to demand dollars and only dollars for its oil, global demand for dollars would collapse, and with it, the U.S.’ ability to fund its massive budget and trade deficits. That would mean the end of the U.S. imperium in the world. This is why the U.S. has long coddled Saudi Arabia, even with its complicity in 9/11 and its aggressive support for the creation of ISIS.

Israel controls the U.S. by targeting politicians who don’t follow its dictates. The U.S. political system, which forces politicians to raise massive amounts of money every two years, is uniquely vulnerable to this kind of focused foreign manipulation. Israel has learned how to use it to its advantage. It was Israeli-aligned neo-conservatives who lied the U.S. into its catastrophic war with Iraq. It is the same neo-conservatives who are pushing the U.S. to destroy all of Israel’s potential challengers: Iraq; Libya; Syria; and Iran.

Obama’s campaign against ISIS is incoherent because it is not controlled by, nor carried out for the interests of, the U.S. Until the U.S. frees itself from its dependence on regional Middle East powers it will continue to leave nothing but confusion and destruction in its wake, including destruction of its own putative role as a stabilizing force in world affairs.

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Robert Freeman

Robert Freeman is the author of "The Best One Hour History" series which includes "World War I" (2013), "The InterWar Years" (2014), "The Vietnam War" (2013), and other titles. He is the founder of The Global Uplift Project which builds small-scale infrastructure projects in the developing world to improve humanity’s capacity for self-development.

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Why Obama’s ISIS Strategy is Incoherent

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