It’s Not Our War
The United States should help others crush ISIS, and not much else.

By Fred Kaplan


Units of Moqtada Sadr's militia parade down a main street of the Shi'a stronghold of Sadr City June 21, 2014, in Eastern Baghdad.
ISIS is well-armed, but not invincible.
Photo by Scott Nelson for the Washington Post

Despite prodding from the United States and others, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki doesn’t want to share power, the Kurds don’t want to give up a shot at independence, and the Sunnis would rather stick with murderous jihadist protectors than trust a Shiite government that shuns their demands and persecutes their leaders.

Should any of this surprise us? More to the point, why do some among us persist in thinking that, through three cups of tea and a few well-aimed airstrikes, we can persuade sectarian chieftains to cede their vital interests to some greater good as defined by foreign powers?

Earlier today, after meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry, Maliki denounced the demands for a new, more inclusive Iraqi government, saying that such a move would amount to a “coup”—which, indeed, it would. Maliki recently won the popular vote in a national election, and while his party hasn’t yet assembled a working majority in parliament, no other obvious leader sits poised on the sidelines. Maliki knows that the countries most keen to beat back the Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—especially Iran, the neighboring ally that counts most—have no choice but to support him for now. He might also look for inspiration from Bashar al-Assad, whose days as Syrian president were long ago deemed over and who nonetheless hangs on. Not only do delusions run deep, sometimes in the short run they’re justified.

Yet this delusion is particularly dangerous, and even Maliki must know it on some level. ISIS forces in Iraq are said to number a little more than 5,000. During the American occupation, strategists spoke of the need to “clear, hold, and build” an area. In other words, they needed enough troops to sweep an area of bad guys and move on to the next locale—while at the same time leaving troops behind to control the ground. The United States had a hard time doing this with 100,000 troops; ISIS can’t do it with a small fraction of that number. To the extent they’re able to hold their territory, they do so because local Sunnis—who dominate the areas conquered so far—prefer ISIS to Maliki’s Shiite government. They may not like the idea of sharia law or an ISIS state, but they see the ISIS guerrillas as their best hope for weakening or overthrowing Maliki, and so they go along for now.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/06/united_states_role_in_fighting_isis_in_iraq_the_u_s_military_should_help.html