BOMBING WON'T SAVE IRAQ

Pat Buchanan


The panic that engulfed this capital after the
fall of Mosul, when it appeared that the
Islamist fanatics of ISIS would overrun
Baghdad, has passed.
And the second thoughts have begun.
"U.S. Sees Risk in Iraqi Airstrikes," ran the
June 19 headline in the Washington Post,
"Military Warns of Dangerous
Complications."
This is welcome news. For if it is an
unwritten rule of republics not to commit to
war unless the nation is united, America has
never been less prepared for a Mideast war.
Our commander in chief is a reluctant
warrior who wants his legacy to be ending
our two longest wars. And just as Obama does
not want to go back into Iraq, neither does
the U.S. military.
The American people want no new war, and
Congress does not want to be forced to vote
on such a war.
Our foreign policy elites are split half a dozen
ways -- on whether to bomb or not to bomb,
on who our real enemies are in Syria and
Iraq, on whose support we should and should
not accept, on what our strategic goals are,
and what are the prospects for success.
Consider the bombing option.
Undoubtedly, U.S. air power could blunt an
attack on Baghdad. But air power cannot
retake Mosul or the Sunni Triangle that
Baghdad has lost, or Kirkuk or Kurdistan.
That will take boots on the ground and
casualties.
And nobody thinks these should be American
boots or American casualties. And why should
we fight to hold Iraq together? Is that a vital
interest to which we should commit American
lives in perpetuity?
When did it become so?
No. Bombing cannot put Iraq together again,
but it may tear Iraq further apart.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has
succeeded in northern Iraq because it has
allied with the same militias, Baathists and
tribal leaders who worked with Gen. David
Petraeus in the Anbar Awakening.
And if we use air power in Sunni provinces
that have seceded from Baghdad, we will be
killing people who were our partners and are
not our enemies. Photos of dead Sunnis, from
U.S. air, drone, and missile strikes, could
inflame the Sunni world.
Upon one thing Americans do agree: ISIS and
al-Qaida are our enemies. But are bombing
ISIS and killing Sunnis the way to destroy
ISIS? Or does bombing martyrize and heroize
ISIS for the Sunni young?
And if destroying ISIS is a strategic
imperative, why have we not demanded that
the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia cease
funneling arms and aid to ISIS in Syria? Why
have we not told the Turks to stop permitting
jihadists to cross their border into Syria?
Why are we aiding and arming the Free
Syrian Army to bring down Bashar Assad,
when Assad's army is the only fighting force
standing between ISIS and the conquest of
Syria?
If ISIS is our mortal enemy, why have we not
persuaded the Turks to seal their border and
send their NATO-equipped army into Syria to
annihilate ISIS?
Turkey's Kemal Ataturk ended the old
caliphate and put the caliph on the Orient
Express to Europe. Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan could be the man who
strangled the new caliphate in its crib.
U.S. policy in Syria and Iraq today add up to
incoherence.
Iran is consistent. She wants to see the Shia
regimes survive in Damascus and Syria, and
has put blood and treasure on the line.
The Saudis and Gulf Arabs are consistent,
while playing a dangerous game. Seeing the
Shia regimes in Damascus and Baghdad as
alien and hostile, they are helping extremists
to overthrow them.
Only the Americans seem conflicted and
confused.
In Iraq we are on the side of the Shia regime
fighting ISIS. In Syria we are de facto allies of
ISIS fighting to overthrow the Shia regime.
"Take away this pudding," said Churchill, "it
has no theme."
Washington believes that the fall of Baghdad
would be a strategic defeat and disaster.
Have we considered what the fall of
Damascus would mean? Who rises if Bashar
Assad falls?
Who goes to the wall if the al-Nusra Front
and ISIS prevail in Syria? Would Americans
be welcome in that new Syria?
If we help bring down Assad's regime and a
radical Sunni regime takes its place, like the
terrorist-welcoming Taliban of yesterday,
would we then have to go in on the ground to
oust it?
This is not an academic question. The use of
U.S. air power in Iraq could cause ISIS to
turn back to its primary target -- Damascus.
And there are reports that part of that
stockpile of U.S. arms and munitions ISIS
captured in Mosul is already being moved
across the border into Syria for a fight to the
finish there, rather than in Iraq.
This new civil-sectarian-secessionist war in
Syria and Iraq looks to last for years. How
have we suffered by staying out of it?