YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY

Cliff May


The largest and most expensive embassy in
the world is in Baghdad. President George W.
Bush built it in the hope, perhaps the
expectation, that before long, it would house
envoys to the first democratic American ally
in the Arab world. It hasn’t quite worked out
that way. With terrorists on the march
throughout an expanding swath of Iraq , the
State Department last weekend began to
evacuate “substantial” numbers of diplomats.
Meanwhile, dozens of Marines are being sent
in.
Many blame Mr. Bush for this failure: In the
aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
they say, he should have kept his eye on the
ball — the ball being al Qaeda , and perhaps
the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Iran.
Instead, he toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein.
Others argue that after the “surge” — which
dealt devastating defeats to both al Qaeda in
Iraq and Iranian-backed Shia militias — Mr.
Bush left behind a relatively stable and
increasingly democratic land. Further
progress required that President Obama
maintain at least a residual U.S. military
presence in Iraq — just as American
presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike,
have maintained a military presence in South
Korea, Japan and Germany long after wars in
those countries ended.
This debate will continue, not without
acrimony, for years to come. More urgent
right now: identifying, preferably on a
bipartisan basis, policies that stand the best
chance of mitigating a growing, evolving
threat.
It’s useful to name that threat, and it was
encouraging that Mr. Obama did so last week:
“We do have a stake in making sure these
jihadists do not gain a permanent foothold in
either Iraq or Syria ,” he said.
The jihadists to which he refers, of course,
belong to ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and
al-Sham, which rose from the ashes of al
Qaeda in Iraq . “Al Sham” implies the Levant:
Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Cyprus, Israel, the
West Bank and Gaza. As the name also
suggests, ISIS aims to create a state that will
join others — al Qaeda -affiliated forces are
currently fighting in no fewer than nine
countries — to form a new caliphate, an
Islamic empire that does not plan to
peacefully coexist with “infidel” and Muslim
“apostate” states.
Like most other jihadist groups, ISIS acts
locally but thinks globally. Its leader, Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi, has promised America
“direct confrontation. The sons of Islam have
prepared for such a day.” He has added:
“Soon we will face you, and we are waiting
for this day.”
Some elite analysts and American officials
have concluded that the U.S. should make
common cause with Iran’s supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against ISIS. Can they
really believe that Iran, for years ranked by
the U.S. government as the world’s primary
state sponsor of terrorism, would be a
reliable ally in a war against terrorists?
Would you stock a river with crocodiles to
solve a piranha problem?
A better approach: Design a strategy to
weaken and, over time, defeat all the various
jihadist forces threatening us and competing
among themselves for dominance over the
barbaric new world they envision — a world
of beheadings, amputations, crucifixions,
summary executions and mass murders; a
world in which women are chattel; a world in
which religious, ethnic and sexual minorities
are brutally persecuted if not “cleansed.”
Such a strategy would integrate multiple
components — more than I can detail in a
brief column. But economic diplomacy and,
in some instances, economic warfare would
certainly be among them. For example, The
Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin reports that for years
ISIS was funded by wealthy donors in Kuwait,
Qatar and Saudi Arabia.” Our intelligence
community should be able to identify such
individuals and, one way or another, stem the
flow. (At this point, it’s worth noting that ISIS
may have become strong enough to fund itself
the old-fashioned way: by taking booty. Last
week, its fighters reportedly looted $430
million from a bank in Mosul.)
Energy policies that bolster national security
— rather than ship trillions of dollars to
people who despise us — are long overdue. It
would be in our interest to support proxies
willing and able to fight common enemies —
as we did during the Cold War. For three
years, Syrian nationalists have been asking
for the means to fight both Mr. Assad’s forces
and the Sunni jihadists. Refusing to support
them was not strategic.
Finally, the lesson we learn from recent
military interventions cannot be to never
again use force — which also would prevent
us from credibly threatening to use force. Our
enemies need to be convinced that so long as
they will not make peace with us, they will
not be safe from us; not while they are
fighting, not while they are resting,
recuperating and plotting. Among other
things, this implies that Congress must keep in
place, and perhaps expand, the Authorization
to Use Military Force.
Years of living dangerously lie ahead. The
carnage in Iraq should be a wake-up call for
those who haven’t grasped that. We can run
— as some on both the left and right are
advocating — but we really can’t hide from
those who believe it is their religious duty to
destroy us.
If we develop a smart strategy and
implement it aggressively we still won’t win
every battle. That’s an important point, too:
In Iraq , as in Syria and Afghanistan, what we
have been losing are battles. If we learn from
our mistakes — Mr. Bush ’s mistakes, Mr.
Obama’s mistakes, others’ mistakes — this
war is, without question, winnable.