ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND THE LEVANT MEDIA FORAY

Austin Bay


The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's
bloody media foray into northern Iraq adds
another international dimension to Syria's
thoroughly internationalized civil war.
It is also a direct political challenge to the
Obama administration, one so stark that
unless the Administration acts decisively,
nations world wide that rely on U.S. security
support will severely question American
reliability.
"Media foray" is more apt than invasion, but
first internationalization.
Iran and Russia internationalized Syria's civil
war to save their own brutal cliques. Arab
Spring threatened authoritarians everywhere.
Tunisia's crony state fell quickly. Egypt's
oligarchy buckled. Libya's dictator faced
NATO-supported rebels. So Tehran and
Moscow rushed to the aid of their Syrian
client. Syria would be the dictators' political
firebreak where repression succeeded.
By fall 2011 Syria had become a war of
attrition, politically and militarily, and it
stayed that way until August 2013.
U.S. president Barack Obama told the Assad
regime that attacking the Syrian populace
with chemical weapons constituted a "red
line." Like, bad stuff would happen if Assad
used gas. On August 21, 2013, Assad's forces
murdered over 1,000 civilians with a rocket-
delivered nerve-gas attack. The Obama
administration responded with ... dithering.
Sunni militants opposed to the Assad regime
established bases in eastern Syria. Syria's
chaos, the porosity of a desert border and the
Iraqi state's unbridled cronyism provided
ISIL with an opportunity to re-energize
extreme Sunni Islamist militants dismayed by
Osama bin Laden's departure from planet
Earth. Hey, that is the propaganda pitch.
Eastern Syria and western Iraq will be the
core of the ISIL's new Global Caliphate. In
2001, bin Laden's caliphate core began in
Afghanistan. Bin Laden is dead, but the
grandiose utopian promise of a religious cure
for cultural fossilization and political failure
seduces the vulnerable souls of too many
alienated (and young) Muslim men.
Though it damns 12 years of calculated
Obama "political optics," Dick Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld were right when they said
defeating militant Islamism would be a very
long struggle that had to be sustained by
action.
The strategic goal of ISIL's Iraq media foray
is global headlines that magnify ISIL's power
and question international resolve (especially
U.S. resolve) to confront the jihadi challenge.
If it sounds like 9/11's media goal, well, it is.
Strategypage.com called ISIL's attack "a mile-
wide and an inch deep." Why? "Right now the
local support for ISIL is just not there,"
Strategy Page reported June 16, though "the
Islamic radicalism that created centuries of
Islamic terrorism survives."
Bin Laden's al-Qaida was an information
power; it could not win on the battlefield.
ISIL does not have the fighters to sustain
attrition battles with Iraqi forces. Bribes to
crooked military and police officers have
spurred its successes. Sunni Arab tribes in
Iraq's Anbar Province have legitimate
grievances with Nouri al-Maliki's crony-
ridden Baghdad government, but Strategy
Page argued their support for ISIL's
internationalists is tepid.
The U.S. is the necessary actor; the ISIL
knows it, even if the Obama administration
doesn't.
The U.S. can meet ISIL's challenge by
returning to 2010. In 2010, the Iraqi security
forces, supported and mentored by the U.S.,
had inflicted a military and political defeat
on the various Sunni terror groups and
Iranian-backed Shia militant militias that had
attacked their nation.
In February 2010, on "Larry King Live" no
less, a grinning Vice President Joe Biden
proclaimed that Iraq "could be one of the
great achievements of this administration."
Wow. Less than three years after Sen. Harry
Reid (D., Global Caliphate.) declared the war
lost, and less than three years after then-Sen.
Barack Obama -- with his usual fierce moral
urgency -- opposed the Bush administration's
military surge, Obama's veep takes credit for
victory. Hey, doubters -- check the videotape.
At the strategic level, the U.S. and Iraq must
negotiate a new Status of Forces Agreement.
To stabilize, Iraqis need confidence; a long-
term U.S. security presence inspires
confidence.
At the military operational level: Iraqi forces
need U.S. airpower, now. They need U.S.
special operations forces teams to coordinate
air strikes and tap U.S. intelligence assets.