Relying on surrogates, ignoring Islamist element seen as flaws.
President Barack Obama is still holding back in his stated determination to defeat the Islamic State, according to one military expert.
Richard Brennan, senior political scientist at The RAND Corporation, said that Obama’s reluctance to employ U.S. troops in the battle leaves a critical gap that is unlikely to be filled successfully by partner nations.
President Obama on Wednesday laid out a long-term U.S. strategy against the terrorist group that would include expanding airstrikes against its fighters in Iraq, launching strikes against them in Syria for the first time and bolstering the Iraqi military and moderate Syrian rebels to allow them to reclaim territory from the militants.
The U.S. already has launched more than 150 airstrikes against militants in Iraq over the past month, and has sent military advisers and millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, including an additional $48 million announced Wednesday.
“The military portion of this strategy can only succeed if air power is used to provide close air support to ground operations,” Brennan said in an email exchange with Aleteia. Brennan is a career Army officer with high-level Department of Defense policy-making experience on issues relating to the war in Iraq, conflict resolution and war termination, homeland defense, and strategic planning. “However, the campaign laid out by the president is totally dependent upon surrogate forces; and it is unlikely that those forces have the capabilities needed to be successful without the direct assistance of U.S. ground forces. U.S. ground forces will be needed to train, advise and assist these surrogate forces. They will be necessary to fill critical capability gaps that these immature surrogate forces will have.”
Brennan added that some U.S. ground forces will also be necessary to provide air-ground controllers that are integrated within surrogate forces to make certain that the air and ground campaigns are complementary. “Eventually the United States will need to employ U.S. special forces to work with surrogate forces in combat operations,” he said. “The United States will also need to employ its counter terrorism forces to work side-by-side with the Iraqi Special Operations Forces, Jordanian Special Operations Forces and others to successfully conduct they type of missions that will be necessary to degrade and destroy ISIL.”
As part of the administration’s strategy, Secretary of State John Kerry sought to pin down Middle Eastern allies gathering in Saudi Arabia on Thursday on what support they are willing to give to the new U.S. plan to beat back the Islamic State. Regional support is seen as key to combatting the spread of the militant group, which has forced Christians and other religious minorities out of their ancestral villages in the north of Iraq. Nearly 40 nations have agreed to contribute to what Kerry predicted will be a worldwide fight to defeat the group.
Kerry is aiming to build a coalition in the region, with Sunni Arab allies and NATO member Turkey playing leading roles. Already, Saudi Arabia has agreed to open its military bases to train moderate Syrian rebels, according to the United States. Some Gulf states could help with airstrikes, as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar did in the U.S.-led aerial campaign over Libya in 2011 that helped lead to the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi. Gulf nations could also assist with arms, training, intelligence and logistics.
The coalition-building efforts could be hampered, however, by squabbling among Washington’s allies in the region. For example, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Egypt are at odds with Qatar and Turkey because of the latter’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in the region.
In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal this week, the Emirates’ ambassador to Washington called for a coordinated and sustained international effort to combat Islamic extremists. Yousef al-Otaiba said his country is prepared to join an international effort to fight the Islamic State. But he called for a broader fight against extremists in the region, including al-Nusra Front in Syria and other groups in Yemen and North Africa.
Kerry is expected to meet later in the day with officials from across the Gulf Arab region as well as envoys from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey to press his case for greater regional support.
But aside from military considerations, Brennan sees another flaw in Obama’s approach. The president in his speech seemed to try to put any religious considerations out of the way from the outset, asserting that the Islamic State is neither Islamic nor a state.
"ISIL is not ‘Islamic,’" Obama said. "No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state."
“Of course it is Islamic,” Brennan said. “It is the a type of radical Islamic extremism that shares an apocryphal ideology with al-Qaida in Pakistan, al-Nusra Front in Syria and other organizations around the world. One critical part of the strategy that was missing was an elaboration about how the United States will this defeat extremist Islamic ideology. The war against al-Qaida and all of its offshoots cannot be won until this ideology is defeated. Claiming these ISIL and related organization are not Islamic is not only patently false, but it also precludes the development of an approach necessary to defeat the fundamental cause that attracts foreign fighters from around the world.”
Some Christian leaders seem to want to focus on an attempt to defeat the extremist ideology. In Nigeria, for example, Boko Haram is fighting to establish an Islamic caliphate. Thousands of people, including Christians, have been killed, and more than 1.5 million people have been forced from their homes in the five-year-old insurgency. This week, Nigerian ground forces backed by warplanes continued to battle the militants in a bid to regain territory.
But Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos was at the Saint Egidio International Meeting for Peace in Antwerp, which concluded Tuesday evening. He told Vatican Radio’s Francesca Sabatinelli that Christians and Muslims of goodwill working together can be a powerful force in overcoming Boko Haram. The Archbishop goes on to say that with growing attacks on Muslim leaders, the eyes of many Muslims have been opened to the damage that is being done to Nigeria.
“If together, good Christians, good Muslims come together they can be a force, a very strong force to confront Boko Haram,” Archbishop Kaigama said. "When we are united together we speak with one voice, we act like one people, I think we can overcome Boko Haram.”
Brennan said that with the Islamic State, President Obama “has selected strategic goals but will not properly resource the effort sufficiently for the goals to be accomplished. It’s as if he preselected the means he was willing to use and then articulated strategic goals (degrade and defeat ISIL) claiming that some unspecified coalition of the willing would fill in the gaps of what was needed for mission accomplishment.”
John Burger is news editor for Aleteia’s English edition. The Associated Press and Vatican Radio contributed to this report.
