Another ‘coalition of the willing’? That’ll be a dumb move, Mr Obama

Like in the Second Gulf War of his predecessor George W. Bush, Mr Obama is currently cobbling together a number of friendly-and pliant- countries into a loose ‘coalition of the willing’ that will provide money, hardware and even boots on the ground to ostensibly confront the IS, formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and the […]

Like in the Second Gulf War of his predecessor George W. Bush, Mr Obama is currently cobbling together a number of friendly-and pliant- countries into a loose ‘coalition of the willing’ that will provide money, hardware and even boots on the ground to ostensibly confront the IS, formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), whose brutal tactics were epitomised in a string of beheadings of many Iraqis and Syrians opposed to the group, and of two American nationals and, last week, a British aid worker. Western countries’ reaction to these horrific and graphic public executions of their nationals is consistent with the values they seek to promote elsewhere, the irony apparently lost on them that methods they employ may differ from those of their targets, but the result is the same, more deaths in more or less brutal ways. What is amazing in Mr Obama’s speech last week is his explicit threat to President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria, who is not only fighting to fend off a coalition of opposition forces that also includes the Islamic State, but also stave of attempts by the United States and regional allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar to force a regime change. In this effort, the United States has despatched cash and armaments directly and through Saudi Arabia.
In announcing an expanded effort to degrade and ultimately defeat the Islamic State, Mr Obama said that he would take the battle against the group into Syria, where the group, along with the Western-backed and –funded Free Syria Army, controls large swath of territory. No US soldiers would be involved in combat on the ground, he said. But US fighter jets would be deployed anywhere inside Syria to fight the Islamic State group. The problem with this obviously provocative and belligerent posture is that Mr Obama made it clear that he does not need the consent of the Syrian government for American aircraft to enter Syrian territory.
This arrogant and clearly illegal move is a throwback to the George W. Bush era, when he ignored the United Nations and much of the rest of the world to launch a war of aggression against Iraq on the pretext, long discredited, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and the capacity to deliver them. The likelihood of Assad being in the crosshairs of America’s coalition forces is not one to be overlooked. Yesterday’s anti-ISIL meeting in Paris attended by some 20 countries is an uncanny replay of the gathering storm before Bush’s war of choice.
That Second Gulf War, which then-Senator Obama vehemently opposed, and after which he won the Nobel Peace Prize, was later characterised as the harbinger of the wind of democracy that would blow across the Middle East and North Africa, has indeed brought neither democracy to the region nor made America safer. In fact, arguments have been made, and contemporary events are beginning to bear them out, that America’s bloody interventions in regions that do not need its help are the foundation for the rise of such groups as the Islamic State and others that propagate ideologies that are at variance with the established order as we know it.
American officials bemoan what they see as the ‘complex’ situation in Syria. In fact, it is not. What Obama should do is simple. If the administration has determined that the Islamic State group is a threat to the US and its allies, then all he needs do is to abandon his woe-begotten aversion to the Assad regime, and recalibrate America’s policy of non-engagement with the government. Enlisting the support of the Assad government, and even providing government forces with the munitions they need, as the US is doing in Iraq, would be a far better option, and makes better sense, than putting together a so-called coalition of the willing that could potentially lead to Gulf War III. In that scenario, Mr Obama would be repeating the odious mistake of 2003.