We Had to Go Back
The U.S. had to intervene in Iraq because ISIS’s goals are absolutely terrifying.
Photo by Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images,HAIDAR MOHAMMED ALI
Scratch the surface of most of the
world’s armed conflicts and you won’t see an ideological struggle or
deep-seated ethnic or religious hatred that has erupted in a war of all
against all. Rather, what you’ll find is a collection of thugs for hire,
some in uniforms and some not, who are taking advantage of the chaos of
war to prey on the weak. Sometimes this involves stealing oil or
diamonds, or sexual brutality. But it’s pretty rare that it involves
some larger design. True, the hooligans who take part in these orgies of
destruction will often claim loyalty to some larger cause. They’re
usually lying. The only heroes you’ll find in these wars are the people
fighting for their lives and their loved ones.
The war that is now unfolding in Iraq is something different, and
something much scarier. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria steals with
the best of them, and I don’t doubt that some of the fighters who’ve
attached themselves to its cause are thrill-seeking psychopaths like
those you’ll find in any lawless hellhole. On the whole, however, you
get the impression that its fighters aren’t killing for fun and profit,
and they’re certainly not killing to protect themselves from other
crazies. Instead, they are killing because they are utopians. They want
to live in a world that is quite literally cleansed of those who do not
share their deranged beliefs, and by killing Yazidis and Christians and
members of other religious minorities, they believe that they are
serving a noble and just cause. The Taliban are awful, but given their
willingness to cut deals with the Afghan government and the United
States and its allies, they aren’t quite so insane. Even al-Qaida is
more tolerant of religious minorities than the lunatics of ISIS. Now,
with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen loot, ISIS is on
the march, closing in on stranded pockets of women and men they see as
pagans and slowly starving them to death. The Kurdish peshmerga, the
only Iraqi fighting force capable of holding ISIS at bay, has put up a
brave resistance, yet they are starting to buckle.
And now, without a moment to spare, President Obama has decided to do
something. For months, the president has resisted committing U.S.
military forces to the fight against ISIS. But ISIS’s campaign of
extermination against Iraq’s religious minorities has stirred him to
action. In a nationally televised address on Thursday night, the
president announced that he had authorized a limited bombing campaign
against ISIS as well as a humanitarian effort on behalf of the stranded
Yazidis.
Though I’ve criticized the Obama administration
for withdrawing from Iraq at the tail end of 2011, I recognize that the
decision to intervene militarily now is a thorny one. ISIS has
succeeded in no small part because Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki’s government has failed to win the confidence of Iraq’s Sunni
Arabs, who’ve suffered mightily from his sectarian chauvinism. Coming to
the Iraqi government’s rescue looks a little too much like forgiving
Maliki for his sins. Most of the defense wonks who’ve called for the
president to come to Iraq’s aid have insisted, quite reasonably, that
Maliki first agree to build a more inclusive government that all Iraqis
can trust and respect—a reasonable request given the stakes. Maliki’s
refusal to make meaningful concessions has made a large-scale
intervention profoundly unattractive.
But the prospect of genocide changes things. What President Obama
understands, I hope, is that if ISIS succeeds in routing the Kurds and
collapsing the fragile Iraqi state, there will be no end to the killing.
American military power cannot make Iraq whole again. It can, however,
help give the Kurds a fighting chance to beat back ISIS, and to
establish a safe haven for the members of religious minorities fleeing
from ISIS-held territory. And in doing so, it can buy time for Maliki to
think hard about his legacy: whether to avoid sharing power he is truly
willing to let Iraq once again become a slaughterhouse.
By giving the Kurds breathing room, the president is doing the
honorable thing. Throughout America’s decadeslong entanglement in Iraq,
it is the Kurds who have been our firmest friends. Right now, Kurds are
fighting and dying to protect their homeland, yes, but also to defend
Yazidis and Christians who cannot defend themselves. They are fighting
for the entire civilized world, and for a country as powerful as our own
to not lend them assistance would be genuinely shameful—not least
because it is the U.S. invasion of Iraq that has contributed so much to
that country’s unraveling.
I am a pessimist. Though I sincerely hope that the limited airstrikes
authorized by the president will be enough to force ISIS into retreat, I
don’t expect this gruesome war to end tomorrow. We need to start
thinking about the Yazidis and the Christians and the other persecuted
Iraqis who will need to find shelter somewhere other than Iraq. The
United States welcomed as many as 130,000 refugees from South Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. We might have to welcome just as many from Iraq in the years to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment