A few days ago, Sen. John McCain of Arizona called the capture of the key Iraqi city of Ramadi by the Islamic State terrorist group "one of the most disgraceful episodes in American history" and slammed President Obama's decision to withdraw American troops from the country in 2011. He's wrong on both counts. His views are an example of what's wrong with our national security policy.
Ramadi was never ours to win or lose, and any disgrace lies only on Iraqi shoulders. It was Iraqi troops who abandoned not only the battle but also U.S.-supplied tanks, artillery pieces and personnel carriers the U.S. Air Force must now destroy lest the Islamic State deploy them. We've been there before. In 2006, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers fought for Ramadi, at a cost of more than 100 military deaths and an unknown number of civilians. For eight years, American troops fought skillfully and heroically to save Iraq from itself. We owe our troops heartfelt thanks for their service, and we owe them the common sense not to make the same policy mistakes again.
What's disgraceful is hawkish calls from McCain and others for more U.S. boots on Mideast ground. This clique whose fantasies got us into Iraq in the first place seems to have forgotten the first law of holes: When you're in one, stop digging.
It's not up to us to preserve the Mideast from its religious extremism. More importantly, it's impossible for us to do so. Any leadership role we take will only rebound against us and make things worse.
Given our mistakes and the Mideast's mistakes, it's not surprising most of the region is sinking tragically. The "Arab Spring" has done much more harm than good, especially in Egypt, Libya and Syria. In the ensuing "Arab Winter," Wikipedia reports 10 ongoing wars in the Mideast and six in North Africa.
We must, for a change, learn from history and we must, for a change, be rational and realistic. We made a big mistake thinking American troops could bring peace and democracy to Iraq, a nation awash in religious differences and medieval mysticism. We are making a mistake now to think American power can rescue either Iraq or Syria from the Islamic State. Salvation is up to those nations themselves, although we can help under the right circumstances.
American policy remains fixated on U.S.-led military solutions. Why is there no serious discussion, for example, of breaking Iraq up into three nations? It's clear there is a strong, unified Kurdish population in northern Iraq, and quarreling Shia and Sunni populations in the west and in the southeast, respectively. Iraq is ruled today by Shia who seem unable to cooperate with Sunnis, and many Sunnis are attracted to the extremely Sunni Islamic State. Are there good reasons for maintaining these three culturally distinct populations, living in three distinct regions of Iraq, as one nation? Or are we maintaining Iraq's unity simply because our national pride might be offended by allowing Iraq, into which we have poured so much blood and tears, to dissolve?
Our dreams for Syria are even more unrealistic than our dreams for Iraq. We desire to defeat the Islamic State, to overthrow President Assad and to install a supposedly democratic faction of the anti-Assad rebels. Probably none of this is going to happen, and in fact none of it should be a foreign policy requirement for America. Our policy in Syria should be to restrict the Islamic State sufficiently that it does not have the means to attack our homeland. Our real interest lies in cooperating with the dictatorial Assad and with Iran to weaken or defeat the Islamic State. The anti-Assad revolution has done more harm than good; if the rebels won, it would probably make things still worse. We have made a mistake in Syria by pursuing our militaristic and naively democratic beliefs rather than the realistic interest of our nation and of the world to end the killing.
The macho idealism of John McCain typifies what's wrong with U.S. policy. President Obama is more rational but still caught up in the myth that American power can solve everything. As regular readers of this column know, my guess is this region will not get its act together until it has seriously tamed its religion. In any case, the Mideast is going to have big problems for the forseeable future, and the U.S. must learn to let Mideastern people and nations solve, or not solve, those problems.
Commentary on 06/02/2015