Despite the Spin, the Administration’s War on ISIS Is Still Ineffectual and Still Callous

By 

David French

|
February 18, 2015

4 min read

Jihad

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As Andrew noted, last night State Department spokesperson Marie Harf declared that we “cannot kill our way out of this war.” Instead, she supports — of course — dealing with “root causes,” like — you know — insufficient young entrepreneurs in the Middle East. 

Facing intense criticism, she took to Twitter to justify her comments. Here’s a sampling:

 

Putting aside the irony of an Obama administration official using George Bush’s quotes to justify the Obama administration’s approach to the war against ISIS, let’s not forget that when George Bush was speaking about changing the conditions on the ground, he was doing so from a position of actually controlling the ground we were trying to change. While our nation-building efforts were excessively idealistic, those efforts took place against the backdrop of two major invasions where almost 200,000 American troops (combined totals in Iraq and Afghanistan) were engaging the enemy in close combat and working mightily to create an improved political and economic infrastructure. And by the end of the surge in 2008, we’d actually given the Iraqis a chance to build something. The Afghans have had years of opportunities.

The Obama administration, by contrast, is speaking the language of economic reform without a fraction of the commitment on the ground. ISIS is killing people on a genocidal pace (by some measures, the Syrian civil war’s casualty counts now top the casualties from the entire Iraq and Afghan wars combined), and the Obama administration has squandered years of hard-won gains. How, exactly, are air strikes and a few thousand partially trained “moderate” Syrian rebels going to create the right conditions for entrepreneurs in Raqqa?

The Obama administration’s strategy represents the worst of both worlds. Without a serious effort to take and hold ground, the administration’s strategy of limited air strikes is centered around exactly the thing that Ms. Harf decries — trying to kill our way to victory. So we kill moderate numbers, hopefully stalemate the front, plan for long-delayed, limited offensives waged by allies who have little or no ability to truly project force, all the while doing nothing meaningful to create the kind of economic conditions that Ms. Harf and her bosses believe will cause youngjihadists to drop their AK’s and pick up their iPads. This is a formula not just for a long war, but for endless conflict — with no winners and no losers, just casualties. Endless casualties.

One gets the sense that so long as Americans can be sufficiently distracted — taught that things are just fine and “random” violence just happens — the administration would be content with the status quo for the foreseeable future. After all, it’s trying to codify that status quo with an AUMF that would severely restrict our next president’s freedom of action.

Here at home, we’re constantly treated to hectoring hashtags based on isolated, small-scale tragic events. A small number of highly ambiguous police shootings makes some people wonder whether #blacklivesmatter. A deranged progressive atheist shoots three Muslim students, and people question whether #muslimlivesmatter. In the meantime, jihadists kill their tens of thousands — their hundreds of thousands — and we’re told we need to exercise restraint, to understand that the world is so very complicated, and to refrain from excessive outrage at (or effective action against) torture, rape, slavery, and mass killings. 

American policy is morally bankrupt, defended by ideologues who never let reality get in the way of the right narrative. We cannot be rid of them soon enough.

This article is crossposted on National Review.