With this recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino, it seems as though many Americans are once again calling for more American action in the Middle East. I think this demonstrates how short-term some of the memories of the American people are. It would be absolutely insane for us to once again to take action in the Middle East.
Making the same mistake.
To put it simply, countries with traditional militaries just aren’t very effective in waging an unconventional war in the Middle East. We saw this in the 1980s with the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. They were widely unsuccessful in fighting the guerrilla fighters, known as the Mujahadeen. This was further amplified by America funding of the Mujahadeen during Operation Cyclone. These same people would go on to form Al-Qaeda by the way. Anyways these guerrillas were able to bankrupt a superpower like the USSR in nine years through prolonged conflict. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, then you would know that the United States has been in Afghanistan and Iraq for the last decade. This has cost us 4 trillion dollars and thousands of American soldiers lives. Having a ground opposition in Syria and Iraq will most likely leave us in a similar situation.
While ISIS likes to present itself as a cohesive organized nation, it is more of a coalition of local fighters swearing allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader. It was formed when six tribes and the Mujahideen Shura Council came together to create it in the mid-2000s. We can even see this through their terrorist attacks in the West. They don’t fight the way a conventional army does. So with this in mind, sending American troops to fight in Iraq and Syria will leave us with about the same results as Afghanistan, that is to say nothing at all.
We create more problems than we fix.
We also need to talk about how ISIS came to exist in the first place. There is a great article by the Guardian which tells the story of how all the key players of ISIS met. This new threat in the Middle East was created right under the noses of United States. All their key leaders met in a US-run prison in Iraq. They even said that being a prisoner was a huge advantage because they had a secure place to meet without fear of being attacked by rival groups in the area. So in a way we created ISIS by invading and destabilizing Iraq.
One strategy that was tried to topple al-Assad and fight ISIS was to fund rebel groups in Syria. This has been widely seen as a failure as a recent study showed that only about 5,000 were trained and of that 5,000 most have deserted their posts. So Obama has stopped the cash flow to the Syrian rebels and has elected instead to supply them with arms. So we flow a plethora of weapons into the Middle East and then wonder how ISIS members are equipping themselves. Do we even remember how the Taliban and Al-Qaeda obtained their weapons? The fact that our media’s depiction of them includes Soviet-era weapons should say a lot about how sending any weapons to the Middle East is ill advised.
The latest strategy being tried out are drone strikes. The only issue is that in this year there has been a scandal involving the drone strike program. This scandal has shown that the US military is not proficient in hitting its intended targets. One statistic even said that during a five-month period between 2012 and 2013 90 percent of people killed in drone strikes were not intended targets. These people were mostly innocent bystanders and/or family members. So it’s no wonder ISIS is using these drone strikes as a way to recruit new people into their fold.
What do we do?
This is the big question when talking about our current situation. I hate to agree with Trump but why not just let Russia deal with Syria. I’m not saying that I agree with the way that al-Asad has run Syria, but it’s very clear that making the same mistakes will only lead to more armed conflict in the Middle East. Why not let the other world powers fight ISIS?
As for preventing terrorism on our native soil, we don’t have much to worry about immigrants coming to America. The male shooter in San Bernardino was a Chicago native who was born and lived in the United States. Also, as details arise it seems that the female shooter was radicalized by the husband. We have to come to grips with the fact that we can not prevent every terrorist act in the United States. Even if tomorrow the entire Middle East disappeared, there would still be those who would want to do harm to America and her people. Some of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil have been committed by domestic terrorism such as Timothy McVeigh.
So in end, the only thing we can really do is let our allies deal with it and get out of dodge as fast as we can. More action in the Middle East can only hurt America.
