Scott Ritter: Why the Current Approach Against ISIS Will Fail
Oddly, he concludes that we can't stop either.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/26212-why-the-current-approach-against-isis-will-fail
The notion of an Arab "caliphate" is not a new phenomenon fabricated from thin air by the radical jihadists of the Islamic State. Rather, it has existed in the psyche of the Sunni Arabs of Mesopotamia and the Levant for more than a century. The essence of the successes enjoyed by the Islamic State to date centers not on any wide-spread embrace of their radical vision, but rather the fact that their movement gives voice to a dream that has long been dampened by the forces of the west and their autocratic regional allies. The Obama administration has stated that the recent strikes against Syria are but the beginning of a more comprehensive campaign to defeat the Islamic State. But bombs and missiles, while adept at blowing up concrete and creating martyrs, have never been successful when it comes to eradicating ideas.
Void of any competing ideology, it is hard to see how this new war on the Islamic State will ever succeed in supplanting the visionary dream of a Sunni Arab Caliphate that resides in the hearts and minds of so many Sunni Arabs living in Syria and Iraq today. On the contrary, it is likely that this campaign will succeed only in fanning the flames of the radical Sunni fringe, empowering them in a way nothing else could. America's allies in this effort -- Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- are a living manifestation of the kind of autocratic rulers who have earned the contempt of many of the disenfranchised Sunni Arabs who currently flock to the Islamic State. These autocrats, more than anyone, understand the dangers posed by the concept -- and reality -- of a Sunni Caliphate, since it is their very survival that is at stake.
This is one fight the United States, having committed itself to, cannot simply walk away from. The ramifications of retreat would be dire and virtually uncontainable. It is also a fight the United States is poorly equipped to deal with successfully. Bombing cannot, and will not, deliver success. Nor will boots on the ground, even if America was disposed to do so. What is needed is a competing ideology that resonates not with America's erstwhile Arab allies, but rather the Sunni populations of Iraq and Syria. The Obama administration has yet to articulate anything that remotely competes with the vision of a Sunni Caliphate. Unless the policy makers who authorized the use of military force against Syria are able to do so, and soon, America's new Syrian adventure may very well prove to be the death knell for a Middle East whose basic construct was engendered by European Empire, and sustained by American Imperialism, for the past century.
The United States spent a quarter century bombing, invading and occupying Iraq to rid itself of Saddam Hussein, and now we can only dream of having such a strong, inclusive secular leader. In bombing Syria, the United States seems to have embarked on a similarly open-ended campaign to eliminate the Islamic State, and the vision of a caliphate it embraces. Who knows what will exist in its place in five, ten or even twenty five years. The American public should be rightfully fearful of any policy maker who claims the gift of prophesy, for in the words of Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, today we may speak as children, but soon we must put away our childish things, and view the past through a glass, darkly.
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