Prepare for war

Brace yourself America: the United States is expanding airstrike operations in Iraq and mobilizing for possible military action in Syria. I’m listening closely, and so far, I don’t hear the drums of war beating loudly enough in Washington regarding the meteoric rise of the apocalyptic terrorist organization known as ISIS. The silence is deafening- it appears that everyone in the Obama administration understands the gravity of the situation, except the commander-in-chief himself.

It is true that the American public is still reeling from the decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; we’re washing down Advil with Gatorade to relieve our insufferable hangover from these two military adventures. Both wars cost us dearly in terms of blood and treasure – over four trillion dollars in total, according to Public Policy Professor Linda Bilmes of Harvard University. CNN reports that 6,829 American troops have died in both wars combined.

However, despite the staggering costs of our protracted excursions across the Middle East thus far, developments on the ground in both Iraq and Syria demand expanded American military operations, for humanitarian, strategic and national security reasons.

ISIS, otherwise known as ISIL and now the Islamic State, began as a Sunni, al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group waging war in Iraq against U.S. forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom in the mid-2000s. Subsequently, ISIS terrorists flocked to Syria to fight against Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the Syrian revolution, purely for sectarian reasons. After staggering achievements on the battlefield in Syria, which allowed them to gain control of a broad swath of territory and critical infrastructure, marauding ISIS militants seized even more territory in Iraq with unbelievable barbarism.

The terrorist organization poses a grave threat to minorities (it has genocidal intentions to purge the populations under its control of apostates); to the government in Iraq that America has spent billions supporting; to Kurdistan, the semiautonomous region in northern Iraq; to American strategic interests in the region (such as the steady and secure influx of oil); and to the national security of America and her allies. ISIS recently sent shockwaves across America and the civilized world by beheading James Foley, an American journalist.

This weekend, President Obama authorized the use of surveillance planes over Syria in order to gather intelligence about ISIS, thereby fueling speculation that America is poised once again to leap into the fray in the Middle East with military action. Thus far, America has merely provided funding, weapons and training for the moderate rebels in Syria to fight against both President Bashar al-Assad and ISIS; despite issuing a “red-line” regarding Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Obama flinched and the U.S. military has not executed any combat operations in Syria to date.

In Iraq however, the United States has already conducted close to 100 airstrikes against ISIS, for the purposes of preventing the massacre of Yazidis and wrestling away Iraq’s largest dam from the control of ISIS. Still, the scope of these operations is not broad enough to properly combat the current threat.

Officials have stated that America’s current strategy against ISIS involves potentially forming a coalition with countries such as Australia, Britain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates; indeed, Secretary of State John Kerry penned an op-ed this week in the New York Times stating that “With a united response led by the United States and the broadest possible coalition of nations, the cancer of ISIS will not be allowed to spread to other countries.” However, the United States should not shy away from using unilateral action in this current crisis in the case that our efforts to build a coalition fails.

In keeping with Obama’s overall foreign policy doctrine, known as “don’t do stupid sh–t,” the president has adopted a highly restrained policy in Iraq by executing only a few airstrikes. Obama has taken far fewer actions in Syria by simply arming rebels; he even commented on the situation in Syria this Thursday and stated, “We don’t have a strategy yet.”

Despite America’s hangover from the costly military excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan this past decade, America needs to mobilize its assets and take the fight to ISIS, in both Iraq and Syria. Obama’s overly risk-averse strategy in combatting ISIS is irresponsible; it jeopardizes the national security of America, it threatens the survival of minorities across the Middle East and it is harming, and will continue to harm, American strategic interests in the region for decades to come.