Fighting to Not Win

[Valin]

National Review:

How Obama’s strategy builds up the Islamic State and fosters terrorism

Ira Straus

Jan 14 2015

 

President Obama is officially at war with the Islamic State, yet he is not fighting to win. He is fighting to contain it and “degrade” it over a period of years. Practically speaking, this means: helping the Islamic State develop itself at home, and helping it inspire more terrorists worldwide — something the terrorists have brought home to country after country in recent weeks. Obama’s strategy is barely different from fighting to lose.

 

As long as the Islamic State is fighting America without losing — as long as it continues to control a large swath of territory — its roots deepen at home and its charisma grows among Muslims everywhere. Here finally is an Islamic entity that is able to fight “the Empire” and succeed in holding it off! It attracts adherents from a global base — a base of many thousand aspiring jihadists and many million supportive Islamists.

 

The U.S. has announced that it has killed a thousand Islamic State fighters — this, in all these months of containing and “degrading.” Meanwhile, by conservative counts, the Islamic State has recruited more than twice that number of additional fighters. Leftists argue that we are building up the IS by fighting it, so stop fighting. They would be right, if they put it this way: We are building it up by fighting pro forma without trying to win.

 

(Snip)

 

GETTING REAL

The Islamic State is fighting for real. The Islamists abroad who join it or support it with terrorist acts have gotten real. It is time for the West to get real. Every week we continue not to get real, there are more jihadists preparing and carrying out more terrorist acts with more victims, from Paris to Pakistan.

 

Trotsky said that, in war, maximum humanity means maximum efficiency. It is not a profound observation. It is not even always true. Some parties are condemned by objective realities to lose. But when one holds the preponderance of force, it is elementary good sense.

It was inhumane to drag out the intervention in Libya, in the name of not owning the victory (yes, that was our explicit line), and it was ruinous for regional stability. It has been brutal and ruinous to keep propping up the civil war in Syria just to the point of stalemate, with hundreds of thousands dead and the Islamic State emerging out of the chaos. Dragging on the current war with the Islamic State in stalemate format spills barrels of innocent blood.

 

The administration feels uncomfortable with the moral responsibility of fighting a war to win. Even when facing an enemy so horrendous that it really would rather see a world without that enemy, it doesn’t want us to own the victory. That, after all, would shift the global balance in our favor, not manage our decline the way the Left wants us to.

 

But Obama does not escape moral responsibility by his avoidance of victory. Failure to choose is also a choice. The more Obama runs away from responsibility, the more blood there is on his hands. The bulk of the world is ready to get real in fighting Islamism and terrorism. It must find the means to move forward, even if Obama continues standing in the way.

[Cyber_Liberty]

Obama has no intention of ever "getting real," nor will he get out of the way.