This stupid war

War is the exercise of politics but through a different method, one that is blood soaked. The golden rule is: Each war must have a clear political objective it seems to achieve. A war that has no objective, or one whose objective is not as obvious as blood and sacrifice, is a stupid war and is doomed to failure. What would be the political objective of the war that is currently being waged against ISIS? No one has an answer to the question, or perhaps there are those who do but they do not want to say it. Even US President Barak Obama, who is leading the coalition in this war, either does not have an answer or he wants to keep it to himself. There is another question: Are all members of the coalition in this war clear about this issue? One presumes they are. And if they all know the answer, as is expected, then why aren’t any of them divulging it?

It will be said that the matter is as clear as daylight: the war on ISIS is part of the war on terrorism. Within this framework, it is a war on a brutal terrorist organisation that should be finished off. This in itself is a noble objective. This statement would be perfectly accurate had matters ended here. There is no doubt that the war on terrorism is legitimate. We may remember that it started in the aftermath of the attacks in September 2001. At the time, there was no terrorist organisation bearing the name of Islam except Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. However, 13 years after the start of this war, there has been a multiplication in the terrorist organisations that hoist the slogan of Islam, so much so that it is impossible to count them. Al-Qaeda has been noticeably weakened in this war. Yet, it has not been defeated. It is still present. However, more dangerous organisations, such as ISIS, emerged.

In other words, instead of the war finishing Al-Qaeda off and besieging the terrorist phenomenon, it has led to a spread of the phenomenon and to the multiplication of its organisations. This is definite proof that the war on terrorism has so far failed.

Why has it failed? Not because it is not a legitimate war. To the contrary, as a matter of principle it is and it does enjoy extensive support. But it failed because it is a stupid war. The features of stupidity during the Afghan era is that the political objectives of this war were, and still are, American more than they are Afghani. This happened at the time because terrorism at the time was mostly directed at the outside, and specifically against the United States. Hence, the war (which is still ongoing) did not enjoy much support outside a segment of the elite that concurs with the Americans. The debate over the viability of a complete withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan next year is continuing in Washington.

The opinion in favour of keeping the troops there, considering what happened after the American troops withdrew from Iraq in September 2010, has been bolstered. The truth is that the American occupation of this country, with the lies it relied on in terms of justifications and objectives as well as management, not to mention the undeclared collaboration with Iran and what all of this led to – a destructive civil war, drove what is called the war on terrorism to the tip of stupidity even according to American standards.

Note in this context what former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on the day they celebrated the withdrawal of the troops in the city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. According to the New York Times on September 1, 2000, he said that “history will judge whether our war that continued for seven years (between 2003 and 2010) was worth its cost”. It is clear that history did not wait long to issue its verdict.

The Anbar province, from which Gates spoke, is the area that came under the control of ISIS three years after the withdrawal of American troops. That is to say that the American war on terrorism failed once more in Iraq. The more bizarre thing is that the Obama administration is repeating the actions by declaring a war on ISIS. This administration ignores that the terrorism emanating from Iraq is different from the terrorism in Afghanistan in that it is principally directed internally, within Iraq, Syria and the region, and that internal sectarianism is the primary and most dangerous cause of terrorism.

The stupidity of this war can be seen in many aspects that share common doubts. The first is that the disagreements among the coalition parties in this war are many and it is not permitted to confront them and discuss them openly. Even when the dispute with Turkey emerged, the Obama administration seemed confused. Ankara wants a clear strategy while Washington refuses, despite being the capital of strategies. On the backdrop of this comes the second thing, which is the fact that what is unknown about the war on ISIS is more than what is known about it.

No one knows why ISIS is specifically being targeted but not the other militias. Why is one organisation being fought instead of fighting the sectarianism that provoked the emergence of this organisation? No one knows why the brutality of ISIS moved Obama’s conscience but not the brutality of the Syrian regime that has killed more than 250,000 people and banished more than 10 million internally as well as externally and destroyed most of the Syrian towns and cities. And then, no one knows why the war against a small organisation whose size does not exceed 30,000 fighters will take more than 20 states several years.

The more serious unknown in this war is that no one knows what comes after defeating ISIS. What step should follow that? Turkey says that one of the objectives of the war should be bringing down the Syrian regime, but America doesn’t agree. The outcome of this debate and this obscurity is that the war on ISIS remains without political strategy and without a clear political objective.

It will be said that this is not stupidity but a deliberate policy. That may be correct. But even policy sometimes seems plagued with destructively stupid mistakes. The question here is: Why is Obama insistent upon the war on ISIS? The first thing to note here is that the American president ignores completely, whether out of conviction or out of political expediency – there is no difference, that Iran is employing the Arab Shia militias as a central tool in its regional policy. What is even more strange is the silence of the coalition’s Arab parties who are saying nothing whatsoever about this issue.

The role of this tool became much bigger immediately after the American occupation of Iraq. It is no wonder that the number of these militias multiplied rapidly in Iraq since 2003 and then after the Syrian revolution. In fact, these militias are primarily responsible for keeping the Syrian regime in power thus far. Seen from this angle, Obama’s concentration on ISIS is a concentration on one party in the sectarian equation, and that is the Sunni party. That means he condones, or does not object to, the employment by Iran of the terrorist militias in the conflict raging in the region. This is where the stupidity, or one may say the political wickedness, lies in this war.

This is a war that so far serves the interest of Iran, which caused the explosion of the sectarian conflict in the region and which is a principal party in the civil wars raging in both Iraq and Syria. Why does Iran have the right to employ sectarianism while the same right is denied to ISIS and its sisters? Obama’s discourse and his political steps indicate that he is using the civil war in Iraq and Syria as a card in his negotiations with the Iranians. It is as if he is saying to the Arabs: you better control your militias and keep them under the umbrella of state legitimacy and consequently unify and control that legitimacy so as to strike a balance with Iran. So, should it be acceptable for Iran to possess nuclear weapons, you too have to possess the same weapons in order to consolidate that balance. If this is truly what he is saying, then there is nothing to prove that the other party is listening to what is being said.

Nevertheless, it would seem that the American president is turning the agonies of the Iraqi and Syrian people into pawns for his political betting and mistakes. Should this war continue the way it is now it will suffer an erosion of its legitimacy in favour of the organisations that are being targeted. What the media is talking about, especially the Western media, of the attractiveness of ISIS has very much to do with this. Imagine what would have happened had the leadership of this organisation been more clever and attentive to public relations, abandoning its brutality against its opponents whether Muslim or non-Muslim. How would its popularity in the Arab world be? This question insinuates that what maintains some legitimacy for Obama’s war on ISIS is the brutality of the organisation, and nothing else. The president should ask himself: if the failure of the war on Al-Qaeda left behind hundreds of terrorist organisations, how many terrorist organisations will be left after the failure of the war on ISIS?

Translated from Al-Hayat newspaper, October 26, 2014.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.