Paying for past blunders

By Carl P. LEUBSDORF

The Dallas Morning News

President Barack Obama’s plan to send 50 Special Operations troops to Syria, following his decision to keep some U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is a tacit admission he went too far in implementing his campaign pledge to end the American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and generally lower the country’s profile in the region.

But that does not justify either President George W. Bush’s decision to launch the war that overthrew Saddam Hussein or the criticism by Obama’s critics that the president could have prevented the rise of the Islamic State by keeping a residual American force in Iraq.

As is now painfully evident, both of the past two presidents went too far – in opposite directions. Bush clearly underestimated the long-term consequences of enmeshing the United States in the region to a greater military and political degree than was realistic. To a large extent, his invasion of Iraq created the mess that persists today.

But Obama’s determination to fulfill his campaign promise to end the U.S. military role in Iraq and Afghanistan failed to recognize the inability of those countries to resolve their many problems without strong U.S. leadership. And his failure to follow through on his vow to bomb Syria’s chemical and biological weapons created a perception of weakness that damaged this country’s future credibility.

Autocratic rule

Still, the region’s underlying problem remains the basic instability of what are, for the most part, artificially created countries like Iraq and Syria, able to maintain territorial integrity only under the autocratic rule of strong-minded leaders who rejected democracy and suppressed their opposition.

Indeed, a strong case can be made that the region would be far more stable if Saddam Hussein still ruled Iraq, Bashar al- Assad maintained control of Syria, Hosni Mubarak was still president of Egypt and even Moammar Gadhafi was running Libya. Indeed, the region’s two most stable powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, owe their stability in considerable degree to their autocratic rulers’ ability to retain their authority.

Unfortunately, unlike many past global conflicts, the one that has wracked Iraq and Syria at enormous material, financial and human cost does not lend itself to any logical solution.

Ironically, it took Vladimir Putin’s bold decision to insert Russia into the chaos to produce some movement toward long-sought political negotiations and bestir Obama to move beyond the fiction – denied by his principal military advisers – that air power alone can turn back the quest of Islamic State terrorists to establish their unique and brutal type of order.

For more than a year, the campaign against the Islamic State has relied too much on air power, despite evidence dating back to Vietnam that bombing alone can’t stop a determined, indigenous power. U.S. efforts to foster a successful anti-Islamic State coalition have proved unsuccessful.

Republicans all criticize Obama’s handling of the situation. For the most part, however, there is far more caution in the GOP’s proposed prescriptions than in some of its anti-Obama rhetoric.

At this point, no one seems to have an effective answer, leaving it likely the region’s problems will fester for years.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.