ISIS: Our Aim, Punishment

President Obama and former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki

What have we learned from the Obama administration’s failed policies in Iraq and Afghanistan? The Cato Institute’s Justin Logan tells readers that the answer is we can’t fix other countries’ political pathologies at an acceptable cost. Justin concludes that several years on, when we look back on our latest Wilsonian experiment in the Middle East, perhaps even Barack Obama will see its folly.

Progress in Iraq used to hinge on Nouri al-Maliki changing Iraq’s politics. When he failed, we helped get rid of him and bring in Haider al-Abadi. Perhaps al-Abadi will have the extraordinary political skills that his several predecessors since our invasion in 2003 lacked. Perhaps Iraq’s politics are finally turning toward liberalism and unity. Perhaps.

The Syria policy seems equally dim. President Obama says U.S. policy is to destroy ISIS but in doing so we don’t want to help the Assad regime, whose rule in Syria it challenges. So Obama says he’ll do more to help moderate rebels. For their part, the Sotloff family says their son was sold to ISIS by a “moderate” group much like the ones the administration aims to help.

ISIS is a symptom of a number of problems: the regional conflict between the Gulf Arabs and Iran; the civil war in Syria; and Iraqi political disputes set loose by the 2003 regime change.

If a new U.S. war doesn’t cure those diseases, they will remain to cause similar symptoms in the future. As Chas Freeman, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, put it, “The contradictions and incoherence of our strategy really beggar the imagination.”