Here’s How Obama’s New ISIS Strategy Could Become A Disaster
Michael B Kelley
BusinessInsider.com
Aug. 26, 2014
The Obama administration has given the green light for surveillance flights over eastern Syria to prepare for possible military strikes on the extremist militant group ISIS. And the missions have reportedly begun without any coordination with the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Any increased U.S. involvement in “somebody else’s civil war” at this point brings risks, especially when airstrikes alone would not be enough to beat ISIS and no real policy has emerged to deal with the militants in Syria.
“Senior officials have talked of efforts to ‘stall,’ ‘contain,’ ‘degrade,’ ‘defeat,’ and ‘destroy’ the Islamic State. These words actually mean very different things, indicating either a major internal administration debate or utter confusion,” Michael Gerson, a senior White House policy adviser from 2000 through June 2006, wrote recently.
Assad, on the other hand, clearly has a plan. The Iranian-backed ruler has offered to work with the West against ISIS — after facilitating the group’s rise — while also attempting to destroy what remains of the mainstream Free Syrian Army (FSA).
“[Assad] would prefer to confront the West with what it would present as a fait accompli: the opposition is dead; ISIS is a greater evil than us; you in the West have no choice but to work with us against this greater evil,” Fred Hof, a former special adviser for transition in Syria under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrote over the weekend.
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