__The following text has been translated and adapted from an article first published in Denmark’s international magazine Raeson. As always in such cases, questions about various subtleties of interpretation or style may arise, and interested readers may wish to refer to the original Danish version,__ available here.
**US bombings of ISIS-targets in Iraq are a small step in the right direction. It is not enough and way too late. Put simply, President Obama’s foreign policy is a catastrophe. To begin with he underestimated ISIS—and then he hesitated. What’s left now is a more insecure world.**
It is highly convenient for President Obama to have avoided taking a clear and active stance towards ISIS, with the intention and belief that the terror organization eventually would collapse on its own. That has unfortunately been a sign of naiveté of terrible proportions. Without any interference, ISIS was allowed to build itself up as an organization in Syria, both militarily and economically. In this way Syria became ISIS’s safe haven and the organization has become far more powerful, rich, and deadly than al-Qaeda. President Obama has clearly underestimated the threat. The columnist Ezra Klein recently pointed out that Obama in January compared ISIS to a basketball team: “If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant […] I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes.”
I find it incomprehensible that President Obama did not take ISIS more seriously because it was already strong in January. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, bragged about having several hundreds of jihadists all over the world ready to commit suicide bombings in a terrorist attack. That’s exactly the point President Obama and his foreign policy advisers have missed: ISIS constitutes a significant threat to the western world, especially the U.S.
Could the U.S., by using President Obama’s foreign policy as a tool, have prevented ISIS’s escalation and advancement? Simply put, yes. Relatively straightforward safeguards should have been implemented years ago. As a result of President Obama’s lack of effort, the problem and conflict has become a thousand times more complex because ISIS has become a large and effective actor which can’t be ignored.
The truth is that since Obama became president in January 2009, the world--and especially the Middle East--has become more insecure. The situation in Iraq has only deteriorated since the withdrawal of U.S. troops and that is certainly a heavy burden for Obama. Everything in Iraq has been put in the hands of the local government with Nouri al-Maliki in charge and despite good intentions, Maliki hasn’t been able to successfully resolve this crisis. Rather the contrary.
ISIS has grown day-by-day, and it reflects the arrogance and supercilious attitude of Obama that he has ignored the growth of the terrorist group for so long. It’s fine that he has finally taken action by ordering drone strikes, but these strikes won’t stop ISIS. For that to happen, land troops are necessary and it would take a coordinated effort to hunt down ISIS jihadists in the entire Middle East.
Hillary Clinton has recently gone public with her criticism of the president’s foreign policy. In the magazine The Atlantic, she wrote that President Obama’s lack of intervention in the Syrian civil war has resulted in a spread of Islamic extremism. She is completely right. I would add that the global community, which most certainly includes Obama, has failed and let down helpless Syrian civilians who have been the victims of extreme violence. Clinton suggests that the original Syrian freedom fighters should have received far more support in every single way in order to fight Assad. But Obama never really intervened in the conflict, which resulted in the horrific slaughter of many Syrian freedom fighters by Assad and his superior military. A lot of ISIS’s progress and expansion happened in the resulting void. Obama could have prevented this. Sure, it wouldn’t have been easy, but the snowball could have been caught before it rolled downhill, growing large and dangerous.
What are the driving forces of President Obama’s foreign policy? Unfortunately he has been overly concerned with his legacy. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the president who entered new wars, especially after withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Such subconscious reasoning just doesn’t work if you are the president of the world’s biggest military and political superpower. You have to take responsibility in that office, including when decisions are tough. I don’t believe any sound person desires a war, but when you are facing a group like ISIS that is based on extremist ideology, there isn’t any other option other than taking actions against the group, in order to prevent a far more extensive war that could inevitably arise if ISIS isn’t stopped in time.
Posterity will judge Obama harshly, as polls of the American people have already demonstrated his lack of popularity.
But many Americans argue that it isn’t the responsibility of the U.S. to maintain peace in Iraq. Are they right? No. This is a misunderstanding Obama makes as well, because ISIS most certainly poses a threat not only to countries in the Middle East, but also the western world and especially the U.S. If ISIS gets more time and space to continue their growth, it won’t be long before they start carrying out some of their frightening intentions globally. The jihadists come from all over the world, including the U.S. and Denmark. We have to understand the question is not whether to intervene in Iraq again and spread democracy. The question concerns the fighting of global terrorism. The terrorist mission is not only the foundation of ISIS, it is also the group’s tactic for recruiting new members and jihadists.
A few months ago, Jakob Nielsen wrote in Politiken, a Danish newspaper, that Iraq paradoxically could be ‘the necessary war’ for Obama. It’s a paradox, because Obama supported the war in Afghanistan, which he described as ‘necessary after 9/11,’ but didn’t support the war in Iraq, which he described as ‘unnecessary.’ This is a great point of Jakob Nielsen’s. Because the U.S.—and the rest of the world for that matter—can’t live with ISIS maintaining its strength, or even worse, growing stronger.
In which cases has President Obama been passive? The best example is the boost which ISIS got from escaped prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison that joined the group—today these are prominent figures and jihadists in ISIS. Assad was also guilty of kick-starting ISIS by letting out many prisoners in February 2012. Assad probably had his reasons to do so. It’s a fact that ISIS doesn’t fight Assad, but is doing everything possible to destroy moderate powers in Syria, including the Free Syrian Army fighting Assad’s regime.
Today it isn’t a completely unrealistic scenario for Baghdad to be taken over by ISIS. That scenario must tell us how absolutely crucial it is that the network and ideology of ISIS’s isn’t underestimated, as Obama unfortunately has done so far.
Obama isn’t alone. There is silence in the Arabic world—and that is a massive problem. The silence from many other countries, including Denmark, is currently overwhelming. In some way it’s grotesque that a conflict, about which we receive so much information about in the media, is being met with such silence.
Why are we in Denmark so silent? It must be because we, like Obama, underestimate the threat ISIS poses to global security, indicated by its current behavior in Iraq and Syria.