Recently, I made a blog declaring that, contrary to popular belief, the constant problems that Iraq faces are not simply a result of American invasions, but rather, the nature of the beast in a state set up by imperial partitioning with not enough regard to the borders of actual nations. The result is that Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds cohabit a space that divides all against their peers and forces them together with others they have less affinity for, which presents a problem any time one or the other is in Baghdad. This article elucidates what I touched upon in last post. It has long been apparent that coming to power in Baghdad has inspired leaders to pursue an oppressive policy to those whom they see as alien.
Yet recently, with the fledgling government of Prime Minister Haidr Al Abadi, we're starting to see a new facet of Iraqi politics joining the old arrogance: Stupidity. Somehow, as ground commanders in the assailed Anbar province beg for US troops to come save them, Haidr Al Abadi continues to ignore these requests. It would be one thing if he had shown himself and his army as able to halt the advance themselves, but thus far, he has not. Concerns have also been raised as to the traditional animosity the locals feel towards the US, but as mentioned last post, the inhabitants of Sunni heartlands now have little more cause to trust the Iraqi government or Iran's proxy militias. A US surge could roll back ISIS while then being open to peaceful negotiations with the Sunnis, but so far the Iraqi army is unable to muster a show of force that could bring them to the bargaining table. If Abadi has any aces up his sleeve to stop this, he has yet to reveal them.
Meanwhile, Baghdad's traditional screwing over of Kurdistan continues. The Kurds, who have perhaps more experience than anyone else in Iraq at battling oppressors, have played a greater role in combating ISIS, taking the offensive in many cases. Yet the central government has instituted arbitrary bureaucracy to make it more difficult to get weapons and ammunition to Kurdish troops, quite possibly to sabotage the Kurds' attempts at independence, but ultimately hurting itself in the immediate moment. With Shiite militias strongest in the East and ISIS strongest in the Northwest, only by working with Kurdistan can Baghdad hope to achieve a two-front war and the possibility of an anaconda strike. Yet here again, the new government seems to think it can waive common sense in favor of making a gallant last stand that might lionize it on the remote chance it succeeds, even while, with constant suicide bombings set only to get worse, this tough facade is going to garner ever more skepticism. Decades of fabricated statehood are coming to a head, and the central government does not yet see that the old centrist order cannot survive.
As a result of this, I advise my government in Washington, and others enaged against ISIS and "for" Iraq, to stop entertaining Baghdad's ridiculous pretense and formulate more sensible plans. While I do not support the withdrawal of American support from Baghdad, the central authorities with regard to greenlighting weapons shipments to Kurdistan should be completely ignored; our planes should land right in Erbil and get the goods more quickly to forces who actually have demonstrated their competence and devotion to this fight. If Abadi wants to whine about this, let him; he's hardly in any position to do a thing about it. With ISIS on his doorstep, he cannot afford say no to what American support he still has; let alone be expected to punish a foreign nation violently, and even attacking Kurdistan for defying his orders is going to be virtually impossible when ISIS occupies the middle ground.
Kurdistan, which lays a claim only to the predominantly Kurdish areas, deserves far more respect than the regime of a state that by design wants to force its will on others. Moreoever, from a pragmatic viewpoint, Kurdistan can be trusted far more not to exacerbate tensions with non-Kurds, as it desperately wants an end to being shot at by other peoples. A free Kurdistan is the first big step towards more sensible politics in the region, and ought to be taken immediately.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Why This Should Be Our Next Iraq War, and How it CAN be Our LAST
Forward: After a period of withholding my views on a variety of subjects, I can take it no longer. Politically, I'm a controversial figure among my family and friends, and if this post doesn't make that clear, allow me to explain a little further. The title of this new political blog of mine is serious; I don't affiliate with either major political parties in the US. Yet this does not mean, as one might think, that I'm a centrist, or that I take the conversationally acceptable stance of hating all politicians for stereotypical, comedic reasons. (Indeed, there are many ways I respect politicians for doing such an inherently hated job.) Rather, it means that I hold (what many others consider) extreme views common to both (what many others refer to as) the left and right of the spectrum. (I don't really believe such things exist, or at least, believe that they shouldn't.) This means it's only a matter of time before someone solely taking one side or the other, says something that sets me off on a rant that's not pleasant for anyone. This isn't one of those rants in textual form. Rather, I'm going to share my analysis of the current situation in Iraq, and explain why I gave this first post the title I did.
To say war-weariness is common in the US is an understatement. Many Americans, not to mention people elsewhere, are questioning whether our invasion, and the Iraqi regime change it sponsored, have actually improved things. It has long been a liberal position that it didn't; that the US destabilized the state and made it a haven for terrorism; terrorism that would continue catching the Iraqis in the crossfire so long as the hated US troops were there for them to shoot. Yet now the conservatives are rebutting this with the apparent evidence that since our troops left, perhaps the most vile terrorist organization since the Khmer Rouge has taken power in large portions of Iraq and Syria, and brutally proven that there are far more people in Iraq that other Iraqis want to kill than just Americans; many of them far less able to leave. Which side of politics in America is correct? The only thing that seems certain at the moment, is that Iraq is a mess.
Yet I argue there is hope, or at least, change of a sort is coming. ISIS has expanded rapidly, but in the process, has enraged every recognized government around, and it can't keep this up for long without foreign reprisal escalating. Its attempts to halt its enemies by beheading their civilians has only strengthened the resolve of sensible nations to crush them, it has pushed traditional enemies like Iran and the US, and Turkey and Kurdistan, into a strange alliance, it has brought out positive trends traditionally acknowledged in the region, and thanks to publicizing its brutality, people in its targeted towns who might have hedged their bets at the start of this campaign are now fleeing instead, quite possibly into the arms of the anti-ISIS militias playing a key role in this civil war. Despite its infamous financial backing, ISIS is no Viet-Cong; they lack both ideological allies and benefactors that can't be attacked for fear of massive retaliation, and the propaganda savvy to convince liberal westerners of their righteousness. Hence, there is a light at the end of this tunnel that the US can affect by upping their involvement in this war, but lest I sound too much like a trigger-happy Neo-con, I must qualify this by saying that if we are to have a lasting positive effect this time around, we have to acknowledge two harsh truths.
1) The first of these is that Iraq, as we know it, is finished.
It is, as I said, a popular rallying cry among western liberals that it was foreign intervention that destabilized Iraq and made it a haven for terrorism. In a sense, this claim is correct, but it wasn't just our intervention that started that trend. That the fall of Saddam was the start of this holds true only if one defines "stability" as "Making a desert and calling it peace," and "terrorism" as the evil actions of stateless guerrillas instead of any politically motivated attacks on civilians. The original reason Iraq is perpetually prone to one problem or another (or several at once), is because it's not really a nation. Rather, it's several nations brought together--and also divided--as a result of being the stomping grounds of predatory empires up until recently (within the last century). The Ottoman Empire conquered it as part of the esteemed "Silk Road", and then the British took it from them as part of the spoils of World War I; soon making it nominally independent, and then losing much sway over it after being weakened in World War II.
The state's resulting independence along these artificial boundaries has made it, in effect, into an empire itself, encompassing a number of different groups--the three largest being the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds, but in the recent conflict, others, such as Catholics and Yasidis, have come to light--that are not necessarily happy to be part of the arrangement; hence the central regime frequently sees the need to control the opposing segments of the population with an iron fist. The US deposition of Saddam Hussein has proven, as is often said, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Saddam ruled Iraq, with Sunni allies, at the expense of the Shiites and, most horrifically, the Kurds. When the US drove him out, Iraq came to be ruled by the Shiite Nouri Al Maliki (an interesting figure for being supported by both the US and Iran), who implemented his own sectarian policies; taking revenge on the Sunnis as a whole, and being rather liberal towards Kurdistan by Saddam-standards; that is, not very.
This drove many Sunnis into the hands of ISIS, though now the group has ruined its reputation with many of them, too. Likewise, Kurdistan wasn't all that unhappy to see the Iraqi army on the retreat, but with ISIS looking to wreck the most oppression upon them since Saddam, they are now one of the terror group's biggest foes. While I do think Obama deserves some of the bashing he's getting these days for holding stubbornly to his earlier pledge not to put "boots on the ground"; no matter what the situation becomes, I gained some real respect for him out of his soft-power approach to ending Maliki's buffoonery. In a political culture wherein both supporting a tyrant and overthrowing him militarily have become taboo (if not always to the same people), Obama took the Batman Begins route of "I'm not going to kill you...but I don't have to save you" (from ISIS's advance on Baghdad), withholding military aid from Baghdad and supplying it to the Kurds instead, and it worked. Facing both a military defeat and the accompanying accusation that he started the fire, Maliki stepped down in favor of a hopefully more-inclusive successor. However, don't place your faith in Baghdad yet; decades, if not centuries, of damage, do not get repaired overnight.
2) The second harsh truth the US needs to consider going into this, is that while Iraq burns, and ISIS is squashed--as I am quite sure it will be; whoever ends up doing it--it's a vulture's picnic for all parties involved against the caliphate; many of them not exactly conducive to lasting peace or justice in the region. The most frightening, almost certainly, is Iran. In case it needs to be said to anyone up to speed on these things, if ISIS is the Hitler in this war, Iran is the Stalin. Despite sharing a common enemy with us at the moment, they in fact, resemble that enemy far more than they resemble us and the other western allies. Iran is also a theocracy, and possesses one of the most infamous victim-blaming rape-cultures in the world; hardly the ideal enemy to defeat a group dealing in sex slavery. For all we know, Iran and its allies might massacre women they "liberate" from ISIS's comfort-stations for being tainted by adultery against their will. (Iran also is willing to execute women who fight back against this adultery.) To take the communist simile still further, Iranian involvement in Iraq's political affairs, at the expense of other parties, frightened Sunnis into deal with their own devil. Moreover, there is no sign that this heavy-handed involvement will necessarily end. Sunnis fear Iran's puppet Shiite militas, which have already committed their own atrocities. A substantial amount of Sunnis seduced into fighting alongside ISIS, or even happening to be dominated by them, don't dare to surrender for fear of blanket reprisals similar to the ones their whole faith got out of its association with Saddam Hussein; if not worse this time.
Also upping their involvement in this war are the Saudis and the Emirates. The involvement of these Sunni states poses an opposite, but not necessarily less dangerous risk; their forces may be too liberal towards fellow Sunnis whose territories they overtake; to the extreme that many ISIS fighters might fold back into normal life without reprisals, until they're ready to inflict a new round of terror; if not upon the US, which would almost certainly bring their military back into the region, at least against Shiites. Also, though the Saudi monarchy is generally on good terms with the US, hotbeds of Sunni extremism brew within their borders, and although draconian, the Saudi government cannot necessarily be counted upon to crack down on these pockets while they're trying to err on the side of Sharia law themselves. Saudi Arabia also does not like Iran; having recently fought a proxy war with the Shiite power in Syria and seeding predecessors of ISIS. As such, a Saudi-backed Sunni regime in Iraq poses a risk of lumping all Shiites with Iranian domination, and once again replacing one bigoted Baghdad authority with another.
Conclusion: It is because of these factors that I argue the US must escalate its involvement in this war, which, in fact, it is already doing in a hush-hush way. Gunships have now joined high-altitude bombers in US airstrikes, and the portent question this development poses is what the plan is should one or more of these get shot down and the pilots survive. On one level, probably nothing. The US is not swayed by terrorists who murder American prisoners for political effect, which, as cold as it sounds, I think is the right policy. We must remember that the amount of Americans and Britons who have died at the hands of ISIS pails in comparison to the genocide the caliphate has wrecked upon the locals, and as such, not connote them with any huge damage to our ability to fight this war. However, any pilot who parachutes to the ground; potentially in the enemy's sights, is already in violation of the "No boots on the ground" policy, and once that egg hits Obama's face, if not before, it will be time to face the facts that we are in another Iraq war, and that if we don't want to be swamped in it for an indefinite amount of time again, or lured back in to clean another mess we didn't quite clean up, we had better not repeat past mistakes. So how can we ensure this involvement doesn't open up a new Pandora's Box? I offer my suggestions below.
1) Kurdish independence is almost non-negotiable at this point.
Up until recently, I might've said they could settle for Hong Kong-style SAR status, but recent events in China have given lie to that notion. Kurdistan has cooperated with, and in fact, lauded us, in every Iraq war we've been in, and though the pesky issue of Baghdad and possibly Ankara whining at the prospect still looms, they are unproven at maintaining a just, progressive peace within their territories thus far, something that the Kurds, in fact, have managed to do from the fall of Saddam up until the current war. Indeed, in Kurdistan, we have a rare "Goldilocks zone" that ticks almost all favorable boxes in foreign policy; a society that both favors and emulates America, a government that welcomes US troop deployment, and large potential oil reserves. While almost all states in the Middle East condemn the US for supporting Israel, Kurdistan declares it wants to join Israel as a US agent in the Middle East. Naturally, recent events have soured American opinions of Israeli politics, but in fact, Baghdad politically resembles Jerusalem far more than does Erbil. A big part of the problematic politics in Israel is that, while its capital is held as sacred by all three monotheistic faiths, the Jewish interest runs it unilaterally, especially at the perceived expense of Muslims; Israel is a cosmopolitan state that intends to be a Jewish state. If "Muslims" is swapped out for one denomination of Islam or the other, the comparison with Baghdad is obvious. Being a "national", rather than regional capital, Baghdad will always pose the danger of placing one segment of Iraq in authority over the other, and this is going to keep being a problem every time the current oppressed group decides it wants a turn at being the oppressor. Supporting Erbil's ambitions instead allows a safe investment in a government more representative of all it claims. In time, as America develops more and more alternate means of energy, I believe it ought to be a goal to cease buying oil from the Saudis--unless they make reforms we demand of them--to leave Kurdistan as our main supplier, and ensure our oil bills don't end up in anti-American hands.
2) We can work with the Sunnis--maybe better than anyone else.
America has something of a reputation as the "Goliath" in this region due to its military superiority, especially embodied by its Airforce, which places it at a seeming remove from the people below. However, if (or when) America deploys its ground troops in the offensive position, it can extend a pledge to the Sunni areas it intends to take back itself. We must be adamant that the political segment of ISIS is our foe, and it might be most advantageous of the Sunnis to turn on it. (Some have already.) If not, we, or some other invading army, will have to take the caliphate out ourselves, but because of the second harsh truth stated above, we might actually offer the best hope Sunni Muslims have to fair treatment upon liberation. While Iraq's Muslims of either denomination may not be on board with the American idea of separating church and state, the implication that the US has no preference for Sunni or Shiite Muslims could form the backbone of a useful policy. Much as the US pledged to Japan at the end of World War II, (in effect, let us in, and we'll keep the Reds out), in areas it wrests from ISIS, we could opt to treat the Sunni citizens humanely, and this policy, when juxtaposed against the more "eye for an eye" approach of the Shiite-dominated factions, could be vital in improving America's standing in the region; securing us a foothold with less fighting and less threat of attacks on our troops and civilians later.
Naturally, this is only a tentative military step, and once a peace is achieved, some manner of enforcement needs to be implemented to ensure neither ISIS nor the Shiite bigots are just playing possum to spring out again later. To this end, the US could essentially offer post-ISIS Iraq a "political auction". The Shiites and Sunnis bid by trying to outdo each other in forming inclusive, benevolent political policies, and the US offers more aid (possibly not military, but otherwise) to whichever segment of the population performs better in that regard. Such a policy may require that Iraq be partitioned into official Sunni and Shiite territories to make the results of this competition evident, but as Iraq is in fact, already partitioned that way unofficially, it's not a huge stretch. In time, this incentivized peace competition could prove much more appealing to both sides than returning to civil war. Speaking of civil wars, there is one other factor that can and should play a key-role in stamping out militant Islamism--Sunni or Shiite--permanently, and it's a force that very few of us expected in this region.
3) Our secret weapon: Women.
While politics can be a dirty game, as noted in the point entailing Kurdistan, every once in a while, self-interest and ethics do line up. During the beginning of the US Civil War, although enough Americans opposed slavery to elect the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, as their president, abolitionism, let-alone extending full rights to African Americans, was not supported highly enough to pass into national law at the time. But after a long, brutal campaign, in the twilight of the war, Lincoln came to realize that, in African Americans, especially those in conquered Confederate territory, he was staring at a potential goldmine of anti-Confederate troops more willing than any white men to aid in the fight. For this reason, he was able to pass the Emancipation Proclamation, hastening the end of the war.
Great evil can seed great heroism, and while ISIS may have given Middle Eastern women the worst slight they've ever gotten, in a long history of bad slights, the conflict they've created has also brought feminism out of the Middle Eastern woodwork. The Kurdish Peshmerga employs female soldiers, who not only have more reason to despise Islamic fundamentalism than any men do; they also strike its idiotic beliefs squarely where it hurts; the delusion of a jihadist Valhalla. One has even suicide-bombed ISIS, proving that contrary to widespread terrorist beliefs, their enemies do, in fact, prove capable of sinking to the same levels they have when backed into a corner. Meanwhile, another woman who gave her life fighting ISIS has been named Iraq's first female sheikh, and a female Emirati pilot has joined the air war. In the US, she may be most known for an infamous misogynistic (and flat-out stupid and contrived) pun mocking her on Fox News, but it may well have been a blessing in disguise, as now the west can honor her, too.
While these women are still second-class citizens in their countries, and voting rights may not be a perk they routinely offer, even to their men, they'd be wise to take note of these examples and promote them as heroines in combating a threat that plagues them all, offering a massive political breakthrough in women's rights if they want their support--because Islamic fundamentalism almost certainly will not. Possessing an inherently chauvinist philosophy, Islamists can market themselves as the "freedom fighters" to men by combining a promise of revenge against their declared enemies and material welfare with the "freedom" of predatory sexual indulgence. The women, who there as anywhere else, make up a large part of the population, are far less likely to see that as freedom. As such, moving towards building a nation they are happy to fight for ought to be a priority in any Middle Eastern state that seeks a permanent bulwark against the default, fundamentalism-driven organizations that usually seize upon popular discontent.
If they do not, however, we should. When we get our troops back into Iraq, as we really have already done, we ought to focus on teaching the women there martial arts and gunnery. We should be establishing women's liberation groups that the government must tolerate or lose our support; instead rerouting all of it to Kurdistan again; they being on board with women's liberation and many other western ideals. We should spread that message to the UAE, which is receptive to western culture in many cases, and now has a model heroine to hail in a move towards more egalitarian policies. From those two countries, pressure to reform could spill over to Saudi Arabia. Such pressure spilling to Iran may be less likely. But even if we can't force a change in Iran, I'm convinced we can get involved in the region in a way that limits what influence Iran can exert on its surroundings, and that is, once again, the key reason I am calling for an escalated US presence. We have a hand of aces that should not only be able to win us this war quickly, but prevent future ones from breaking out. Now it's time to see if our government has the courage to play it.
To say war-weariness is common in the US is an understatement. Many Americans, not to mention people elsewhere, are questioning whether our invasion, and the Iraqi regime change it sponsored, have actually improved things. It has long been a liberal position that it didn't; that the US destabilized the state and made it a haven for terrorism; terrorism that would continue catching the Iraqis in the crossfire so long as the hated US troops were there for them to shoot. Yet now the conservatives are rebutting this with the apparent evidence that since our troops left, perhaps the most vile terrorist organization since the Khmer Rouge has taken power in large portions of Iraq and Syria, and brutally proven that there are far more people in Iraq that other Iraqis want to kill than just Americans; many of them far less able to leave. Which side of politics in America is correct? The only thing that seems certain at the moment, is that Iraq is a mess.
Yet I argue there is hope, or at least, change of a sort is coming. ISIS has expanded rapidly, but in the process, has enraged every recognized government around, and it can't keep this up for long without foreign reprisal escalating. Its attempts to halt its enemies by beheading their civilians has only strengthened the resolve of sensible nations to crush them, it has pushed traditional enemies like Iran and the US, and Turkey and Kurdistan, into a strange alliance, it has brought out positive trends traditionally acknowledged in the region, and thanks to publicizing its brutality, people in its targeted towns who might have hedged their bets at the start of this campaign are now fleeing instead, quite possibly into the arms of the anti-ISIS militias playing a key role in this civil war. Despite its infamous financial backing, ISIS is no Viet-Cong; they lack both ideological allies and benefactors that can't be attacked for fear of massive retaliation, and the propaganda savvy to convince liberal westerners of their righteousness. Hence, there is a light at the end of this tunnel that the US can affect by upping their involvement in this war, but lest I sound too much like a trigger-happy Neo-con, I must qualify this by saying that if we are to have a lasting positive effect this time around, we have to acknowledge two harsh truths.
1) The first of these is that Iraq, as we know it, is finished.
It is, as I said, a popular rallying cry among western liberals that it was foreign intervention that destabilized Iraq and made it a haven for terrorism. In a sense, this claim is correct, but it wasn't just our intervention that started that trend. That the fall of Saddam was the start of this holds true only if one defines "stability" as "Making a desert and calling it peace," and "terrorism" as the evil actions of stateless guerrillas instead of any politically motivated attacks on civilians. The original reason Iraq is perpetually prone to one problem or another (or several at once), is because it's not really a nation. Rather, it's several nations brought together--and also divided--as a result of being the stomping grounds of predatory empires up until recently (within the last century). The Ottoman Empire conquered it as part of the esteemed "Silk Road", and then the British took it from them as part of the spoils of World War I; soon making it nominally independent, and then losing much sway over it after being weakened in World War II.
The state's resulting independence along these artificial boundaries has made it, in effect, into an empire itself, encompassing a number of different groups--the three largest being the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds, but in the recent conflict, others, such as Catholics and Yasidis, have come to light--that are not necessarily happy to be part of the arrangement; hence the central regime frequently sees the need to control the opposing segments of the population with an iron fist. The US deposition of Saddam Hussein has proven, as is often said, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Saddam ruled Iraq, with Sunni allies, at the expense of the Shiites and, most horrifically, the Kurds. When the US drove him out, Iraq came to be ruled by the Shiite Nouri Al Maliki (an interesting figure for being supported by both the US and Iran), who implemented his own sectarian policies; taking revenge on the Sunnis as a whole, and being rather liberal towards Kurdistan by Saddam-standards; that is, not very.
This drove many Sunnis into the hands of ISIS, though now the group has ruined its reputation with many of them, too. Likewise, Kurdistan wasn't all that unhappy to see the Iraqi army on the retreat, but with ISIS looking to wreck the most oppression upon them since Saddam, they are now one of the terror group's biggest foes. While I do think Obama deserves some of the bashing he's getting these days for holding stubbornly to his earlier pledge not to put "boots on the ground"; no matter what the situation becomes, I gained some real respect for him out of his soft-power approach to ending Maliki's buffoonery. In a political culture wherein both supporting a tyrant and overthrowing him militarily have become taboo (if not always to the same people), Obama took the Batman Begins route of "I'm not going to kill you...but I don't have to save you" (from ISIS's advance on Baghdad), withholding military aid from Baghdad and supplying it to the Kurds instead, and it worked. Facing both a military defeat and the accompanying accusation that he started the fire, Maliki stepped down in favor of a hopefully more-inclusive successor. However, don't place your faith in Baghdad yet; decades, if not centuries, of damage, do not get repaired overnight.
2) The second harsh truth the US needs to consider going into this, is that while Iraq burns, and ISIS is squashed--as I am quite sure it will be; whoever ends up doing it--it's a vulture's picnic for all parties involved against the caliphate; many of them not exactly conducive to lasting peace or justice in the region. The most frightening, almost certainly, is Iran. In case it needs to be said to anyone up to speed on these things, if ISIS is the Hitler in this war, Iran is the Stalin. Despite sharing a common enemy with us at the moment, they in fact, resemble that enemy far more than they resemble us and the other western allies. Iran is also a theocracy, and possesses one of the most infamous victim-blaming rape-cultures in the world; hardly the ideal enemy to defeat a group dealing in sex slavery. For all we know, Iran and its allies might massacre women they "liberate" from ISIS's comfort-stations for being tainted by adultery against their will. (Iran also is willing to execute women who fight back against this adultery.) To take the communist simile still further, Iranian involvement in Iraq's political affairs, at the expense of other parties, frightened Sunnis into deal with their own devil. Moreover, there is no sign that this heavy-handed involvement will necessarily end. Sunnis fear Iran's puppet Shiite militas, which have already committed their own atrocities. A substantial amount of Sunnis seduced into fighting alongside ISIS, or even happening to be dominated by them, don't dare to surrender for fear of blanket reprisals similar to the ones their whole faith got out of its association with Saddam Hussein; if not worse this time.
Also upping their involvement in this war are the Saudis and the Emirates. The involvement of these Sunni states poses an opposite, but not necessarily less dangerous risk; their forces may be too liberal towards fellow Sunnis whose territories they overtake; to the extreme that many ISIS fighters might fold back into normal life without reprisals, until they're ready to inflict a new round of terror; if not upon the US, which would almost certainly bring their military back into the region, at least against Shiites. Also, though the Saudi monarchy is generally on good terms with the US, hotbeds of Sunni extremism brew within their borders, and although draconian, the Saudi government cannot necessarily be counted upon to crack down on these pockets while they're trying to err on the side of Sharia law themselves. Saudi Arabia also does not like Iran; having recently fought a proxy war with the Shiite power in Syria and seeding predecessors of ISIS. As such, a Saudi-backed Sunni regime in Iraq poses a risk of lumping all Shiites with Iranian domination, and once again replacing one bigoted Baghdad authority with another.
Conclusion: It is because of these factors that I argue the US must escalate its involvement in this war, which, in fact, it is already doing in a hush-hush way. Gunships have now joined high-altitude bombers in US airstrikes, and the portent question this development poses is what the plan is should one or more of these get shot down and the pilots survive. On one level, probably nothing. The US is not swayed by terrorists who murder American prisoners for political effect, which, as cold as it sounds, I think is the right policy. We must remember that the amount of Americans and Britons who have died at the hands of ISIS pails in comparison to the genocide the caliphate has wrecked upon the locals, and as such, not connote them with any huge damage to our ability to fight this war. However, any pilot who parachutes to the ground; potentially in the enemy's sights, is already in violation of the "No boots on the ground" policy, and once that egg hits Obama's face, if not before, it will be time to face the facts that we are in another Iraq war, and that if we don't want to be swamped in it for an indefinite amount of time again, or lured back in to clean another mess we didn't quite clean up, we had better not repeat past mistakes. So how can we ensure this involvement doesn't open up a new Pandora's Box? I offer my suggestions below.
1) Kurdish independence is almost non-negotiable at this point.
Up until recently, I might've said they could settle for Hong Kong-style SAR status, but recent events in China have given lie to that notion. Kurdistan has cooperated with, and in fact, lauded us, in every Iraq war we've been in, and though the pesky issue of Baghdad and possibly Ankara whining at the prospect still looms, they are unproven at maintaining a just, progressive peace within their territories thus far, something that the Kurds, in fact, have managed to do from the fall of Saddam up until the current war. Indeed, in Kurdistan, we have a rare "Goldilocks zone" that ticks almost all favorable boxes in foreign policy; a society that both favors and emulates America, a government that welcomes US troop deployment, and large potential oil reserves. While almost all states in the Middle East condemn the US for supporting Israel, Kurdistan declares it wants to join Israel as a US agent in the Middle East. Naturally, recent events have soured American opinions of Israeli politics, but in fact, Baghdad politically resembles Jerusalem far more than does Erbil. A big part of the problematic politics in Israel is that, while its capital is held as sacred by all three monotheistic faiths, the Jewish interest runs it unilaterally, especially at the perceived expense of Muslims; Israel is a cosmopolitan state that intends to be a Jewish state. If "Muslims" is swapped out for one denomination of Islam or the other, the comparison with Baghdad is obvious. Being a "national", rather than regional capital, Baghdad will always pose the danger of placing one segment of Iraq in authority over the other, and this is going to keep being a problem every time the current oppressed group decides it wants a turn at being the oppressor. Supporting Erbil's ambitions instead allows a safe investment in a government more representative of all it claims. In time, as America develops more and more alternate means of energy, I believe it ought to be a goal to cease buying oil from the Saudis--unless they make reforms we demand of them--to leave Kurdistan as our main supplier, and ensure our oil bills don't end up in anti-American hands.
2) We can work with the Sunnis--maybe better than anyone else.
America has something of a reputation as the "Goliath" in this region due to its military superiority, especially embodied by its Airforce, which places it at a seeming remove from the people below. However, if (or when) America deploys its ground troops in the offensive position, it can extend a pledge to the Sunni areas it intends to take back itself. We must be adamant that the political segment of ISIS is our foe, and it might be most advantageous of the Sunnis to turn on it. (Some have already.) If not, we, or some other invading army, will have to take the caliphate out ourselves, but because of the second harsh truth stated above, we might actually offer the best hope Sunni Muslims have to fair treatment upon liberation. While Iraq's Muslims of either denomination may not be on board with the American idea of separating church and state, the implication that the US has no preference for Sunni or Shiite Muslims could form the backbone of a useful policy. Much as the US pledged to Japan at the end of World War II, (in effect, let us in, and we'll keep the Reds out), in areas it wrests from ISIS, we could opt to treat the Sunni citizens humanely, and this policy, when juxtaposed against the more "eye for an eye" approach of the Shiite-dominated factions, could be vital in improving America's standing in the region; securing us a foothold with less fighting and less threat of attacks on our troops and civilians later.
Naturally, this is only a tentative military step, and once a peace is achieved, some manner of enforcement needs to be implemented to ensure neither ISIS nor the Shiite bigots are just playing possum to spring out again later. To this end, the US could essentially offer post-ISIS Iraq a "political auction". The Shiites and Sunnis bid by trying to outdo each other in forming inclusive, benevolent political policies, and the US offers more aid (possibly not military, but otherwise) to whichever segment of the population performs better in that regard. Such a policy may require that Iraq be partitioned into official Sunni and Shiite territories to make the results of this competition evident, but as Iraq is in fact, already partitioned that way unofficially, it's not a huge stretch. In time, this incentivized peace competition could prove much more appealing to both sides than returning to civil war. Speaking of civil wars, there is one other factor that can and should play a key-role in stamping out militant Islamism--Sunni or Shiite--permanently, and it's a force that very few of us expected in this region.
3) Our secret weapon: Women.
While politics can be a dirty game, as noted in the point entailing Kurdistan, every once in a while, self-interest and ethics do line up. During the beginning of the US Civil War, although enough Americans opposed slavery to elect the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, as their president, abolitionism, let-alone extending full rights to African Americans, was not supported highly enough to pass into national law at the time. But after a long, brutal campaign, in the twilight of the war, Lincoln came to realize that, in African Americans, especially those in conquered Confederate territory, he was staring at a potential goldmine of anti-Confederate troops more willing than any white men to aid in the fight. For this reason, he was able to pass the Emancipation Proclamation, hastening the end of the war.
Great evil can seed great heroism, and while ISIS may have given Middle Eastern women the worst slight they've ever gotten, in a long history of bad slights, the conflict they've created has also brought feminism out of the Middle Eastern woodwork. The Kurdish Peshmerga employs female soldiers, who not only have more reason to despise Islamic fundamentalism than any men do; they also strike its idiotic beliefs squarely where it hurts; the delusion of a jihadist Valhalla. One has even suicide-bombed ISIS, proving that contrary to widespread terrorist beliefs, their enemies do, in fact, prove capable of sinking to the same levels they have when backed into a corner. Meanwhile, another woman who gave her life fighting ISIS has been named Iraq's first female sheikh, and a female Emirati pilot has joined the air war. In the US, she may be most known for an infamous misogynistic (and flat-out stupid and contrived) pun mocking her on Fox News, but it may well have been a blessing in disguise, as now the west can honor her, too.
While these women are still second-class citizens in their countries, and voting rights may not be a perk they routinely offer, even to their men, they'd be wise to take note of these examples and promote them as heroines in combating a threat that plagues them all, offering a massive political breakthrough in women's rights if they want their support--because Islamic fundamentalism almost certainly will not. Possessing an inherently chauvinist philosophy, Islamists can market themselves as the "freedom fighters" to men by combining a promise of revenge against their declared enemies and material welfare with the "freedom" of predatory sexual indulgence. The women, who there as anywhere else, make up a large part of the population, are far less likely to see that as freedom. As such, moving towards building a nation they are happy to fight for ought to be a priority in any Middle Eastern state that seeks a permanent bulwark against the default, fundamentalism-driven organizations that usually seize upon popular discontent.
If they do not, however, we should. When we get our troops back into Iraq, as we really have already done, we ought to focus on teaching the women there martial arts and gunnery. We should be establishing women's liberation groups that the government must tolerate or lose our support; instead rerouting all of it to Kurdistan again; they being on board with women's liberation and many other western ideals. We should spread that message to the UAE, which is receptive to western culture in many cases, and now has a model heroine to hail in a move towards more egalitarian policies. From those two countries, pressure to reform could spill over to Saudi Arabia. Such pressure spilling to Iran may be less likely. But even if we can't force a change in Iran, I'm convinced we can get involved in the region in a way that limits what influence Iran can exert on its surroundings, and that is, once again, the key reason I am calling for an escalated US presence. We have a hand of aces that should not only be able to win us this war quickly, but prevent future ones from breaking out. Now it's time to see if our government has the courage to play it.
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