“Why can’t we go after them harder?”
by digby
I’m seeing a lot of this sort of thing around the interwebs today:
We can. Obama won’t. @David_Gergen: “How much longer will the world permit the brutality of ISIS? Why can’t we go after them harder?”
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 4, 2015
I get it. You see monsters doing something horrible like videotaping an execution by immolation and it’s sickening, infuriating. Of course, that’s the point. They are manipulating you. (And, by the way, so are the ratings hungry media who pimp this stuff for hours on end…)
But how exactly do we “go after them harder”? Invade? Nuclear war? What’s the plan?
Here’s what’s happening right now:
Today, the New York Times reported that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) suspended airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in December, “citing fears for its pilots’ safety after a Jordanian pilot was captured.” The article states that the UAE will not participate until U.S. V-22 Osprey aircraft are based in northern Iraq, rather than Kuwait where they reportedly are now, so they can respond faster to execute a combat search-and-rescue operation to recover a downed pilot. The reason those V-22s are not in northern Iraq is that the airbases located there cannot be adequately secured from the potential threats from ISIS rocket, mortar, and small-arms attacks. Raising the overall level of the security of an airbase, including the approach and departure corridors, in order to station such a valuable air asset would require an estimated three to four hundred American troops.
To be completely clear, the UAE is demanding that the United States place its troops at greater risk of being killed—in order to reduce the risks to its own pilots—before it will recommence airstrikes against ISIS. The UAE has two fleets of its own AW109K2 and AW139 combat search-and-rescue helicopters that it could station in Irbil, most likely, with Iraq’s permission. These are less capable than V-22s, but they could be used by the UAE if it wanted to immediately assure the safety of its pilots. Understandably, it would rather pass the risk on to U.S. troops and V-22 pilots.
Sound good? Somehow, I don’t think that’s something on which the American people are too keen.
Read the whole article which explains why these coalitions are always difficult to maintain and how all the incentives are in favor of the countries in the middle east laying off as much as possible on the US and other members of the West. It’s a very difficult problem but unless you are Bill Kristol and openly wish for the US to colonialize the entire middle east (except Israel) it’s a problem with which you have to deal.
I don’t have the answer to this dilemma and I haven’t heard anyone else make much sense about it yet. We are doing too little, and yet it’s also too much. It’s horrible and yet the tools we have are inadequate to fix the problem and trying to use them are liable to to make things worse. So getting really, really mad and “going after them harder” whatever that means, isn’t likely to solve this one. Wringing your hands on twitter certainly won’t.
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