Well, how about that! The solution for peace in the Middle East has been hidden in a doo-wop song all this time. And we didn’t even need to play it backward to hear it. At least that’s what last week’s hoopla over State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf’s comments would suggest. ISIS members just need to “get a job.” Judging by the way Democratic pundits scrambled to defend her remark, we can assume they believe it. Four years ago, this would have been great news.
I would agree with her - if her comments were made prior to President Obama’s precipitous withdraw of troops from Iraq. Ms. Harf said we need to build stability in the Middle East in order to get to the root of the problem. Yet, like most of this administration’s foreign policy, her words are too little, too late. You can’t address the root of the problem after you’ve poisoned the soil.
In order to create a long term solution to escalating violence, Ms. Harf suggested we focus on economic development in the war torn Middle East. However, what she called “economic development,” foreign policy experts have long been calling “nation building.” And “nation building” in Iraq is precisely what the Democrats shut down in 2011.
When Mr. Obama withdrew our troops from Iraq, we were in the democracy building phase of the Iraq war; rebuilding their communities and helping them “get jobs.” Folks like Ms. Harf whined that it wasn’t our role to build stability over there. We left. Iraqi’s felt abandoned. Al Qaeda swooped in and quickly grew to become the force it is now, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
A key point to the War on Terrorism (to include Iraq) is that we aren’t fighting against nation-states as much as we are rogue terrorists who are trying to blend in with the population in order to escape grasp. They aren’t wearing uniforms. They aren’t using tanks to fight us. They are like weeds popping up in any terrain where they can easily flourish. That would be any country that is not able to “pull them out” so to speak.
Terrorist organizations want to cultivate fertile ground where their twisted idealism can sprout up. Whether it’s in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan; it’s all fine with them as long as they are able to use that country as a platform to leverage their attacks. This poses a huge challenge for the United States when fighting this unconventional war. We can’t just bomb every country were terrorists hide out. France, England, even the United States would be on that list.
When then-President Bush declared that America will not differentiate between terrorists and those who harbor them, it narrowed down the list. France and England aren’t harboring their terrorists. Yet, even though Mr. Bush was absolutely correct in making this declaration, it presented another challenge. It opened up every country that supported terrorism (financially, housing, guns) to be attacked by the U.S. We can’t attack them all. We have to rely on shared intelligence to determine where the terrorist hot spots are. Then, we need to turn the countries that border these hot spots into our allies.
And this is where Iraq comes in.
For those who claim we shouldn’t have gone there in the first place, keep in mind we were at war with Iran on Iraqi soil. Iran spews terrorists like they spew oil. According to intelligence reports gathered by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), “Iran has been increasingly active in attacking Americans. Iran provided weapons, training, funding, and guidance to Iraqi Shia militants as well as Iraqi troops and civilians targeting U.S. forces.”
Iran is the epitome of fertile ground for the most vile of vile terrorists. This is what the Iraq war was all about. Forget weapons of mass destruction.
Thousands of men and women eagerly and voluntarily enlisted to fight in Iraq because they wanted to make sure American soil was never again defiled by these wicked creatures.
We were making progress. Iraq was gaining stability. And then, yank.
As for nation building, it is in our country’s (and the world’s) best interest to make sure Iraq succeeds. We cannot allow it to be controlled by terrorist organizations. Iraq provides a buffer between Israel and Iran. It also geographically separates Syria from Iran. Can you imagine the leverage a failed Iraq state would give groups like ISIS in moving goods and committing terrorist acts?
A failed Iraq puts the U.S. economy at the whim of these savage organizations.
A failed Iraq gives terrorists control of a large portion of the Middle East. Like it or not, until we are energy independent, the United States depends on the Middle East for oil. What do you think our enemies would do with this sort of control over us? They’ll deliver a devastating blow to our entire way of life. We will long for the days of $5 per gallon gas prices. Groceries will skyrocket. It will cost most people more to get to work than they will earn at work. Inflation will explode before incomes have a chance to catch up.
Sure, going green would prevent some of this. I’m all for finding reasonable energy alternatives. But replacing oil with any practical alternative is still decades away. ISIS burst on the scene in just 12 months. Where will its members be in another 12?
We don’t want the U.S. to be at the mercy of these guys. Ms. Harf was right. The question is, will she and her colleagues acknowledge that Mr. Obama remains the obstacle to their solution.
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