Letter 2 America for September 12, 2014

Dear America,

I am somewhat surprised by the reaction to President Obama's speech about dealing with the ISIL threat, and for once it isn't a function of the conservative Republican response.  The norm for Republicans is to contrive some sort of criticism of The President's policies and positions for nakedly political reasons, but this time, there seems to be a recognition of two things tempering their instinct to obstruct.  First, the consensus among the American people seems to be that ISIL is not just a threat to the people on the other side of the world, but rather is transportable, at least in small packages, from Iraq and Syria to the United States and elsewhere in the "free world."  Second, the Republicans, in the persons of John McCain and Lyndsey Graham, demanded a policy, which they professed to prefer would look like just what President Obama limned on Wednesday evening.  For once, President Obama and the Republican Party see the truth the same way.  But none-the-less, there is a swell of criticism coming out of the news media that is perplexing to someone like me, who believed all along that the press were at least neutral on the issue of what kind of president Mr. Obama has been.  The increasingly grizzled and seemingly breathless Wolf Blitzer of CNN, who made his bones during the first Gulf War along with General Norman Schwarzkopf, has spent the last twenty years living on laurels earned back then, and now is in the habit of taking anti-authority positions just for the sake of doing so, it seems.  Still, with what I thought was at least a lack of bias in the media toward The President, I didn't expect to hear the same kind of reportage from him and from the shellacked coiffure pretty faces on Fox News.  After they joined the chorus of conservative and Republican critics over President Obama's admission that no strategy had yet been formed relative to ISIL in Syria at least, they now are implicitly auguring another middle east war, full blown from its inception in the air over what purports to be the new Islamic caliphate, proclaimed by The President on national television just two days ago.  As with all issues in the news, a phrase comes to designate the central concern, and in this case, it is "boots on the ground."  And while even John Boehner, whose acquaintance with the truth is only passing at best, invoked the phrase by saying that someone's boots would be, but that they wouldn't be ours.  But the media continues to ignore the parameters of the administration's plan for ISIL and instead direly warns us all that this is how American forces become inextricably involved abroad, implying that it is inevitable in this case, even though President Obama and his policy are specifically designed to avoid just that.  I'm not sure what is happening, but let me add my voice to the chorus.

The plan in Iraq and Syria is to bomb ISIL wherever it is found and whenever it is tactically advantageous to our allies on the ground.  We will have planes and other machines in the air, but no men with guns in their hands below.  There will be "boots on the ground," but they will be the boots of soldiers from various countries that have a direct stake in the outcome of the battle against the bestial and heinously inclined ISIL forces.  Thus, we are offering support to our allies in this cause, but support of only a limited nature.  We will not be getting our hands dirty now or later in this case, and what this imputes is not that we are on the edge of another military adventure that will turn into an abyss.  What it suggests is that we will do what we can to abet those with minds like to ours in routing a foe that is abhorrent to both them and us.  But that by the same token, if the effort fails, it won't be for lack of our effort to that extent, but rather as a consequence of the lack of the level of commitment--or perhaps even capacity--of those whose first hand business all this is to prevail.  The Obama policy in this case isn't that the United States will carry the banner for the rest of the world.  It is that we will aid our friends from arms length, and let the chips fall where they may.  There will be no second decade in Iraq, nor will there be a first decade in Syria.  If our efforts and those of the countries in the region fail, it will be a bad thing for all of us, but nothing immediate for us, and therefore, we are leaving countries from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Turkey to cast their own fates.  And while it is true that at least none of those three has taken an active role thus far, if ISIL begins crossing the border from Iraq into Turkey, they will take one, we can all be sure, but in the interim, we have no duty to them other than to suggest to them that they carefully consider what they are not asking for, fore they well may not get it when they need it, which might be when it is too late.

For my part, I think The President has done a masterful job of dropping the task at the doors of those to whom it rightfully belongs.  At the same time, he has essentially said that they can open those doors and take on their responsibilities to their own people at their own discretion, but that we will not be their surrogates while they shrug with indifference, or worse, condemn our efforts with faint praise.  This war will be a war of attrition waged for a long time, but it is not now, and never will be, our war, regardless of what Wolf Blitzer and The Kelly Report on Fox impute to it.  We are not returning to Iraq, nor will we be in Afghanistan this time next year.  Our wars are behind us.  What is ahead is the war of the Arab peoples to determine whether their destiny is in the twenty first or the seventh century, and they alone will reap the fruits of their labors...or the lack thereof.  That's what President Obama said, Wolf.  You weren't listening, were you?

Your friend,

Mike