Obama's New AUMF Lacks Much Needed Oomph

Yesterday, in a letter to the United States Congress, President Obama formally requested an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the fight against the Islamic State. Obama has been operating under and defending the current strategy against ISIS as within the scope of the two AUMFs passed under President Bush: the 2001 AUMF, which authorized combat operations in Afghanistan, and the 2002 AUMF, which authorized the Iraq War from 2003-2011. The President has sufficient authority as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to conduct the current operations against ISIS, but opposition has grown louder in the face of the terrorists’ expansion into Syria.

The AUMF proposed by the Obama Administration limits authorization to three years, thus avoiding embroiling the US in large-scale ground combat operations with no end in sight, which was the case with the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The President’s AUMF does not address the enduring 2001 and 2002 AUMFs and while it restricts the use of ground combat operations, it also excludes existing ground troops (ex. the US military personnel currently in Iraq) from these restrictions. This AUMF would allow the President to deploy new military personnel in the roles of intelligence collection and sharing, advisers, special operations forces, combat search and rescue personnel and Joint Terminal Attack Controllers to assist US air strikes. Lastly, this AUMF would sunset the 2002 AUMF, but not the 2001 AUMF, as the latter serves as legal justification for the broader war on terror.

Two aspects of this proposal are striking: it commits President Obama’s successor to operating under its terms for at least the first year of office; and it also does not significantly expand existing efforts against ISIS in any way. The proposed AUMF seems to lend political cover to ongoing operations against ISIS, which are comprised primarily of targeted airstrikes and operations against ISIS under Operation Inherent Resolve. This strategy has also placed upwards of 1,400 US military personnel in Iraq and costs on average $8.4 million per day.

The current strategy, according to President Obama’s announcement last September is to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State. The new AUMF proposes a continuation of this strategy, even through our current efforts seem to be yielding very little in the way of military gains against this fluid enemy. The existing military operations against ISIS will not accomplish the intended goal of annihilating the terrorist group as it has proven much more dynamic, adaptable, and better funded and staffed than previous threats.

Containing, let alone defeating, ISIS will require a robust and much more comprehensive military effort, which is possible under the terms of the current AUMF, but which may not necessarily be palatable to the American public. The new AUMF promises to prevent another open-ended military commitment to the region, but perhaps also promises to prevent significant victories against this terrorist outfit.

House of Kurds: ISIS-Kurdish Fighting Threatens Turkey’s Stability

Intense fighting between ISIS and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters over the past month for control of the strategic city of Kobani on the Turkish-Syrian border threatens not only domestic stability within Turkey, but also the peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 

ISIS, Kohrasan, and America's Begrudging March Towards War

It's been a long week.

I wrote two weeks ago about President Obama's new foray into intervention in Iraq, using airstrikes to weaken ISIS strongholds throughout the country. Vicky followed up with an excellent piece arguing that intervention was nothing new for Obama, and perhaps she's right. However, these airstrikes were arguably a bold move for a President more accustomed to surreptitious drone strikes and more covert action as opposed to this new, more broadened campaign. Surely Obama is beginning to step out of his comfort zone.

The past two weeks have seen ISIS continue to use their disturbingly impressive PR prowess to dominate headlines both in the U.S. and abroad. Many continued the dialogue of exactly how much of a threat ISIS was, but most everyone agreed that they did pose a significant threat to the Western world. The Congress and Senate gave approval for the U.S. to begin deploying arms and military advisors to Syria in an attempt to equip and train the floundering rebel movement that has been fighting President Asad's troops, among others, for two years now. This was a striking decision - and not because of the complexity of equipping and training rebel militants in the worst warzone in the world. This decision was striking because of what it meant domestically: after an arduous few years of being deadlocked with the Republican-controlled House, President Obama was somehow able to get Congress to pass a bill, and rather quickly. The fear that ISIS has brought to America's doorstep has lead to lawmakers and the American people alike to rally behind Obama, and support him in his efforts to combat these Islamic radicals. As a recent Pew Research poll noted, the majority of Americans now think that President Obama must be "tougher" in his foreign policy - a figure that would have been impossible to believe as he assumed the Presidency in 2008.

Early this week, President Obama took one step further outside of his comfort zone with similar airstrikes targeting ISIS territory in Syria, as well as renewed strikes in Iraq. This came after reports about some new, even scarier terrorist organization hiding out in Syria, that posed an even graver threat to American interests: Khorasan. Somehow able to have remained incognito until now, Khorasan is a group of former al Qaeda members that, like al Qaeda, have specific interest in attacks against America and Western Europe. As many experts have noted, unlike al Qaeda, ISIS is interested primarily in carving out their own territory and establishing a theocracy in which they can subject their people to strict Sharia law. Sure, disruptions to this plan such as American airstrikes will draw ire and could present ugly repercussions for America, but they are no al Qaeda in the sense that they exist solely to promulgate anti-American ideology and harm as many Westerners as possible in frightening, grandiose attacks. President Obama's airstrikes in Syria were a direct response to Khorasan, and it was reported shortly after the strikes began that the U.S. had thwarted an "imminent" plot to harm Americans.

Interestingly, the strikes came as Obama took the stage at the United Nations General Assembly this week, where on Wednesday he talked about the threat terrorist organizations like ISIS and Khorasan pose not just to the West, but to the entire world. He made a point of emphasizing the coalition of Middle Eastern countries he had rapidly assembled to carry out the strikes in Syria, and called on an even broader coalition to support even broader efforts to deter these groups in the future. Notably, when President Obama took the stage at the General Assembly last year this time, it was following his decision not to call for airstrikes in Syria, despite President Asad having crossed Obama's "red line" and using chemical weapons on his people. The changes from Obama's candor then and today is truly striking.

What comes next is anyone's guess. ISIS has shown no signs of slowing down, despite increased airstrikes today and new targets of oil fields they control, which keep them flush with cash. The Iraqi Prime Minister alluded to plotted attacks on American and European subway systems by terrorists in his speech before the General Assembly today, causing an immediate panic despite the fact that his words were difficult to immediately corroborate. And many analysts have expressed skepticism of the broad airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, as this can potentially strengthen Asad's army and terrorist groups such as Khorasan, who along with fighting the rebels, have also opposed ISIS' rise. For now, the strikes will continue, and it appears Obama has substantial support in his efforts.

Let's just hope next week isn't as crazy.

Obama’s Foreign Policy: A Legacy of Interventionism

My colleague Colin Wolfgang recently wrote about Pres. Obama’s speech last Wednesday, in which the president announced that US airstrikes would extend from Iraq into Syria to combat the growing threat of the terrorist group ISIS(/IS/ISIL/who-cares-what-they-call-themselves-they’re-nuts). While many, including Mr. Wolfgang, point to the speech as a turning point in the Obama administration away from isolationism, it in fact continues the Obama White House foreign policy that has been in place since he took office: namely, Pres. Obama’s policy of small- to medium-scale military intervention by another name.

Whether you call it “police action,” “counterterrorism,” “targeted airstrikes,” or any of the other Obama administration euphemisms, this White House has pursued interventionist tactics in almost every global hotspot where it has encountered national security threats. The supposed difference from the George W. Bush administration has been the absence of “boots on the ground,” despite the fact that there will now be nearly 2,000 American “advisors” and who-knows-how-many special operations and CIA agents in Iraq. While large-scale military operations such as the Bush-era wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been wound down, the United States is far from an isolationist nation.

ISIS' Miscalculation

Yesterday marked another tragic step in the story of the Islamic State, which has captivated news outlets as it expands its self-proclaimed caliphate in the Middle East and begins enforcing strict Sharia law on anyone within its control. ISIS released a video, since confirmed by the U.S., of Stephen Sotloff, an American journalist, being beheaded. Like the first video, featuring James Foley, another American journalist, Sotloff criticized American foreign policy in the region and warned of the repercussions from ISIS in the future. Again, like the first video, another living hostage was presented, with another warning towards President Obama that any further American engagement in the region will be met with more beheadings.

Foley and Sotloff are both courageous and will be remembered for their heroic foray into some of the most hellish places on Earth for the sake of reporting. Both videos were condemned by President Obama immediately upon confirmation, and were denounced by the entire Western world. And despite the fact that Obama vowed to continue airstrikes in Iraq against ISIS, they leaked Sotloff's video to the internet again. Why?

Sotloff, Courtesy of Time.

The gruesome nature of execution videos has very rarely achieved any goals, for anyone. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's execution video in 2002 resulted in the majority of those directly involved in the killing being sentenced to death themselves or indefinitely held at Guantanamo Bay. Efforts against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan were substantially ramped up after the video became public, and it is not difficult to say that ultimately, nothing was accomplished by their inhuman execution of an innocent American.

The release of these videos is not an attack on the United States government - at least not in the same sense as a suicide bombing is. Rather, it is intended to bore unpleasant images into the heads of the public, so they cannot escape what is happening abroad. It's intended to frighten civilians.

Foley

These videos are a miscalculated attempt though, in the sense that the American public will view them as a personal attack - something that years of images of wartorn Syrian streets failed to accomplish - and will renew the fervor for action. In fact, it was shortly after the Foley video was released that President Obama publicly stated his contemplation for increased surveillance (and perhaps eventually military) engagement in Syria - something he wouldn't have dreamed of saying several months ago. ISIS has failed in their attempt to rattle the American public, and will only strengthen its solidarity and resolve to seek justice. One can only hope that no more innocent hostages have to die before ISIS understands this, and rethinks their scare tactic agenda.

Rewriting History in the Middle East: The Yazidis [No Longer] in Iraq

State borders in the Middle East have been in flux for millennia, with the strongest ruler of the day vying for control over fertile land, trade routes, and major water sources. Today, the region is populated with many countries whose modern-day borders were arbitrarily delineated by the British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement, whose peoples have been in a constant struggle to reclaim what they believe is rightfully their land. Much of a state’s validity comes from being able to show that they have the oldest claim to the region, so what happens when a people’s physical life, when their physical history is deleted?

What happens when a city is blown to smithereens by explosive charges, as with mosques and churches in Mosul, instead of falling to salvageable ruins? What happens when an entire people is removed from their ancestral homeland, fleeing to a neighboring country, leaving no trace of their existence in the former land? Or, in the grand scheme of political and strategic interests, is the individual human story irrelevant?

Part 2: From Anbar to Aleppo and Back Again

The most recent violence in Iraq did not appear suddenly, as if from nowhere. It’s been brewing since the US troop withdrawal in 2011, and was established during the US occupation, as discussed in Part I of this essay series. The insurgency’s fires have been flamed by the civil war that has been raging in Syria for roughly the same period of time. The conflict’s regional extension is the topic of Part 2 of my essay series on the increasingly likely Iraqi civil war.

Part 2: From Anbar to Aleppo and Back Again

ISIS may have been born in Iraq, but it came of age in Syria. Founded in 2003 as a branch of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) dedicated to combatting the US occupation of Iraq, the Islamic State in Iraq was one of many AQI-led terrorist groups that carried out attacks against both foreign forces and the newly elected Iraqi government of Nouri Al-Maliki during the civil war of 2006-2007. The group has long operated out of Al-Anbar province, while receiving aid and fighters from Syrian provinces across the border, where tribal connections run deeper than national boundaries. Despite a lull in attacks during the US surge, ISI operations began to ramp up as troop withdrawals began in 2009. The civilian death toll in Iraq has only continued to climb and each year reaches new, morbid heights:

And then came Syria. Already the launching ground and regrouping point for ISI attacks in Iraq, the rapid disintegration of government power in Syria provided the perfect vacuum for the group to step in and claim to join those fighting for freedom. At the same time as the final US troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011, Syria was descending into a civil war that would eventually act as a magnet for extremist groups including ISI, all of whom wanted a piece of the post-war spoils. The Islamic State in Iraq quickly transformed into the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (or “and Syria,” or “and the Levant”) to denote its expanded mission, and has now declared its name as simply “Islamic State,” indicating its goal of creating a caliphate that spans the Muslim world. In July 2012, ISI declared the “Breaking of the Walls” campaign, which culminated with over 500 militants freed in a prison break from the infamous Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad in July 2013. It broke off from Al Qaeda in January 2014, when arguments among the leadership over tactics and strategy apparently caused an irreparable rift.