In my opinion, the Obama Administration made three significant mistakes in dealing with ISIS, Iraq, and Syria. They were:
- Identifying the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian military as a “red line;”
- Changing course and asking for congressional approval of air strikes; and
- Underestimating the strength of ISIS and the rottenness of the Iraqi Army in the early stages of the war.
The question for today is whether, in the long run, these mistakes made any real difference in the circumstances on the ground. Here are my reactions:
- The “red line” created an open-ended obligation to take military action in Syria. The President, for very good reasons, was extremely reluctant to do that, because he foresaw that a few air strikes would not make much of a difference, and the GOP hawks would have subsequently insisted on sending troops to remove Assad and occupy the country (i.e., Iraq II) There is no plausible reason to believe that limited air strikes would have caused the fall of the regime, particularly in light of its backing from Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. The practical result of this mistake, therefore, was a temporary loss of credibility and prestige, but nothing else.
- Same as #1 above.
- If we had understood the magnitude of the threat correctly, we would have gone to Maliki and demanded that he clean up his act, and he would have refused. There is no reason to believe that renewed American involvement in the Iraqi military would have been welcomed until the disaster had already occurred. That involvement would not have been possible without the cooperation of the Iraqi government.
In short, Syria and Iraq would still be a mess, and just about the same mess, if the mistakes had not been made.