It's not a silly question at all
Inder Malhotra
ON the face of it the question I have raised does look silly. After all President Barack Obama, whose supporters call him a “gloomy realist”, has learnt the lessons of not only the Vietnam war but also of those in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s longest war. In this it is ending its combat role while retaining a relatively small number of American troops there to train and advise the Afghan National Army. More remarkably, while announcing his plan to “degrade and finally destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria”, Obama made it clear that this objective would be achieved by intensive air strikes on the ISIS (besides sending some special forces to Iraq) and there would be “no boots on the ground”.
Before proceeding further, let me admit that the headline I have used is taken verbatim from The New York Times of October 7. In the article under it eminent historians have argued that half a century ago President Lyndon Johnson had also authorised “only a strategic bombing campaign” against targets in North Vietnam, but this was swiftly followed by deployment of ground troops. The rest of the story, including LBJ's undoing, is well known. To the argument that Johnson was deeply committed to winning the war in Vietnam and had indeed made it a “personal war”, historians reply that this widely held belief is factually wrong. They have cited evidence to show that privately Johnson often told his confidants and aides that there “was no point fighting when there was no daylight in sight”. Another quote attributed to him is: “What can Vietnam mean to me?” Yet he had to go on escalating the war in Vietnam under "pressure" from his hard-line adviser who felt that the withdrawal from or defeat in Vietnam would have a “domino effect”. Some are suggesting that Obama may soon be in the same plight that LBJ was in then.
This assessment must not be swept away with a flippant wave of the hand. For only one month after its start, the failure of Obama's current strategy is becoming evident and he obviously cannot call it a day. One of the several points on which there is unanimity among military leaders, diplomats and analysts is that air strikes alone cannot defeat the IS. At best these might have delayed the Islamists' advance but the air strikes haven't prevented their conquests. Their grip on strategically vital Kurdish town of Kobane on Syria’s northern border with Turkey is undeniable. In a few places the air strikes have helped the Kurds regain some territory from the IS but the Islamists control large areas in Syria and Iraq. Security in the Sunni-dominated Iraqi province of Anbar is deteriorating fast. Even more stark is the success of IS fighters in overrunning several Iraqi army bases, and seizing Abu Ghraib, which is within shelling distance of Baghdad's international airport. Alarmed over this, the Americans, for the first time, sent Apache helicopters to strike at the IS targets on the road that runs west of Baghdad to the IS stronghold of Falluja. The Economist's comment on this is eloquent and revealing: “Calling up the Apaches — no boots on the ground, perhaps, but certainly boots in the air — is an admission that the high-flying jets have their limitation”. A further problem confronting Obama is that some of its “willing allies” bomb only Iraq whose government has invited them to do so, but are staying away from Syria. A cruel irony is that the American air strikes on Syria have driven the “moderate fighters against President Assad of Syria”, whom the Americans were hoping to train and arm, to the side of the jihadists!
Moreover, despite the change of government in Iraq at American behest, Baghdad is still unable to win over suspicious Sunnis. Despite America’s strong advice to the new government to be more inclusive, Shia militias of Iraq are still killing Sunnis. The US knows that the country best able to persuade the Shia-led government in Baghdad to win the confidence of the Sunni minority that ruled in the era of Saddam Hussein is Iran. But then Iran is the closest ally of Assad-led Syria. No wonder Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunnis and a bitter rival of Shia Iran, saying openly and loudly that the war in the Middle East will last long and also become a source of terrorism in both the West and the East. In this context one has to bemoan the tragic fact that, in the words of an eminent Kurd leader on the CNN, “the Iraqi army no longer exists; it has evaporated”.
Turkey, the biggest military power in the region and a staunch ally of the US, has become the most difficult problem for the Americans and the biggest contradiction in the Middle East situation. Nothing illustrates this more vividly than the horrendous plight of Kobane, the Kurd town on the Syrian border. Turkey has lined up its tanks and troops on its side of the frontier. But these are not being used to fight the IS. Instead the Turkish army is engaged only in firing tear gas to beat back the Turkish Kurds wanting to help their Syrian brethren who are being slaughtered by the IS. This is happening in spite of the fact that on October 2, the Turkish Parliament had authorised the Turkish forces to operate in Syria. But the country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is playing a different and puzzling game. He already has nearly two million Syrian refugees on his soil. His greater worry is that if the Syrian Kurds prevail, his own Kurds that have been revolting for decades would also join them to form an independent Kurdistan. He is making it clear that the Turkish support to the US-led coalition will remain rhetorical until America enforces a buffer and a no-fly zone on the Syrian side. That is not going to be easy.
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