“ISIS is coming! Send troops. ISIS is coming! Send Troops”

President Obama’s ratcheting up of the number of military advisers into Iraq is a raise of the ante in a poker game that is clearly lost.  Lost to muddled thinking regarding the misuse of the terms tactic and strategy.   It appears that we are pursuing the tactic to support a unified Iraq toward a strategy difficult to fathom other than one to hold together a status quo of despot regimes.   Also the administration misperceives what the enemy is by its continued use of the name ISIS or ISIL for the Sunni rebellion that morphed into the more politically acceptable Daesh. This development ends the need for the United States to militarily engage in the region, not increase it.               

ISIS is clearly remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party with the know how to organize economic, military and propaganda resources.  The gruesome beheadings of western reporters was a recruitment call to bloodthirsty jihadist from afar and the local more numerous atrocities with cadavers left in public places spread terror for conquest and domination.  In the vacuum of politically dysfunctional Syria and Iraq the terrorist tactics of ISIS were useful in conquering great swaths of territories  containing money making oil wells and refineries to fund their operations. With the easy conquests came the braggadocio of an Islamic Caliphate to unite extremist Sunnis for more funding and recruitment. It’s all quite logical if they are thought of in terms of a rebel group rather than the chaos fomenting terrorist group that is Al Qaeda.

ISIS’s recent conversion to Daesh, a political union of Sunnis, comes from its defeats in Kobani and Tikrit.  The Kurds’ pesh merga militia showed ISIS the limits of the caliphate.  It could not dominate a region populated by those loyal to another powerful political and ethnic sect such as Iraq’s Kurdistan.  Also the unintended consequence of U.S. airstrikes  forced the ISIS apparatchik to live with the people and develop political acumen. The metamorphosis of ISIS into Daesh makes it a political entity capable of filling the Sunni voids in Syria and Iraq.

Daesh’s current policy is to consolidate, hold and govern Sunnis.  The Shia regions of Iraq are more or less safe from Daesh because of the lesson learned in Kobani  where the vision of a caliphate dominating a rebellious Shia population has been tempered by experience.  This analysis suggests the split in Iraq among its Sunni, Shia and Kurdish regions has  happened and that President Obama and his administration are in denial that it is so.  Upping the ante to help Iraq’s Prime Minister al-Abadi’s losing political battle to form a united Iraq is pointless now that Daesh is entering into an era of political normalcy.  Reinforcing Baghdad’s hand in such as scenario is akin to taking sides in a civil war which has already been decided.  Its a meddlesome intervention that can not be called  a tactic nor a strategy, rather a mindless charge of the bull toward the waving red cape.

The United State’s goal in the Middle East should be nothing more than to pacify. A primary tactic would be to relieve the pressures of sectarian conflict. The Middle east is a series of artificially drawn boundaries by the European powers after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.  Let these tribes reconfigure into self determined regions.  This  understanding would make the uselessness of negotiating a peace accord with Assad in Syria obvious. Never the less you see headlines occasionally suggesting it.  Our support for despot regimes is contrary to our ideals and heritage of our founders and the Declaration of Independence.  Bemoaning the fact that Qaddafi isn’t around anymore to hold Libya together or to give support to General Sisi's military coup d'etat in Egypt is giving in to a gut reaction to  screw down tight the pressure cooker bombs.  These contrary actions to our ideals make us the Great Satan Iran accuses us of being and gives propaganda ammunition to our enemies. Instead of mindlessly clucking like Chicken Little “ISIS is coming! Send troops. ISIS is coming! Send Troops” lets think more like a doctor whose first prescript is: do no harm. Let’s not exacerbate and ignore long festering realities.