The Case Against Bombing ISIS
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- Published on Monday, 04 April 2016 03:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1242 .... April 4, 2016
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The Case Against Bombing ISIS
Greg Shupak
When ISIS claimed responsibility for the horrendous attacks in Brussels last week, U.S. President Barack Obama was unequivocal: the U.S. and its allies, he said, "can and will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." More bombing, it hardly needed to be said, was on the way. For their part, the presidential candidates only disagree on the scale of military action needed to stamp out ISIS -- not on the appropriateness of yet more American warfare. The call for a muscular response, however, overlooks the casualties the U.S. has already inflicted.
To date, U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in the war on ISIS have likely killed at least 1,044 civilians in Iraq... and Syria. Even the brutal calculus of "collateral damage" cannot rationalize such deaths. They're simply the latest victims in the latest phase of a decades-long, U.S.-led campaign that has visited death and destruction on countries across the globe -- particularly in the Middle East.
The current anti-ISIS strategy -- which treats the group as a discrete problem with a ready military solution -- is myopic. ISIS is the product of long-term, structural factors. To "degrade and ultimately destroy" the group, it's necessary to address the root causes of its growth. An American war promises, at best, a combat trophy -- and the spawning of new jihadist groups. Even if military intervention dispersed ISIS, the social forces undergirding it would persist, perhaps emerging even stronger than before. If ISIS disappeared, another organization would likely swoop in to fill the void (whether it was Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, or some analogous upstart group), ready to carry out ethnic cleansing and the occasional terrorist attack in the West.
Or perhaps ISIS would simply move its base to countries like Libya or Yemen that, thanks in part to U.S. actions, it's established a foothold -- inflicting even more devastation on the local population. In either scenario, though, we could expect the same U.S. response: begin the drumbeats for war, kick off another round of death and destruction. It was one of those bloody rounds that birthed ISIS.