Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Obama Approves Air Surveillance of ISIS in Syria

By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPERAUG. 25, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/world/middleeast/obama-syria-ISIS.html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — President Obama has authorized surveillance flights over Syria, a precursor to potential airstrikes there, but a mounting concern for the White House is how to target the Sunni extremists without helping President Bashar al-Assad.

Defense officials said Monday evening that the Pentagon was sending in manned and unmanned reconnaissance flights over Syria, using a combination of aircraft, including drones and possibly U2 spy planes. Mr. Obama approved the flights over the weekend, a senior administration official said.

The flights are a significant step toward direct American military action in Syria, an intervention that could alter the battlefield in the nation’s three-year civil war.

Administration officials said the United States did not intend to notify the Assad government of the planned flights. Mr. Obama, who has repeatedly called for the ouster of Mr. Assad, is loath to be seen as aiding the Syrian government, even inadvertently.

As a result the Pentagon is drafting military options that would strike the militant Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, near the largely erased border between those two nations, as opposed to more deeply inside Syria. The administration is also moving to bolster American support for the moderate Syrian rebels who view Mr. Assad as their main foe.

On Monday, Syria warned the White House that it needed to coordinate airstrikes against ISIS or it would view them as a breach of its sovereignty and an “act of aggression.” But it signaled its readiness to work with the United States in a coordinated campaign against the militants.

The reconnaissance flights would not be the first time the United States has entered Syrian airspace without seeking permission. In July, American Special Operations forces carried out an unsuccessful rescue attempt for hostages held by ISIS, including the journalist James Foley, whose death was revealed last week in an ISIS video.

Mr. Obama met Monday with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other advisers to discuss options, but the White House said Mr. Obama had not yet decided whether to order military action in Syria. The White House made clear that if the president did act, he had no plans to collaborate with Mr. Assad or even inform him in advance of any operation.

“It is not the case that the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. “Joining forces with Assad would essentially permanently alienate the Sunni population in both Syria and Iraq, who are necessary to dislodging ISIL,” he said, using the group’s alternative name, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

Still, administration officials acknowledge that the sudden threat from ISIS to Americans — several of whom are still held by the militants in Syria — had complicated the calculus for the United States in a conflict Mr. Obama has largely avoided.

“There are a lot of cross pressures here in this situation,” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters. “There’s no doubt about that. But our policy as it relates to pursuing American interests in this region of the world are actually really clear, that we want to make sure that we are safeguarding American personnel.”

Under plans being developed by the administration, a senior official said, the United States could target leaders of the militant group in and around their stronghold, the northern city of Raqqa, as well as in isolated outposts to the east, near the Iraqi border.

While the Syrian government has the capability to partly defend its airspace from American warplanes, American fighter jets can fly close to the border and fire on targets in Syria using long-range precision weapons.

The American military could also jam Syria’s air-defense systems by sending signals that would make it difficult or impossible for radar to pick up American fighter planes entering Syrian airspace. Such a move would give fighters a limited amount of time to hit ISIS targets or camps before leaving Syria. The military could also use B-2 stealth bombers, which are almost invisible to radar, or could fire at stationary targets in Syria using Tomahawk cruise missiles, launched from ships at sea.

On Monday, even as he warned the Obama administration against unilateral strikes in Syria, Walid Muallem, the foreign minister, said, “Syria is ready for cooperation and coordination at the regional and international level to fight terrorism.” Mr. Assad has long tried to rally support by portraying the insurgency against him as a terrorist threat. He has made little headway with the West or his Arab neighbors.

Syria’s strategy, some former administration officials say, carries a risk for the United States, particularly if the moderate opposition is squeezed out by ISIS.

“We’re going to find ourselves maneuvered into a very uncomfortable position,” said Frederic C. Hof, a former State Department official who worked on Syria policy. “We’re unconsciously walking into an ambush.”

The White House is betting that airstrikes against ISIS in Syria might help moderate Syrian opposition groups, which are opposed to the Assad government — and which are also fighting ISIS themselves, in Aleppo. The Free Syrian Army, which the United States has provided with training and equipment, is at risk of losing access to aid and other supplies from Turkey to ISIS militants.

A spokesman for the rebel coalition, Oubai Shahbandar, said, “The Free Syrian Army commanders on the ground fighting ISIS in northern Syria have declared their readiness to coordinate with the U.S. in striking ISIS.”

The Free Syrian Army has nowhere near the firepower or ground strength as either the Kurdish pesh merga fighters who have worked with the American military against ISIS in Iraq, or even the Iraqi Army. And the weapons and ammunition that the administration have been supplying to the rebels have so far failed to tilt the battle in their favor.

In an interview on Monday, however, Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said that Secretary Hagel was “looking at a train-and-equip program for the Free Syrian Army.”

Some experts noted that the administration had another strong incentive not to do anything to help Mr. Assad. A central element of its strategy is to assemble a coalition in the region against ISIS, enlisting partners like Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

“Any hint that our actions might further reinforce Assad’s grip on power would make it hard to build that coalition,” said Brian Katulis, a national security expert with the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the White House. “They all want to see him go.”

ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT (AP) — Gen. Martin Dempsey said Sunday that once he determines the Islamic State militants in Iraq have become a direct threat to the U.S. homeland, he will recommend the U.S. military move directly against the group in Syria.

But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that right now, he still believes the insurgent group is still more a regional threat and is not plotting or planning attacks against either the U.S. or Europe.

Speaking on a military plane en route to Afghanistan, Dempsey provided more detail into his thinking about the Islamic militants who have stormed across Iraq, operating out of safe havens in Syria.

Dempsey did not rule out strikes for any other critical reasons, but listed a homeland threat as one of the key triggers for any military action in Syria.

Hillary Clinton's 'Mission Impossible' Doctrine

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clintons-thread-the-needle-doctrine/378882/

On foreign policy, the presumptive presidential candidate responds to hard choices by fake-punting.

CONOR FRIEDERSDORFAUG 21 2014,

America's foreign-policy hawks are once again circling high over their maps of the Middle East. They see several countries where they would like America to strike. Some of the hawks are neoconservatives. Others are liberal internationalists. Hillary Clinton's hawkish shrieks are an unusual blend of their styles. Her book Hard Choices, her remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and herinterview with Jeffrey Goldberg include calls for the U.S. to support the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, weaken the government of Iran, and destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a Sunni terrorist group being fought by both Assad and Iran.

This puts her in an awkward position: If the U.S. is determined to weaken or destroy ISIS, the regimes in Syria and Iran, and the Shiite Islamist militant group Hezbollah—if America is to pursue all these goals at once, as Clinton urges in her rhetoric—we're operating in such a way that our enemy's biggest enemies are our enemies.

There are several ways a country could respond to this situation. Non-intervention is one of them. Perhaps the fight among ISIS, Assad, Iran, and other actors besides is so dynamic and complicated that there's no way to foresee the consequences of our intervention. Inaction guarantees that the U.S. won't spend blood and treasure in a way that does not help or inadvertently harms us–though inaction has costs and risks too.

Another way forward would be to choose which enemy poses the biggest threat, focus on defeating it, and understand that in doing so we'd be compromising other goals.

Then there's what we could call the "Mission Impossible" approach to geopolitics, where the seeming tradeoffs are so unappealing that one tries to avoid them. Hollywood screenwriters are the biggest proponents of this approach. Is the target too heavily armed to take by force and too well-guarded to sneak into? Don't call off the heist. Just devise a plan to steal a stealth helicopter during a lunar eclipse, rappel down a ventilation shaft mere inches wider than the thinnest member of your team, and rely on his acrobatics—plus the piece of cinnamon gum that is his trademark in outlaw circles—to bypass the lasers.

That's the level of difficulty that comes to mind when I read Robert Ford, the career diplomat who resigned over the same objections to President Obama's Syria policy voiced by Clinton. "Some have argued that the easier course is to accept that Mr. Assad is entrenched in the capital and work with his regime to contain and eliminate the terrorist groups in Syria," he wrote in a June op-ed. "This would not benefit American security. ... [H]is record of relying on horrific brutality to maintain power is clear. Moreover, his regime has a history of implicit cooperation with Al Qaeda, as we saw in Iraq. This is not a man with whom the United States should align itself." Plus, "Mr. Assad now depends on Iran and Hezbollah for his survival, and Iran’s influence in Syria is likely to remain as long as Mr. Assad does." So what to do? "To be sure, there is no military solution, but it is possible to salvage something in Syria by preparing the conditions for a genuine negotiation toward a new government. And that requires empowering the moderate armed opposition. The Free Syrian Army needs far greater material support and training so that it can mount an effective guerrilla war."

This was presented as a realistic embrace of the least-bad option.

It's basically the same advice Clinton gave: identify the subset of rebels battling Assad who aren't Islamist radicals; give them money and weapons; hope that they topple the Syrian regime; and then, when Assad is gone, wager that the power vacuum won't be filled by ISIS or some radical Islamist force like it. Though Assad's forces have done their best to kill ISIS fighters, Clinton spoke as if funding the opposition to Assad would have preempted the rise of ISIS, and as if post-Assad Syria wouldn't likely turn into a lawless place where terrorists could plot.

But how was that a realistic plan?

Everything about Iraq, the scene of an earlier intervention that Clinton favored, ought to have given her pause. When that country's dictator fell, the resulting power vacuum empowered Islamist terrorist groups despite the presence of thousands of U.S. troops. Weapons and equipment that the U.S. gave its allies in Iraq now make up a major part of the weaponry that ISIS stole to seize territory there. But ISIS wouldn't have been able to seize weapons funneled to moderate Syrians? And a Syria without Assad wouldn't have turned into a more heavily contested power vacuum? The folks beheading journalists and seizing vast swaths of territory would've let the moderates do their thing or been suppressed by them?

Those seem like risky wagers.

There's no way to prove the Ford/Clinton approach to Syria wouldn't have worked, just as there's no way to prove I wouldn't have won if I'd gone to a Las Vegas sports book last year and wagered that I could pick the winner of every Dallas Cowboys game. An embrace of plans with long odds of success is nevertheless a worrisome approach to foreign policy. It's as if Obama is a football coach with an injured quarterback and no ground game, the tough choice is whether to run or pass, and Clinton is on the sidelines emphatically agitating for an insanely complicated trick play that the team has never practiced before, even though trick plays attempted in previous games unfolded unpredictably and failed.

Clinton presents this posture as evidence of her capacity to make "Hard Choices," which for her means something like forcefully urging intervention even when I have no idea if it will work. As she told Goldberg in their interview, "I can’t sit here today and say that if we had done what I recommended, and what Robert Ford recommended, that we’d be in a demonstrably different place."

She sees the long odds, yet never considers, or at least never refutes, the notion that our involvement could make things worse, as has happened before. ISIS could have more of our guns. Our now-successful effort to destroy many of Syria's chemical weapons could've been derailed. What voters should seek out, as they decide whether Clinton is capable of being a good president, is any recognition from her that attempts by American experts to steer events abroad do often make things worse–and that simple, plausible plans ought to be favored for that reason, not elaborate interventionist schemes that can only succeed if lots of contested assumptions hold true and lots of contingencies we don't control go right.

Her inclination is to make risky bets on intervention "with conviction":Every course poses its own risks. But as Vietnam proved—and as Clinton ought to have learned in Iraq—a hubristic, ill-planned, failed American military intervention is, when it goes wrong, the very most damaging thing a U.S. president can order. We should not elect any commander-in-chief who doesn't understand that.

The new battle against evil

By David Ignatius Opinion writer August 21

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-obamas-correct-approach-to-battling-the-evil-islamic-state/2014/08/21/4fdef9ea-296a-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html

The propagandists of the Islamic State must have imagined that their brutal video of the beheading of journalist James Foley would intimidate and terrorize the world. But people aren’t built that way, not in Muslim countries or anywhere else. When they see sadistic, uncivilized behavior, they are disgusted — and angry.

President Obama spoke Wednesday with special precision and moral clarity in reacting to the video’s release. The Islamic State, he said, “speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day.”

The videotaped beheading was a sign of the Islamic State’s weakness, not its strength. “People like this ultimately fail,” Obama explained. “They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.” He spoke, as a president must, about the consequences of killing U.S. civilians: “We will be vigilant and we will be relentless. When people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done.”

The life and death of Osama bin Laden illustrate why the terrorist strategy is destined to fail — if civilized nations maintain their will. Obama authorized the mission that pursued the al-Qaeda leader to his lair in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But in the months before his death, bin Laden knew he had failed.

Documents taken from his hideout show that, in his final days, bin Laden was haunted by the mistakes al-Qaeda had made. The organization’s wanton killing had appalled and alienated Muslims, to the point that bin Laden wondered whether the group should rebrand itself as a less toxic force. He even suggested 10 alternative names that might sound better to the world’s ears.

Bin Laden reflected in a draft letter about “miscalculations” and “unnecessary civilian casualties” that were hurting the jihadist cause. “Making these mistakes is a great issue,” he said, noting that taking “Muslim blood” had resulted in “the alienation of most of the nation [of Islam].” Local al-Qaeda leaders should “apologize and be held responsible for what happened.”

This week’s macabre executioner, robed in black, traces his jihadist lineage to the very people bin Laden was condemning, the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Call their successor ISIL or ISIS or the Islamic State — the group has chosen to debase itself with the most extreme and bloodthirsty version of Muslim revolt. Its actions and boasts are a kind of jihadist fantasy, celebrating the pornographic violence of religious killing with beheadings and crucifixions and genocidal assaults on Shiite Muslims, Yazidis, Christians and dissenting Sunnis.

We can see evil through the eye slits of the ski mask worn by Foley’s killer. But stopping that evil is a harder task. As the United States has witnessed over the past decade, the obsession to counter terrorism can drag a country into unwinnable wars and immoral acts.

For months, Obama has been struggling with how to get it right this time — how to contain and eradicate the Islamic State without making the United States the Muslim world’s enemy. Obama’s voice could have been clearer and more emphatic, early on, but I think the basic course of his policy has been correct. He has moved strategically, step by step, gathering the tools that will be needed to confront this malignancy.

Consider how this policy has come together: Knowing that Iraqis must lead the fight against the killers in their midst, Obama refused to provide American air support until Iraqis had endorsed a more inclusive government. Recognizing that the mission should have limited initial goals, he focused on rescuing the Yazidis trapped atop Mount Sinjar. Calculating that Iraqi Kurdistan would be a crucial platform for U.S. projection of power, he pledged to defend Irbil.

A crucial turn was the campaign to win back the Mosul dam. Understanding that jihadist control of the massive dam amounted to a dagger at Iraq’s throat, Obama said Aug. 9 that “there’s key infrastructure inside of Iraq that we have to be concerned about.” Few noticed. This month, 57 of the 90 U.S. airstrikes have been in support of Iraqi forces at the Mosul dam.

Knowing that the jihadists were holding U.S. journalists hostage, Obama ordered a raid this summer to free them. This bold action failed, but it was correct. Even though he knew that European governments had paid huge ransoms to free their hostages, Obama refused.

Those were difficult but sound decisions, and a principled start to a long campaign against brutal killers.

A Necessary Response to ISIS

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDAUG. 24, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/a-necessary-response-to-isis.html

The United States cannot go it alone in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the extremist group known as ISIS whose ruthlessness and killing has dumbfounded and horrified the civilized world.

American airstrikes and other assistance from the United States have brought some measure of relief to religious minorities and others that ISIS has threatened. But defeating, or even substantially degrading, ISIS will require an organized, longer-term response involving a broad coalition of nations, including other Muslim countries, and addressing not only the military threat but political and religious issues.

The recent persecution of Christians and Yazidis and the murder of James Foley, an American journalist, has brought ISIS’s savagery into full view. On Thursday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said ISIS posed an “immediate threat” to the West, in addition to Iraq, because thousands of Europeans and other foreigners who have joined the group and have the passports to travel freely could carry the fight back to their home countries — including the United States.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was equally emphatic. ISIS, he warned, is “beyond anything that we’ve seen” because it is extremely well-financed and has demonstrated sophistication and tactical skill in its campaign to impose an Islamic caliphate by brute force. Other analysts have gone so far as to describe ISIS as one of the most successful extremist groups in history because of its ability to seize and hold large sections of two countries — Iraq and Syria — with what seems like blinding speed.

While the group poses a risk to the United States and the West, those paying the biggest price are Muslims. That’s why President Obama was correct to argue that “from governments and peoples across the Middle East, there has to be a common effort to extract this cancer so that it does not spread.” Making this happen will take American leadership, but, so far, neither he nor America’s allies have laid out a coherent vision of exactly what this fight might entail or how to achieve success.

The response to the immediate crisis has been prudent. The United States has insisted that Iraq’s government and army set aside longstanding rivalries and work with the pesh merga militia of Kurdistan to back up American airstrikes by fighting ISIS on the ground. Germany, Italy, Britain and France have promised weapons.

The politics of Iraq, however, remain dangerously unsettled. The United States successfully pressed for a change from Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as prime minister in Iraq because only a more inclusive leader would have any chance of unifying the country against the ISIS threat. And, in a rare convergence of interests, Iran also withdrew its support from Mr. Maliki, resulting in the appointment of a new leader, Haider al-Abadi. But Parliament has yet to give final approval to the new government, thus prolonging political uncertainties that undermine the fight against ISIS.

The prospects of defeating ISIS would be greatly improved if other Muslim nations could see ISIS for the threat it is. But, like Iraq, they are mired in petty competitions and Sunni-Shiite religious divisions and many have their own relations with extremists of one kind or another. ISIS has received financing from donors in Kuwait and Qatar. Saudi Arabia funneled weapons to Syrian rebels and didn’t care if they went to ISIS. Turkey allowed ISIS fighters and weapons to flow across porous borders. All of that has to stop.

Creating a regional military force may be required, including assistance from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Turkey. It certainly will require money, intelligence-sharing, diplomatic cooperation and a determined plan to cut off financing to ISIS and the flow of ISIS fighters between states. France’s suggestion for an international conference deserves consideration.

No matter how many American airstrikes are carried out — Mr. Obama is also considering strikes against ISIS in Syria — such extremists will never be defeated if Muslims themselves don’t make it a priority. To their credit, some leaders are speaking out. Among them is Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority, the grand mufti, who called ISIS and Al Qaeda the “enemy No. 1 of Islam.”

But they must go further and begin a serious discussion about the dangers of radical Islam and how ISIS’s perversion of one of the world’s great religions can be reversed.

Events in Iraq, Syria and Russia further stoke debate about Obama’s worldview

By Zachary A. Goldfarb August 23

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/events-in-iraq-syria-and-russia-further-stoke-debate-about-obamas-worldview/2014/08/23/eb95db18-23ea-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html

The week began with the breaking of the siege of Mount Sinjar in Iraq, thanks to U.S. bombing runs, and ended with the public beheading of American journalist James Foley in Syria and renewed Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The juxtaposition of military success and public human failure has caused a sense of whiplash around President Obama’s foreign policy and further stoked the debate about his worldview.

Obama’s detractors revived criticism that his foreign policy is based on retreat from the world, typified by the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq three years ago, a lack of direct action in Syria and an economics-first approach to driving Russia’s military back from Ukraine.

His supporters argue that his approach has been consistent with his strategy of returning the United States — after post-Sept. 11 wars — to a foreign policy built around economic engagement rather than military intervention. The question, though, is whether he is contradicting the pledge embraced in his 2009 Nobel Prize lecture: “to face the world as it is,”not as he would like it to be.

“He thought he could change the tenor more easily than he could, and I think he thought the world would be more responsive to his desires than the world has proven to be,” said Jon B. Alterman, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Now he faces the criticism that, whereas the Bush administration embarked on a war of choice in Iraq, he embarks on a series of skirmishes that are reactive and not of his choosing.”

Obama wanted to close the book on 9/11 America, pledging to end the nation’s “permanent war” footing. That has meant not only taking on the legacy of the attacks but also convincing worried allies in Europe and the Middle East that the country is not in retreat after more than a decade of war.

In place of the large military deployments, Obama has relied on smaller operations to manage, rather than resolve, many of the conflicts that have arisen during his time in office. The attempted rescue of Foley earlier this year from a camp deep inside Syria stands as the most recent example of that approach.

But smaller has not translated into peace or greater American influence.

After pulling troops from Iraq on the eve of his reelection year, Obama is now overseeing a military operation to protect Iraqi civilians threatened by the Islamic State, secure U.S. personnel in Kurdish Iraq, and advise the country’s U.S.-trained army.

Leaving behind an Iraq dominated by an organization al-Qaeda once disavowed as too extreme would cloud his legacy as the president who ended that war — and would bequeath his successor a difficult national security.

The Islamic State emerged from the pit of Syria’s civil war, overrunning the blurry border with Iraq and leading U.S. civilian and military policymakers to consider the two conflicts as one.

Obama called for the end of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government years ago, yet his primary goal has been to eliminate a chemical weapons cache that could be used against U.S. targets or allies if extremist groups take control of them.

The question of how best to roll back the Islamic State’s territorial gains — short of a boots-on-the-ground deployment Obama has ruled out — is one that he and the Pentagon must deal with.

“Containing the threat is the great challenge of the final 21 / 2 years of the Obama presidency,” said Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Senior administration officials say that as they confront the challenges in Syria and Iraq, however, they are unwilling to sacrifice either of Obama’s guiding principles.

“Iraq and Syria are very much within the goal preventing the threat of terrorism from emanating from outside the United States,” Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, said last week. “That’s a core interest.”

At the same time, he said, Obama is not reconsidering his view that Iraq — and Afghanistan — must be primarily responsible for their own security.

“The basic premise still holds that we’re transitioning from wars in which the United States was on the ground in big numbers fighting to secure Afghanistan and Iraq to Afghans and Iraqis fighting on the ground to secure their own countries,” Rhodes said.

While Obama and his advisers see consistency in his actions, analysts and some supporters see more of a patchwork.

“This president has ignored the threat for a long period of time, and now we’re paying the price,” Sen. John McCain (R) told his home-town newspaper, the Arizona Republic. “The more [Obama] delays and the more he acts incrementally, the more [the Islamic State] adjusts and the more difficult they will become.”

Obama has contributed to the confusion, occasionally turning to vague phrasing and metaphors to explain his foreign policy.

Even former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton said recently that “Don’t do stupid stuff” — the president’s latest foreign policy credo — is not an “organizing principle.”

Obama recently told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that he learned an important lesson from the U.S.-led intervention in Libya when, after the death of Moammar Gaddafi, the United States and allies didn’t do more to rebuild the North African country, which is engulfed in an extremist uprising.

Now when he considers intervention, he always asks, “Do we have an answer [for] the day after?” he said.

At the same time, Obama said he did not regret the intervention in Libya, raising questions about why that was worth direct U.S. military action and Syria is not.

“Obama made the decision not to intervene [in Syria] and not to provide the support that the moderate opposition was asking for,” said David J. Kramer, a senior State Department official in the George W. Bush administration and president of Freedom House.

“The problem for Obama is he often sets up these false choices between essentially doing nothing and sending in the 82nd battalion,” Kramer said.“And there are gradations about what one can do, including providing military support to forces that we should be supporting.”

Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East expert at the Wilson Center, said the Libya experience was low risk for Obama, with support for the multinational operation from the U.N. Security Council and the Arab League.

“This was a humanitarian disaster reduced to a scale that Barack Obama could get his arms around,” Miller said. “He could actually preempt, prevent and rescue a large number of people.”

Adding to Obama’s challenges has been the crisis in Ukraine, which has deeply wounded U.S. relations with Russia, and the conflict in Gaza, which has dashed the administration’s hopes of securing peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Administration officials say Obama has put a lot on the line in both places, sanctioning Russian leaders and sending his secretary of state, John F. Kerry, to invest tremendous amounts of time trying to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

But current and former administration officials see a big difference between what’s happening in Iraq and Syria and what’s happening in Ukraine and Gaza. Iraq and Syria fit into a framework of potentially threatening Americans. Solving the crises in Ukraine and Gaza appeals to U.S. principles of democracy and diplomacy, but they do not pose direct threats.

“Nations don’t have permanent friends and enemies anymore,” said Lawrence Korb, a national security analyst. “They have permanent interests, and that’s why it’s hard to get a principled one-word container to put everything in.”

In the end, Obama’s legacy might be defined by an issue that has lost attention as new crises have emerged: preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Mission Leap

Micah Zenko Douglas Dillon Fellow

August 22, 2014

Foreign Policy

On Feb. 12, 1993, journalist Christopher Burns filed a story from Somalia containing a term that had never before appeared in English language press: "The U.S.-led military mission to halt clan warfare and get aid to the needy has unofficially widened its role to include such tasks as rebuilding houses, digging wells and creating police forces. Officials call it 'mission creep.'"

As America's recent intervention in Iraq gathers steam, the phrase and its implicit warnings have reemerged among policymakers and public commentators. Worryingly, though, it seems some top officials don't get it. As President Barack Obama noted on Tuesday: "Typically, what happens with mission creep is when we start deciding that we're the ones who have to do it all ourselves. And because of the excellence of our military that can work for a time. We learned that in Iraq." This is a puzzling lesson to take away from Iraq: rather than preferring unilateralism, the Bush administration begged every country with deployable military forces to participate in the invasion and occupation.

On Wednesday, Pentagon spokesperson Rear Adm. John Kirby offered a more concise definition: "mission creep doesn't refer to numbers of sorties, numbers of troops, numbers of anything. It doesn't refer to timelines. It doesn't even refer to intensity. It's about the mission itself." This is true in the technical sense of how the Pentagon defines a mission: "The task, together with the purpose, that clearly indicates the action to be taken and the reason therefore."

The problem with relying upon U.S. officials' articulation and description of military missions is that there is a time-honored history of denying, dissembling, or outright lying about mission creep -- while it occurs. This includes the U.S. bombing of 113,716 sites in Cambodia between 1965 to 1973 while the Johnson and Nixon administrations claimed otherwise; Reagan's deployment of 1,800 Marines to Lebanon, initially "to provide an interposition force at agreed locations," but later openly taking sides in that country's civil war; and the 2011 intervention in Libya to provide airpower for regime change, just after the Obama repeatedly said this would not happen. "Saying one thing and doing another" has alsocharacterized U.S. non-battlefield drone strikes from their introduction in November 2002.

Given the tendency of the United States to routinely undertake additional military missions, all while contending that they are not, everyone should be skeptical of how officials justify and depict the ongoing intervention in Iraq. Nevertheless, here are five clues to look for and things to think about, when considering whether mission creep is occurring now in Iraq.

1. Don't fence me in.

Presidents articulate missions in a manner to assure they have the greatest flexibility to do whatever they want. Even the supposedly limited missions for the current airstrikes -- humanitarian assistance and protecting U.S. personnel -- are broad enough to justify practically anything. Indeed, most countries claim that their uses of force are strictly to protect their citizens or save someone's life -- in the Western world, rarely is vengeance or bloodlust an acceptable reason to bomb someone. Given that there are more than 10,000 U.S. government employees or contractors in Iraq -- and militant groups seeking to attack them or the critical infrastructure that supports them -- there are many new types of combat operations that could be justified to protect them. Moreover, the Obama administration already contends the right to use force anywhere on Earth where "the relevant governmental authorities ... cannot or will not effectively address the threat to U.S. persons." Iraq is only the most recent country where this broad remit has been exercised.

2. We've got people on the ground.

The need for such force protection airstrikes only increases with each additional troop or "advisor" and contractor sent to Iraq. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq has steadily grown since the June 16 announcement of a deployment of up to 300 military personnel.

By June 30,three Special Forces units had deployed, and just one day later President Obama stated that an additional 200 troops would be sent to Baghdad.

By June 30, three Special Forces units had deployed, and just one day later President Obama stated that an additional200 troops would be sent to Baghdad. On Aug. 13, it was announced that 130 military advisers would be sent -- bringing the total number of American military personnel in Iraq to more than 1,000 -- and the Pentagon is discussing sending another 300 troops.

Alongside these acknowledged forces are thousands of private contractors providing logistics and security support on behalf of the United States. In January, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) quit providing data for Iraq when it optimistically announced: "This will be the final USCENTCOM report on Iraq contractor numbers." Until CENTCOM republishes this data in its quarterly reports, it will be impossible to know how many contractors are in Iraq, and what percentage of them are U.S. citizens. But as a point of comparison, during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan deployments there were slightly more Pentagon-employed private contractors than U.S. troops. Thus, when U.S. officials provide an updated estimate for troop levels in Iraq, it is safe to double it -- since that number will not include contractors. Again, more U.S. personnel and facilities dispersed throughout Iraq raise the prospect of more force protection strikes.

3. Call the exterminator.

Adam Siegel's excellent 1998 examination of the concept provides a useful typology for diagnosing the onset of mission creep:

• Task accretion is the general assumption of tasks necessary to achieve the mission's initial objective.

• Mission shift occurs when forces adopt tasks that expand the mission.

• Mission transition is an unclear or unstated transition to a new set of objectives.

• Mission leap occurs with a clear decision -- an explicit choice -- to change the mission and, therefore, the military's tasks.

Any of these changes could occur in the near-term with or without a clear decision. There are indicators that future airstrikes could expand to simply kill suspected Islamic State (IS) members as policymakers and officials increasingly demand the defeat or total destruction of the terrorist organization. On Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) termed IS as "evil people that need to be defeated." Similarly, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)offered his belief that the United States has "a compelling strategic interest in defeating this group." The following day, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf stated: "Look, we believe that ISIS needs to be taken out." And on Aug. 20, Secretary of State John Kerry agreed,declaring: "ISIL and the wickedness it represents must be destroyed." On Aug. 21, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, capped it off, saying, "This is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated."

Eliminationist counterterrorism objectives such as these are fanciful, but not uncommon. In April 2012, then-White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan claimed: "We're not going to rest until al Qaeda the organization is destroyed and is eliminated from areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Africa, and other areas." You probably noticed that never happened, and no officials were held accountable for the glaring mismatch of stated objectives and accomplishments.

Similarly, in Iraq, U.S. airpower, even in coordination with local ground forces, will not eliminate IS, which intelligence officials estimate to include at least 10,000 committed fighters. However, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the tactically successful airstrikes around the Mosul Dam are "creating momentum for a broader campaign that could take American air power to the militant group's heartland." That apparent momentum may have been invigorated with the video release of the Islamic State's latest savagery -- the abhorrent beheading of American journalist James Foley. As an anonymous senior Pentagon official crudely described it, "Hunt while the hunting's good" -- meaning kill whoever you can.

4. But they need it!

Watch for the inevitable demands by Kurdish and Iraqi politicians for greater airpower, intelligence, and weapons support to defeat the insurgency in its midst. "[The United States'] technology capability will offer a lot of intelligence information and monitoring of the desert and many things which we are in need of," said Ahmed Khalaf al-Dulaimi, the governor of Anbar province. Note that word: need. As Ghazi Qadir, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Gwer, stated, "U.S. assistance on the ground is very important to us. It needs to continue as we gradually push forward." Iraqi Minister of Parliament Zainab al-Sahlani, framed her expectations a bit differently, but in equally demanding terms: "The U.S. has to provide further military assistance to the Iraqi army per agreements between the two sides to assist with the fight against terrorist groups." Then there's always the guilt trip, as Sunni lawmaker Haider al-Mutlaq put it, noting that Iraqis were "expecting the U.S. to expand their airstrikes," otherwise "Iraq will remain in its broken state and the U.S. will be responsible for that."

President Obama might not believe that the United States is Iraq's air force, but Iraqi politicians and officials increasingly will. And Iraq's security could become America's obligation, especially the use of airpower to assure the newly formed government in Baghdad survives and thrives.

5. Watch out for talking stars.

Beware of those who carelessly use the concept to prevent discussions of military missions. As Richard Holbrooke observed regarding Clinton administration debates: "[Mission creep] was a powerful pejorative, conjuring up images of quagmire. But it was never clearly defined, only invoked, and always in a negative sense, used only to kill someone else's proposal." The planning staffs within CENTCOM and the Joint Staff are developing numerous operational plans for senior civilian and military officials to debate, and which Obama may ultimately authorize. We know, based upon historical precedent, that military officials are more likely to oppose discrete military operations, and will repeatedly raise warnings about their risks, costs, and relative unimportance compared to "vital national interests." These concerns are then expressed via media leaks or through sympathetic retired general officers, even when they have no direct insights into the operations that are being reviewed. As these statements inevitably come forward the experienced opinions should be respected, but readers should be wary of their situational awareness of Iraq or insights into Oval Office discussions.

A few months ago, I interviewed retired U.S. Army Gen. Peter Schoomaker. He was one of the original 22 members of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, a.k.a. Delta Force, and later commanded every special operations force for which he was eligible. He led one of the three Delta teams used in the failed April 1980 raid to free U.S. hostages in Iran, and many other rescue missions that appropriately have never made the light of day. Schoomaker offered a warning that has resonated with me as I watch events unfold in Syria and Iraq: "Sometimes military force is most effective when it is held in reserve. Once you use it, it takes on a weather of its own."

Mitigating mission creep requires President Obama speaking "clearer than truth" (to borrow Dean Acheson's phrase) about what U.S. forces in Iraq are doing, and then acknowledging adjustments as that "weather" unfolds. Presidents have a poor record in doing this, including Obama. Yet, given that any strategy to counter the threat that the Islamic State poses to the United States will be longer and costlier than most want to admit, it's not only essential to the military, he owes it to the American people.

Situation Room