Has Trump Administration Done More in Eight Months Than the Obama Administration Against ISIS?
Sayfullo Saipov’s attack that killed eight people on Halloween in New York City shows ISIS can still inspire murderous violence. Notwithstanding this latest terrorist action, the Trump administration has directed considerable effort to fighting ISIS. But has the Trump administration done more in eight months than the Obama administration against ISIS? The position of the Trump administration in ISIS has no doubt been steadfast. Whether it has been effective is another matter.
President Obama was highly ineffective against ISIS. It was under the Obama administration that ISIS flourished in Iraq. But, Obama—and particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—helped fuel ISIS’s rise. They either grossly misread what the driving forces behind the Syrian revolt in 2011 were or they deliberately encouraged it.
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ISIS did not start with Obama. ISIS is the cancerous growth that metastasized directly out of the war that President George W. Bush—or better, the Neocons like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle to name a few—unleashed against Iraq. Rather than stay away from playing Dr. Frankenstein in the Middle East by promoting risky socio-economic and political experiments to magically produce democracy out of the desert, Obama decided to give it the old college try.
It wasn’t enough for Bush Jr. to have crashed and burned the concept of exporting democracy. Obama, and much more the hawkish Hillary, tried to hide their efforts but encouraged local powers like Qatar and Saudi Arabia to covertly damage the Asad regime in Syria. The aim was to topple it without direct U.S. military intervention, which American voters would have rejected.
There was always a suspicion that the Saudis and Qataris funded the Syrian rebellion—anything but secular and even less democratic—supplying funds and weapons to operatives in Turkey and Jordan, who would then funnel these to fighters in Syria. But thanks to the ongoing dispute between Qatar and the Saudi-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), emirs from the former country have been speaking out. In a recent interview, which has gone viral in much of the Arab world, a Qatari official admitted as much. (Source: “In Shocking, Viral Interview, Qatar Confesses Secrets Behind Syrian War,” Zero Hedge, October 29, 2017.)
Syria remains one of the most secular countries in the Middle East. Its government was even ready to ban the niqab—full-face veil—in 2010. It’s so secular that the Syrian Constitution permitted Christians to be elected president. Forgetting that in Syria, there’s little chance of anyone challenging the Asad presidency, it’s still an important symbolic achievement in an 85% Muslim majority country.
In 2012, the Constitution changed to ban Christians from seeking the presidency, but it was a desperate attempt by the weakened Asad government to quell the rising tide of the Arab Spring. In Syria, this “spring” was no manifestation of democratic ideals and hopes. It was an Islamic revolution in all but name. Thus, Asad tried to please the crowds by shifting the country’s character toward the more orthodox Islamic views. (Source: “Syria Passes New Constitution, Bars Non-Muslims From Presidency,” The Christian Post, February 28, 2012.)
Of course, the Obama administration should not have intervened in favor of the Asad government or any other dictatorship. But they should not have helped the rebels either. Doing so has made a precarious Middle Eastern and North African region all the more unstable thanks to ISIS, aka Islamic State, IS, or DAESH (al-Dawla Islamiya fii Iraq wa Shams).
Far from her failings in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, Clinton and her boss Obama’s biggest foreign policy disasters were to have encouraged the Arab Spring and especially the revolt in Syria. Bernie Sanders understood this clearly and called Clinton and Obama on it. (Source: “We finally know what Hillary Clinton knew all along – US allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding Isis,” The Independent, October 14, 2016.)
Instead of blaming the Russians, Hillary Clinton might want to review her record as Secretary of State.
Obama botched his strategy to confront the challenges of the Arab Spring. His administration’s arrogance in thinking it could win where Bush Jr. failed was the original sin of the ISIS problem. Encouraging regime changes in an area where it was common knowledge that the political opposition long ago took on a radical Islamic character showed incredible “chutzpah.” Obama and Clinton gambled with the Middle East.
Is the Trump Administration Defeating ISIS?
Any textbook on the Middle East written between 1973 and the present would have mentioned it. It wasn’t the exclusive knowledge of the CIA. The Obama administration also gambled the security of the United States and its allies in the process, because their policies have favored the rise of ISIS and its expansion from Iraq to Syria.
Therefore, simply by avoiding anything that could help or encourage ISIS in Syria, the Trump administration has done more to defeat ISIS than did Obama’s. This includes avoiding actions to weaken the Syrian government, sending funds or weapons to “rebels,” or undermining the Syrian Arab Army and its Russian allies in their conduct of military operations against all rebels in Syria.
Is the Trump Administration Really Responsible for the Defeat of ISIS?
But is the Trump administration defeating ISIS? President Trump enjoyed taking credit for the recent defeat of ISIS in their capital of Raqqa in northern Syria. But, the president exaggerated. The fight against ISIS owes much more to the Russians, who went into Syria in 2015 to stop it along with the other Islamist rebels as well. (Source: “Russian op saved Syria from being overrun by ISIS – analysts to RT,” Russia Today, September 30, 2017.)
Trump’s stance on ISIS has changed since he won the presidency. At first, he wanted to pull out of Afghanistan and leave Russia completely free to operate in Syria. But soon after, Trump decided to stay in Afghanistan, committing additional troops and efforts. In Afghanistan, the main targets remain the Taliban. Last April, Trump authorized a major show of force, allowing a U.S. plane to drop the Massive Ordnance Air Bomb (MOAB). The device killed 94 people, allegedly members of ISIS. (Source: “Massive bomb dropped by U.S. killed 94, Afghan official says,” CBC News, April 15, 2017.)
Last March, the Trump administration reiterated that its strategy over ISIS is to annihilate the group. The Obama administration had never used quite such determined language. Thus, Donald Trump’s campaign on ISIS started out with clear goals. But however tough Donald Trump’s claim on ISIS, his later moves have left much to question.
Trump Has Intensified Military Action But Compromised Overall Strategy
For starters, Trump has intensified the anti-ISIS military actions. But he has given little thought—or so it seems—to what might come in the eventual vacuum left by a defeated ISIS. In Iraq, the Trump presidency vs. the Obama presidency has been more active on the military front, but less on the political one. The anti-ISIS actions have produced a string of battle wins, but the U.S. will likely have to remain in Iraq as well. That does not fit well with Trump’s campaign promises of “America First.” Moreover, the Kurds will be demanding their own independent State.
This will put them at odds with the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government, which has only strengthened its ties to the Iranian and Syrian governments over the past few years. The United States—also given Trump’s stance on the Iranian nuclear deal—risks getting embroiled in another regional war involving Kurdish separatist claims. Apart from the already massive risks, the U.S risks losing a crucial ally in this mess: Turkey.
Trump and others have accused Obama of pulling out too early from Iraq in 2011. But allowing the United States to fall into this trap was probably one of the things his advisors were suggesting when they urged him to pull out. The other issue is that Trump has a tendency to be overly triumphant. He has taken much credit for ISIS having been expelled from Raqqa in Syria. But, as in Iraq, that victory could prove pyrrhic.
Kurdish independence claims will resonate from there to Turkish-, Iraqi-, and Iranian-controlled Kurdistan. The next regional war could involve at least five countries with the United States in the middle, trying to act as referee. Meanwhile, the Russians and Iranians, who have done more than anyone else to defeat ISIS, will not simply give up and go away. They have important strategic goals in Syria and they will see them through.
As for ISIS, it will exploit the emerging regional differences and the efforts to redraw the map of the Middle East to its advantage. Many of its members—many of whom traveled to fight in Syria from various countries—will return to their original towns and potentially stage many low-level attacks that could prove highly disruptive. As Sayfullo Saipov has proven in New York on October 31, you don’t need battle training to kill innocent people. There are potentially dozens of Saipovs ready to take up similar actions in North America and in Europe while the U.S. and its allies get sucked into more military actions in the Middle East.
