(Newswire.net — September 12, 2014) — Most of the 500 additional U.S. troops recently assigned to the middle east will be sent to operational command centers in Baghdad and Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish north. Another 150 will assess the skills of Iraqi soldiers, and the final 125 will help run the armed drones now bombing IS, also known as ISIL and ISIS.
To date, the US military has conducted about 150 airstrikes in Iraq – but this was when the US was on the defensive.
Now, it’s time to go on offense, said President Barack Obama.
This covers operations in Iraq, for now. The other major step in the US plan to fight IS involves ramping up US assistance to the Syrian opposition. In the days to come, this will include calling on Congress “to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters,” Obama said.
This is easier said than done, since it is frustratingly difficult to determine who, precisely, the “moderate opposition” is.
The less-extreme center of the Syrian opposition “is quite small, and has gotten smaller over the years,” says retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA.
Another tricky problem, however, is that it’s not clear that the Free Syrian Army, which is widely considered to be the best bet to gain this stepped-up US backing, “has a clear vision of what they would do with the Syrian state if they were able to assume control,” says Ben Connable, senior international policy analyst at the RAND Corp. and a former Marine intelligence officer in Iraq.
And it’s not just the White House. The congressional authorization of force — if one ever passes — will quickly forbid committing more ground troops. So even if the Obama administration wanted to move in quickly, they’d need to persuade a reluctant Congress to pass a new law allowing them to do so.
So why is there so much debate over such a seemingly costless endeavor? Because things might go wrong.
Tne caution here is that much of what could go wrong if the United States intervenes could go wrong if the US doesn’t intervene, as well. But that’s where the Pottery Barn rule comes in.
The “Pottery Barn Rule” —- “you break it, you buy it” — became famous during the Iraq war. “You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,” Colin Powell told President Bush before the invasion of Iraq. “You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You’ll own it all.”
But Syria isn’t Iraq. It will make it much harder for US to say that what happens in Syria isn’t our problem. It will mean many more members of the Syrian opposition have contacts with Washington journalists and defense policymakers. The Obama administration believes it can send some missiles and be done with it, but that may not prove to be true.