A War of Many Years

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2014/10/02/a-war-of-many-years/

A War of Many Years
Published in Capital (Bulgaria) on 19 September 2014 by Svetlomira Gurova [link to original]
Translated from Bulgarian by Mila Alexandrova. Edited by Emily Chick.
Posted on October 2, 2014.

He stepped into the White House with a promise to take America out of the war in Iraq. Now, he is forced to return to the region and become the fourth American president who gets his country involved in a conflict in an Arab state. It looks like his successor is going to be the fifth one – the coming battle won’t be short or simple.

The enemy in the new round in the war against terror has many names — it started as one of the many factions under the name al-Qaida, became notorious as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant and shorten its name to the Islamic State after it proclaimed itself a caliphate in the Middle East in June. Whatever label it puts on, the group is enemy number one for the U.S. and Europe and it has been condemned by both Sunni and Shiite. Even archenemies Iran and Israel, as well as Pope Francis, have joined the crowd asking to stop the Islamic State group’s rise.

Stopping it won’t be easy, even if the most reluctant U.S. president to military involvement in recent years is pushed again towards the quicksand of the Middle East. The cynical interpretation of the events shows that the execution of two American journalists and one British humanitarian worker did what the death of 200,000 people in Syria did not. But bombs falling from the sky simply won’t be enough to accomplish the goal — a complete annihilation of the military, financial and ideological resources of the Islamic State group.

Time and luck will be necessary for the success of the strategy announced by the president on Sept. 11 — what irony — to abolish al-Qaida’s little brother. The strategy builds around four main components — airstrikes, further support for local troops on the ground (but no American boots), tighter anti-terrorist measures and humanitarian aid. The plan, marked by numerous weak and unclear points, lacks detail, takes serious risks, and could produce satisfying results only if Iraq and Syria get out of the chaos that gave birth to the bloody march of the Islamic State group on first place.