Secretary of State John Kerry tells us that we are not going to war with the Islamic State. President Obama says it’s not even a state.
Yet the U.S. is sending military personnel, planes, and bombs to the part of the Middle East controlled and governed by the group that goes by that name.
Obama wants to wage this non-war war against a non-state state without congressional authority or debate. But we need a debate, to establish whom we’re fighting, for how long, and to what end.
For one thing, a debate could address what the administration expects will happen after we wipe out this enemy.
There is a longstanding conservative case against war — not a case most political conservatives always adhere to, but an argument that flows from the conservative disposition. The core of this argument is that when you remove something bad, something worse often takes its place.
In Libya, this has proven true. In Iraq, this has proven true. The Islamic State’s very existence confirms that this wariness was wisdom. Deposing Hussein led to the instability in which the Islamic State has arisen; had we deposed Assad, we could have made the group even stronger in Syria.
This argument may not apply as well to this situation, because the Islamic State is already the bad thing filling the vacuum. If it really is just a “terrorist group,” as President Obama insists, and “not a state,” then there may be no vacuum created in its absence.
One can see why Obama and others would want to deny ISIS the label of statehood. Some people think statehood carries serious moral weight. But many of the most evil institutions of recent decades have been states — Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and today, North Korea.
But the Islamic State controls territory. It brings in revenue through taxes and oil sales. It has police and courts that enforce Islamic law. These are features of a state. What is to be gained from calling it a state? Maybe some strategic clarity.
In The Art of War, Sun-Tzu instructed the reader to “know your enemy.” The Islamic State’s state-like features aren’t important just for semantic debate. They help us understand the nature of the enemy.
For terrorists to pull off a large-scale attack on the U.S., they probably need more than just a few rich funders and hiding places in the mountains. They need reliable flows of money. They need safe places for training and plotting, where they don’t worry about the authorities.
Compare what al Qaeda accomplished on 9/11, while enjoying protection and support from the Taliban, to their relative weakness since then — when they were reduced to roaming bands of terrorists.
If the goal of our attack on the Islamic State is to protect Americans from terrorism, then our goal is largely to dismantle the state-like infrastructure it has built. We probably don’t need to kill every fighter or supporter to accomplish that. We mostly need to make them scatter and cut off their ability to tax, sell oil, and control land.
This sounds familiar. It sounds like yet another attempt to overthrow an evil regime in the Muslim world. This makes most Americans wary — which may be one reason the administration avoids discussing its imminent action as “war.”
When Secretary Kerry says we’re not going to war with the Islamic State but are instead “engaging in a very significant counter-terrorism operation,” it might be in part to skirt the need for congressional approval.
Obama illegally attacked Libya in 2011. In 2013, he wanted to invade Syria without Congressional authorization, until his change of heart. On Wednesday, he flatly asserted that he has legal authority to go to almost-war with the Islamic State.
After long denying it as a source of authority, Obama now cites the post-9/11 congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force. “On its face this is an implausible argument because the 2001 AUMF requires a nexus to al Qaeda or associated forces of al Qaeda fighting the United States,” law professor Robert Chesney told Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake.
The 2001 AUMF authorized attacks on “those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons…”
ISIS is a splinter group of al Qaeda, and the two are often enemies. Lake spoke to experts from Harvard and Brookings Institution, including former Defense Department officials. The consensus was that the 2001 AUMF doesn’t really cover a battle against the Islamic State.
There are plenty of reasons President Obama would shy away from a debate on another Iraq war. For those same reasons, the country should demand one.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
