Much is being made of President Obama’s “we don’t have a strategy yet” line last week when addressing what the United States will do about Islamist militants. He has been excoriated for appearing weak and indecisive.
It was an unfortunate choice of words, even if it happens to be true. The reality is no one person or one country has a single solution for a very complicated problem. Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times that the region is engulfed in three different civil wars.
“When you have a region beset by that many civil wars at once, it means there is no center, only sides. And when you intervene in the middle of a region with no center, you very quickly become a side.”
But the country, watching the brutal ISIS executions of Americans with horror, is more interested in payback than the nuance of foreign policy. It’s easy to lapse into the “bomb somebody” response. Friedman says that’s what got us into trouble after September 11th.
“We were in a hurry, myself included, to change things after 9/11, and when you’re in a hurry you ignore complexities that come back to haunt you later.”
Still, at times of tumult we expect leadership. It’s the job of those in power to reassure the American people that there will be a reckoning, not only for the murders of journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, but also for ISIS’s other atrocities.
President Obama started down that path during a press conference in Estonia where he said the U.S. would “degrade and destroy” ISIS. “We will not be intimidated,” the President said. “Their horrific acts only unite us as a country and stiffen our resolve to take the fight against these terrorists.”
However, later in the press conference, the President drifted back to intellectualizing the fight, calling ISIS a “manageable problem.” Fox News Digital Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt opined, “So which is it? Destroy or manage? And how exactly do you manage barbarians who are beheading your citizens?”
Vice President Joe Biden was more succinct during a speech in Portsmouth, New Hampshire yesterday. “When people harm Americans, we don’t retreat and we don’t forget,” he said. “They should know we follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice, because hell is where they will reside!”
We need to hear that occasionally, not to whip up jingoistic wrath, but to be reminded that we are a strong, convicted nation that will not waver in the face of the existential threat of Islamic radicalism, no matter how long it takes.
It took ten years to track down and kill Osama bin Laden after 9/11. In 1960, Israel finally captured Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann, 14 years after he escaped following the end of WWII.
The often-studied Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz advised warring nations to avoid half-measures when engaging in battle. “Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.”
What’s the strategy for defeating ISIS? Perhaps there really isn’t one yet. But in the meantime, it’s important to hear the Commander-in-Chief tell the country and the world in clear and unequivocal terms that we will not yield.