In 2014, as the threat from ISIS was growing, President Obama dismissed the terror group as the “JV team,” an inconsequential threat compared to al-Qaeda. Fast forward two years and ISIS has become the Islamic State. It controls vast territory on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border. It now also has provinces in other countries, most notably in Libya, which has become the second-most important ISIS stronghold. Libya is now home to over 5,000 ISIS fighters headquartered in Sirte just across the Mediterranean from Italy, and they are in danger of gaining control of at least part of Libya’s vast oil reserves.
By all indications, the Defense Department is eager to act against this growing terrorist enclave. “It’s fair to say that we’re looking to take decisive military action,” General Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said.
But if this Daily Beast report is accurate, “the Obama administration has turned down a U.S. military plan for an assault on ISIS’s regional hub.”
It’s not hard to see why Obama, a president who came to office in opposition to the Iraq War, would be opposed to another deployment in the Middle East, but in this case, the Pentagon was not proposing ensnaring large numbers of U.S. troops in ground combat. The Pentagon proposal, insofar as it has been leaked accurately, called for air strikes and possibly Special Operations Forces to work with Libyan militias opposed to ISIS.
A smart plan would also include a major component devoted to bolstering the fragile Libyan unity government backed by the United Nations. It is imperative that Libya have a functioning government again; until it does, that country will be wide open to terrorist groups including ISIS and al-Qaeda. Christopher Chivvis of RAND has some valuable suggestions for how the U.S. can flex its muscles as it did in Bosnia, employing airpower and sanctions, in order to create a functioning state. This is something that President Obama shamefully failed to do in 2011 after helping to overthrow the Qaddafi regime, even though the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan clearly showed the dangers of toppling a dictator without building a new government to rule.
But as the Washington Post wisely opines, the state-building project in Libya, while necessary, is likely to be protracted and “ultimately, a Libyan political solution should not be a prerequisite for action against the terrorist threat.” The Post calls the “the United States and its allies” to “conduct airstrikes against Sirte and help a Libyan protection force that has been trying to guard oil facilities.”
You would think that President Obama would grasp the imperative to act now in Libya when we have seen the high price of inaction in Syria and Iraq. But, for a smart man, Obama has shown himself surprisingly unwilling to learn from experience.
