On Friday, President Obama announced on “Good Morning America” that ISIS had been contained. Hours later, coordinated ISIS attacks across Paris killed more than 120 and wounded hundreds more.
French President François Hollande has vowed a “merciless” response to what he rightly calls an “act of war.” Hmm. France is a NATO member. How will the alliance react if Paris invokes NATO’s collective-defense guarantees?
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| Rescue workers gather at victims in the 10th district of Paris following the attacks on November 13. |
The president had insisted that was working. “I don’t think they’re gaining strength,” he said Friday on ABC. “We have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria . . . you don’t see this systematic march by [ISIS] across the terrain.”
It’s obvious why Obama wants to pretend his strategy’s effective. After all, no Western leader (and few if any Western publics) has the stomach for sending in the ground troops needed to simply take ISIS out.
Which, after all, would leave the problem of what comes next: If the troops just come home afterward, won’t some other nest of horrors take ISIS’s place? On the other hand, most see the long, bloody occupation of Iraq as evidence that leaving Western troops in place won’t solve anything, either.
But the “degrade” tactics leave ISIS in place — success enough for the terrorist state to attract tens of thousands of new recruits, many from the West. Nor is this the first time those recruits returned home to strike: The Charlie Hebdo attacks came 10 months ago.
Yet even ISIS is also one corner of many in the Syrian civil war — which is flooding Europe with refugees, a tide that seems to have concealed at least one of the men who struck Friday night.
There are no easy answers to any of this; that’s why the West has been muddling along since ISIS first reared its hideous head. But that comes at a cost, too — not just in ISIS attacks like Friday’s, but in options lost.
Enforcing a no-fly zone in northern Syria, for example, is now a no-go — unless you’re willing to shoot down the Russian planes bombing there to shore up Bashar al-Assad (whom Syrians still hate more than ISIS).
Beef up security at home? France has been doing that and will surely do more now. But no war is won on defense — and no defense is perfect.
In that light, wasn’t it remarkable to see Mayor de Blasio, in the wake of Friday’s attacks, praising the anti-terror apparatus built by former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly — a guy de Blasio has been badmouthing for years?
Let’s give the mayor credit for at least some rethinking in the face of the horrors in Paris. And hope that the president and leaders across the West can be as flexible.
Because Friday night was vivid proof that what they’ve been doing isn’t good enough.
Source: NewYork Post
