Airstrikes will not Change the Fate of Iraq

This morning, American bombers struck ISIS targets in Northern Iraq. This was the first airstrike in Iraq since 2011. For a little background, you can read a few of my earliest articles on Iraq, reposted below.

http://libertyswindow.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-5-reasons-isis-will-win-iraq_30.html
http://libertyswindow.blogspot.com/2014/06/why-we-lost-iraq.html
http://libertyswindow.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-democracy-fails.html

History has conclusively shown that airpower alone cannot defeat an enemy. It can have a decisive effect, but only if it is combined with substantial ground operations and an exit strategy. There is absolutely no evidence of any plan to combine our airstrikes with substantial ground operations, either American troops or Iraqi regulars. As a result, while airstrikes may slow the advance of ISIS, they will not be decisive.

Moreover, for the reasons outlined in my other articles, there is no will to win, no decisive military force in place, and no viable plan for peace in the aftermath. Pressing this engagement is, at best, ineffective and, at worst, another strategic blunder in a region of the world in which we tend to strategically blunder. It also prolongs what is almost certainly an inevitable result: Civil war in Iraq and then the continuation of perpetual war between Sunnis and Shiites in the broader Middle East. Genocide is almost always a component of civil war between these groups. The only way to stop the genocide has always been for the western powers to occupy large swaths of the Middle East, which we have decided as a nation not to do.

Finally, even if we were to successfully halt ISIS's advance and pave the way for a Shiite advance, and even if the Shiites successfully push ISIS back, the genocide will not end there. There will be old scores to settle and revenge to be had. The Shiite majority in Iraq has been only marginally less oppressive than the Sunnis. To believe that the Saddam remnants and ISIS will be allowed to peacefully retreat back to their homes in Tikrit is just naive. The bloodbath will continue, and the moral justification used to intervene in the first place will be visibly compromised in the eyes of the world when we do nothing later.