Already engulfed by sectarian violence, Iraq is now on the precipice of total collapse.
Having gained control of vast swathes of eastern Syria and northern Iraq, fundamentalist fighters from the Sunni extremist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are now bearing down on Baghdad, the seat of Iraq's Shia-led but nonetheless democratically elected government.
Despite the clear and present danger that ISIS poses to democratic Iraq, stability in the Middle East, and ordinary civilians across the globe, the West is gripped by moral paralysis.
US President Barack Obama remains unmoved by the Iraqi Foreign Minister's urgent request for US air strikes against ISIS fighters, and yesterday announced that the US response will for now be restricted to the deployment of up to 300 military advisors.
Meanwhile, Major General John Cantwell, director of strategic operations with the multi-national forces in Iraq in 2006, has said: 'If we've learned nothing from Iraq, it is that we cannot take short sighted action without thinking it through in detail and at great length.'
Of course, those warning against intervention are right to remind us of the shocking costs and derisory results of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. But they misdiagnose the right policy response to the current crisis.
A foreign military intervention should only be launched as a last resort and on the basis of deep deliberation, but one ineffective pre-emptive intervention in Iraq in 2003 is not a good argument against a cautious and reactive intervention in Iraq in 2014.
To be sure, in the wake of US air strikes, Iraq would still be bitterly divided along sectarian lines, the Middle East would still be wracked by war and terrorism, and the world would still face a threat from hardened ISIS fighters operating in Syria.
Yet the crucial test of whether foreign military intervention is warranted is not whether it will produce perfect peace and stability. Such a standard is utterly unrealistic given that intervention is only ever a best worst option aimed at averting an even more dire disaster.
Further ISIS advances in Iraq in the absence of US air strikes are likely to constitute just such a disaster. A disaster that would lead to the consolidation of a fundamentalist Islamic quasi-state likely to brutalise its own people, spark a broader sectarian conflagration in the Middle East, and act as a training ground for international terrorists.
Dr Benjamin Herscovitch is a Beijing-based research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
Home > Commentary > Opinion > Iraq’s disastrous descent demands decisiveness
Iraq’s disastrous descent demands decisiveness
Having gained control of vast swathes of eastern Syria and northern Iraq, fundamentalist fighters from the Sunni extremist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are now bearing down on Baghdad, the seat of Iraq's Shia-led but nonetheless democratically elected government.
Despite the clear and present danger that ISIS poses to democratic Iraq, stability in the Middle East, and ordinary civilians across the globe, the West is gripped by moral paralysis.
US President Barack Obama remains unmoved by the Iraqi Foreign Minister's urgent request for US air strikes against ISIS fighters, and yesterday announced that the US response will for now be restricted to the deployment of up to 300 military advisors.
Meanwhile, Major General John Cantwell, director of strategic operations with the multi-national forces in Iraq in 2006, has said: 'If we've learned nothing from Iraq, it is that we cannot take short sighted action without thinking it through in detail and at great length.'
Of course, those warning against intervention are right to remind us of the shocking costs and derisory results of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. But they misdiagnose the right policy response to the current crisis.
A foreign military intervention should only be launched as a last resort and on the basis of deep deliberation, but one ineffective pre-emptive intervention in Iraq in 2003 is not a good argument against a cautious and reactive intervention in Iraq in 2014.
To be sure, in the wake of US air strikes, Iraq would still be bitterly divided along sectarian lines, the Middle East would still be wracked by war and terrorism, and the world would still face a threat from hardened ISIS fighters operating in Syria.
Yet the crucial test of whether foreign military intervention is warranted is not whether it will produce perfect peace and stability. Such a standard is utterly unrealistic given that intervention is only ever a best worst option aimed at averting an even more dire disaster.
Further ISIS advances in Iraq in the absence of US air strikes are likely to constitute just such a disaster. A disaster that would lead to the consolidation of a fundamentalist Islamic quasi-state likely to brutalise its own people, spark a broader sectarian conflagration in the Middle East, and act as a training ground for international terrorists.
Dr Benjamin Herscovitch is a Beijing-based research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
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