by Dick Cheney
When President Obama withdrew from Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq had largely been defeated. The Shi’a militias had also been routed. President Obama’s decision not to leave any U.S. forces behind created the space and the conditions for the rebirth of al Qaeda in Iraq, as well as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS.
Even before the Obama withdrawal was complete, President Obama’s administration made clear that they had as little interest in maintaining political ties with Iraq as they did in maintaining a military presence there. A delegation of Iraqi government officials who visited Washington in early 2009 met with Obama administration officials and attempted to thank them for all America had done to liberate their country. The Iraqis reported that it was as though they were thanking representatives of a government that had nothing to do with their liberation. The officials had no interest in their gratitude, nor, apparently, any interest in their country.
Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who has served as U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, describes the severing of the U.S. relationship with Iraq this way:
We disengaged not only militarily at the end of 2011, we disengaged politically. The war was over. We were out. Let the chips fall where they may. Well, I don’t think we thought through exactly how many chips were going to fall and what the consequences of that were going to be.
Senior level phone calls, senior level regular visits basically ceased. There was exactly one visit to Iraq since the end of 2011 until mid-2014 by a cabinet level official. Given that we were hard-wired into their political system, they wouldn’t be able to function effectively with each other, among communities, without us. I think that disengagement brought them all back to zero sum thinking.
The day after the last American troops left Iraq in December 2011, the Shi’ite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, issued an arrest warrant for his Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi. Maliki also began to purge Sunni officers from the military, and he targeted the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni fighters who had fought alongside the United States during the surge. Although they had been given promises that they would be absorbed into the Iraqi Army, Maliki initially stopped paying them and then a number of them were arrested and killed.
Throughout this period, violence was rising in Iraq. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had become the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq in May 2010. As America withdrew, he orchestrated waves of car bombs and suicide attacks across the country.
Soon Baghdadi turned his attention to Syria, where, in early 2011, protests began against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Launched first in Da’ara, a town near the Jordanian border, the demonstrations quickly spread. Protesters chanted the familiar refrain heard in Tahrir Square in Cairo: “The people want the regime to go.”
The Obama administration sent mixed messages. Secretary of State Clinton appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation on March 27, 2011. Host Bob Schieffer asked her whether the United States would use force to defend the Syrian people from attacks by the regime, as we had done in Libya. Pointing to the reign of terror of the Assad family, Schieffer suggested it was at least as bad as the brutality of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. In her answer, Secretary Clinton defended Syrian president Assad:
There is a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he is a reformer.
At the same time, U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, who was under no illusions about the nature of the Assad regime and its leader, was traveling to sites of the anti-regime protests to show solidarity with the demonstrators. He was also urging Washington to act to provide support for the uprisings, which were at this point largely composed of secular, peaceful groups.
As Assad began ordering violent crackdowns, killing protesters in an attempt to end the demonstrations, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on some Syrian officials. President Obama announced on May 19, 2011, that if Assad was unwilling to lead the movement for reform, an unlikely possibility given that his forces were slaughtering protesters, then it was time for him to go:
The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy. President Assad now has a choice: He can lead that transition, or get out of the way. The Syrian government must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests. It must release political prisoners and stop unjust arrests. It must allow human rights monitors to have access to cities like Dara’a; and start a serious dialogue to advance a democratic transition.
Assad stepped up his attacks on the demonstrators, and at dawn on July 31, 2011, he sent tanks into Hama, the city that had been the site of a horrific massacre ordered by Assad’s father in 1982. The Obama administration imposed more sanctions and the president issued another stern instruction for Assad to step down:
The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. . . . We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.
The president was still unwilling, however, to take any action. It should have been clear that stern words were not enough to force Assad from office. It should also have been clear that America’s credibility was diminished when the president instructed Assad to leave and he didn’t.
The question of just what behavior from Assad might spark the use of American military force came up in a press conference on August 20, 2012. President Obama drew his red line:
I have at this point not ordered military engagement in the situation. . . . We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.
On August 21, 2013, Assad launched a sarin gas attack on the suburbs of Damascus where rebel groups were operating. The death toll was over 1,400 civilians. President Obama had drawn a red line. Assad had crossed it. Obviously, the United States would have to act.
Military preparations began. But then, according to Leon Panetta, who was secretary of defense at the time, “President Obama vacillated, first indicating he was prepared to order some strikes, then retreating and agreeing to submit the matter to Congress. The latter was, as he well knew, an almost certain way to scotch any action.”
President Obama had blinked. The consequences were devastating. First, as Panetta explained:
When the president as commander in chief draws a red line, it is critical that he act if the line is crossed. The power of the United States rests on its word, and clear signals are important both to deter adventurism and to reassure allies that we can be counted on. Assad’s action clearly defied President Obama’s warning; by failing to respond, it sent the wrong message to the world.
Amr al-Azm, a member of the Syrian opposition, described it this way:
I think it was a terrible, terrible error on the part of this administration. I mean, it’s not just a red line. This is the president of the United States, this is the White House, and a tinpot dictator challenges that and gets away with it? Who’s going to believe you next time?
Inside Syria, the president’s failure to act was a propaganda victory for ISIS, one that they used to convince Syrians that they couldn’t count on the United States. Oubai Shahbandar, a member of the Syrian opposition, described what happened:
Immediately after [Obama’s failure to attack], extremists and what eventually came to be ISIS were sending the message to the locals that, “Look, you have been betrayed by the world. Do not trust those nationalist rebel forces,” that at this point were receiving nominal support from the United States and its regional allies.
As President Obama vacillated about whether to take action, the Russians sensed an opening. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov offered to get the Assad regime to turn over its chemica
l weapons and agree to have them moved out of Syria. The Obama administration has claimed this as a diplomatic success. On July 20, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “We struck a deal where we got one hundred percent of their chemical weapons out.” This claim is undoubtedly somewhat surprising to the Syrian civilians who were the victims of the thirty-five chlorine gas attacks that occurred between March 16 and May 26, 2015.
While the president was making threats and delivering ultimatums, the situation in Syria and Iraq continued to deteriorate. Baghdadi’s influence and effectiveness spread as ISIS forces conducted an increasing number of operations in both countries. In July 2013, ISIS forces attacked Iraqi prisons on the outskirts of Baghdad and freed at least five hundred prisoners. In August 2013, ISIS took control in Raqqa, Syria, and made the city its headquarters. In October 2013, the situation in Iraq had gotten so bad that Prime Minister Maliki visited Washington to seek assistance.
Maliki’s warnings to the Obama administration—that ISIS posed an existential threat to Iraq and that Iraq did not have control of its own borders—were echoed by intelligence reports the administration was receiving. President Obama’s response was to provide a minimal amount of assistance to the Iraqis. Obama officials fundamentally viewed what was happening inside Syria and Iraq as not their problem. The constant refrain was “This is up to the Iraqis to sort out,” “This isn’t our fight,” “We can’t do it for them.” All of which ignored the direct, clear, and present danger of ISIS to the security of the United States.
In 2014, after establishing a base of operations in Syria, and gathering strength and followers, ISIS spread full force back into Iraq. They bulldozed border crossings and began taking Iraqi cities. In January 2014, they took Fallujah. The Obama administration still failed to recognize the magnitude of the threat. In an interview published the same month ISIS took Fallujah, President Obama explained his view of the terrorist group: “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think it is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” The terrorists President Obama described as the “jayvee team” would soon control more resources and territory than any other terrorist group in history.
In June, ISIS took Mosul. Baghdadi declared the establishment of a caliphate and, as caliph, preached a Ramadan sermon in Mosul’s main mosque. The caliphate stretched across territory in Syria and Iraq, effectively erasing the former national boundaries, and securing a huge propaganda victory. It was a practical victory as well. The establishment of a caliphate imposes an obligation of allegiance upon those Muslims around the globe who share ISIS’s apocalyptic, medieval interpretation of Islam. Since the declaration, tens if not hundreds of thousands of jihadists from around the globe have flooded into the caliphate.
ISIS’s spread into territory that now reaches virtually from Baghdad to Damascus has continued despite American air strikes that began—in a limited fashion with onerous rules of engagement and no forward U.S. air controllers—in September 2014. In addition to the territory ISIS controls in Iraq and Syria, the group has established wilayats or administrative districts in Yemen, the Sinai peninsula, Libya, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia.
During the period of ISIS’s expansion, President Obama has minimized the threat, declared the war on terror over, proclaimed that it was U.S. policy to “degrade and ultimately defeat ISIS,” declined to deploy the resources to accomplish this, and announced at least twice that we had no strategy to do so. His actions have served to accelerate progress by our enemies rather than safeguarding our interests. He has pointed to examples of his own success, only to see those policies deteriorate under the weight of the advance of militant Islam. Announcing his plans to combat ISIS in September 2014, for example, President Obama said the United States would adopt a plan similar to the counterterrorism strategy “that we have successfully pursued in Yemen . . . for years.” Six months later, in the face of advancing Iranian-backed rebels, the United States was forced to close its embassy and pull out of the country. America had also been forced to close its embassies in Syria and Libya due to the violence and chaos unleashed by the rise of America’s adversaries across the region.
Allowing this rise to continue nearly unabated, the president has pointed to one instance in which he would deploy U.S. ground forces: “If we discover that ISIL had gotten possession of a nuclear weapon and we had to run an operation to get it out of their hands, then yes, you can anticipate that not only would Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin] Dempsey recommend me sending U.S. ground troops to get that weapon out of their hands, but I would order it.” Is the president of the United States really willing to let ISIS get a nuclear weapon before he acts? Surely even this president and this national security team recognize that would be too late. Isn’t there at least one person inside the Obama White House who could tell the president that his job is to prevent the terrorists from getting nuclear weapons, not to wait and act after the fact?
It is abundantly clear as we write this that the Obama strategy to defeat or even degrade ISIS is failing. General Jack Keane testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 21, 2015:
Looking at this strategy today we know now that the conceptual plan is fundamentally flawed. The resources provided to support Iraq are far from adequate. The timing and urgency to provide arms, equipment, and training is insufficient. And as such, we are not only failing, we are in fact losing this war. Moreover, I can say with certainty, this strategy will not defeat ISIS.
The president is undeterred. ISIS is Iraq’s problem, not ours. Having lived through the attacks of 9/11, the president cannot claim ignorance about the threat to America posed by terrorists who have the territory, desire, resources, and commitment to attack America, and with the spread of ISIS, the threat America faces is grave and growing. No combination of armies, absent American leadership, will defeat them. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has described the situation this way:
It is hard to overstate the threat that this organization poses. I call it al Qaeda Version 6.0. The Islamic State is far better organized, equipped, and funded than the original. They are more experienced and more numerous. Several thousand carry Western passports, including American ones. All the terrorists have to do is get on a plane and head west. But perhaps the most important asset they possess is territory. For the first time since 9/11, a determined and capable enemy has the space and security to plan complex, longer-range operations. If we don’t think we are on that list, we are deluding ourselves.
In his time left in office, President Obama would do well to remember the words of one of his Democratic predecessors. In 1948, President Harry Truman spoke to Congress about the growing Soviet threat to Western Europe. Urging Congress to act immediately to pass the Marshall Plan and maintain America’s military strength, Truman said, “There are times in world history when it is far wiser to act than to hesitate. There is some risk involved in action—there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act.” President Truman continued, “We must be prepared to pay the price for peace, or assuredly we shall pay the price of war.”
In years to come, President Obama will have to explain to his fellow citizens why he chose inaction as the threat grew, spread, and gathered strength? Why was he unwilling to stop those bent on America’s destruction?
When history asks, how will he answer?
FIVE
Appeasing Adversaries
If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.
—PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN, MARCH 8, 1983
In his first inaugural address, on January 20, 2009, President Obama had a message for dictators around the globe. “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent,” he said, “know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench y
our fist.” Leaders in Tehran and Moscow had yet to take the measure of America’s new president, but over the next six years, as they were placated and even appeased, they learned that the president’s extended hand was full of prizes for them and did not require—contrary to what he had said—that they unclench their fists.
IRAN
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 1987. The Iranian delegation arrived with a check, in Swiss francs, for approximately $3 million. Representatives from A. Q. Khan’s nuclear network, including S. M. Farouq and B.S.A. Tahir, met them in the hotel room carrying a briefcase containing designs for centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Once Farouq confirmed the Iranians’ check would clear, Khan’s team handed over the briefcase. Technical drawings for a centrifuge were just the beginning. Khan’s sales to the Iranians would eventually include a starter kit for a centrifuge plant, centrifuge components, and instructions for enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels. The Iranians were Khan’s first customers in what would become the most dangerous nuclear proliferation network in history.
MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS earlier, the Iranians had established a peaceful nuclear energy program. In 1967, the Tehran Research Reactor went online. In 1970, the Iranian parliament ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which aimed to halt the spread of nuclear weapons technology by creating a two-tiered structure for membership. The five countries that tested nuclear weapons before 1968—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Great Britain, and France—joined the NPT as nuclear weapons states. Other states that signed the treaty, the non-nuclear-weapons states, promised not to develop nuclear weapons. In exchange, the NPT recognized the absolute right of all signatories to nuclear programs “for peaceful purposes,” and the nuclear weapons states agreed to provide technical assistance and equipment for the development of peaceful programs. Nearly every country in the world has now signed the NPT.