Looking at photographs of the ruined, desolate streets of what was once the Islamic State group’s capital of Raqqa is a reminder of the overwhelming, pitilessly effective military power of the United States.
Perhaps it’s a tribute to the inevitable nature of American force, once it‘s engaged, that the fall of Raqqa this week provoked so little public discussion. Commentators focused on whether President Trump had dissed the parents of America’s fallen warriors, but they barely seemed to notice that our military has achieved a goal that three years ago seemed distant and uncertain.
The heaps of rubble in Raqqa that once housed terrorists and torturers convey a bedrock lesson, as valid now as in 1945: It’s a mistake to provoke the United States. It may take America a while to respond to a threat, but once the machine of US power is engaged, it’s relentless -- so long as the political will exists to sustain it.
The Raqqa campaign is a reminder, too, of something we rarely see in these divisive days -- the continuity of U.S. commitments from the Obama administration to Trump. Truly, it was a shared enterprise. Trump deserves credit for accelerating the campaign against the Islamic State group and giving commanders more authority. But the basic strategy -- and the will to resist the jihadists in the first place -- was President Barack Obama’s.
A secure and confident Trump would invite Obama to the White House to meet with commanders and troops returning from the battle. That would remind the world that America can keep its word, across administrations. Trump, still anxious about his authority, seems incapable of such generosity.
Thinking back to the beginning of this campaign is to recall how fragile it initially seemed. The Islamic State exploded in the summer of 2014, overrunning Mosul and racing like a firestorm across the Sunni regions of Syria and Iraq. The lines of defense buckled. The Kurdish capital of Irbil was in danger; so was Baghdad.
As a precondition for American military involvement, Obama demanded a new government in Baghdad that would be less pro-Shiite sectarian and better able to win Sunni trust. He was right, and he got what he wanted in the replacement of Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister by Haider al-Abadi, who has had a steadier hand than Iraq-watchers initially predicted.
When Obama announced his goal to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State group, it sounded like an obtuse and conditional war aim. And it didn’t help that nobody agreed on a name for this enemy, variously called “ISIS,” “ISIL” and “Daesh.” America was hardly enthusiastic for the war after long, frustrating battles against Islamic insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Obama pushed ahead.
The campaign got off to a slow start. Tribes in Iraq’s Euphrates Valley pleaded for American aid that was initially slow to arrive. The Iraqi military was a mess until the US-trained Counter-Terrorism Service began to display real combat power. But gradually, mostly invisibly, the battle turned: US airpower killed tens of thousands of recruits to the caliphate, obliterating anyone who raised a digital signal. The U.S. military said little about this harsh campaign, but Syrian and Iraqi fighters saw it, and people go with a winner.
Watching this battle unfold during multiple visits to Iraq and Syria, I saw two factors that changed the tide. First, the US found committed allies. The toughest fighters initially were Kurdish, the KDP and PUK peshmerga militias in Iraq, and the YPG in Syria. They stood their ground and fought, and died. This Kurdish loyalty is worth remembering now, in their time of troubles. The anti-Islamic State group alliance broadened as the Iraqi military got stronger, and YPG recruited Sunnis into a broader coalition dubbed the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Victory came from marrying these committed fighters to America’s devastating firepower. The US could dial in strikes from an array of platforms -- drones, fixed-wing aircraft, advanced artillery. The ruin of Raqqa makes it look like we just pounded everything, and the US needs to make a self-critical accounting of civilian loss of life. Honesty about the war’s human cost, and American responsibility for mistakes made in the fog of battle, is the best bridge to the future.
The problem with this campaign from the beginning was that our military dominance was patched on top of political quicksand. That’s still true. Obama never had a clear political strategy for creating a reformed, post-Islamic State group Syria and Iraq; neither does Trump. Our military is supremely effective in its sphere, but the enduring problems of governance, it cannot solve.
By David Ignatius
David Ignatius’ email address is davidignatius@washpost.com. –Ed.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
