Is the US About to Make a Blunder of Historic Proportions by Escalating Against ISIS?

By Michael Rozeff

The Atlantic has a decent article on what ISIS is and wants. That’s one matter. A second matter is how ISIS came into existence, and clearly the blunders of the U.S. in the Middle East have been very important in causing ISIS to arise.

But the most important thing at this juncture is what

the U.S. does next concerning ISIS and what it has already been doing, which is the bombing campaign, the reintroduction of ground forces in Iraq, and policies regarding Syria. Obama has already brought the U.S. into a war against ISIS, the self-declared Islamic State (IS) or the caliphate. Obama and Congress are going to continue this war. This war is no small matter. It already covers a very large amount of territory. It cannot be won by the U.S. The U.S. didn’t obtain victories (achieve its aims) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. There is no reason to think the U.S. can win this one either by applying its force of arms.

This is another U.S. blunder of historic proportions. The challenges presented by IS have to be met by the countries in which it is seeking to rule and already rules. They have to defend themselves. Entry by the U.S mobilizes more adherents to IS, allowing IS to argue that the U.S. is attacking the Muslim religion. Every U.S. intervention in the Middle East has radicalized opposition to the U.S. The U.S. presence helps them recruit. The U.S. interventions have spread opposition across a huge swath that now covers Libya, Syria, and Iraq and surely some other countries as well. Further military intervention by the U.S. will divide and weaken the very countries that the U.S. aims to protect.

Obama had the right idea when he said that the peoples in these lands must do their own fighting, but he has shown himself to be a man who says one thing and soon is doing the opposite or something else. He has already placed American military personnel at risk of capture or being killed by IS forces in Iraq. Congressional pressures are huge. Jeb Bush is already calling for enhanced military. Hillary Clinton, another presidential prospect, is a war hawk. Great War II continues unabated and now expands. No matter what Obama does or how he conducts this part of the war for the next 2 years, the odds are that the next president will raise the ante and commit more forces, including ground forces, against IS.

The AUMF against IS means that Great War II (the Great War of the American Empire) will go on for years to come, many years to come.

IS is definitely evil. It’s killing people, mostly Muslims, by methods that scare people. That’s their goal. They want people in these lands to knuckle under to their rule. States are built on brutality and blood. IS is no exception. This doesn’t mean that the U.S. should fight it. The U.S. has itself been the site of many evils. It is estimated that 19,000 whites and 45,000 Indians died in the American Indian Wars. It is estimated that Civil War deaths in America were 750,000. Am I equating the evil of IS to American evils? Not at all. I am saying that evil is not some abstract thing that belongs uniquely to an enemy or to a group like IS that’s murdering people. By the same token, good is not uniquely an American property. Prior to taking any action, good and evil cannot always be cleanly evaluated. Lincoln thought the Union should be preserved, the good he sought; but the evil that came out of his quest was huge. Wilson thought the U.S. should enter World War I to beat the Kaiser, but we now recognize that World War II was a consequence. Bush thought that the U.S. should remove Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, but we now recognize that one result has been the rise of IS. Obama and Hillary Clinton thought that it would be a good thing for Gaddafi to be removed, but the results have been more evil than good. The same can be said of the Ukraine, where the U.S. thought it would be good to meddle.

Time after time after time, as in these few instances, the quest by the state for something “good” produces an abundance of “evil”.

It is not at all clear that the U.S. making war on IS will produce “good” and not produce even greater “evil”. A better path is for the U.S. to step aside and let the affected nations come together with their own plans. And if this includes some nearby European nations, that is their business. The U.S. should not make war on IS. It shouldn’t contribute to a NATO or a UN force, if they decide on war.

Neutrality is not in America’s blood, however, war is.

The above originally appeared at LewRockwell.com.