海角大神

Late yesterday while most Americans were settling down to watch聽Monday Night Football聽or the season premier of their favorite television show,聽the United States began bombing ISIS targets in Syria:

On some level, of course, these attacks can hardly have come as a surprise. The administration has been telegraphing the intention to attack the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in Syria for at least the past month, and President Obama said specifically in聽his speech nearly two weeks ago聽that the attacks would be coming. From a military point of view, of course, that means that there really was no element of surprise involved here, and there have been several reports in recent weeks that the group was moving men and equipment into civilian areas and otherwise taking steps to hide their most important assets in an effort to protect them from air attacks. How effective those efforts can be is questionable, of course, but at the very least it should mean that these airstrikes, and what follows, are unlikely to be sufficient to wipe out IS and may not necessarily do anything to seriously degrade its military position, which is of course the first part of President Obama鈥檚 鈥渄egrade and destroy鈥� strategy that he announced in his White House speech. As has been noted before, any successful strategy against this group, especially in Syria, is going to require some level of ground combat forces, and since the administration continues to insist that its plans will not require American ground combat forces, that means we have to rely on the so-called 鈥渕oderate鈥� Syrian rebels. As I鈥檝e noted before,聽it鈥檚 entirely unclear just how reliable these 鈥渕oderates鈥� are聽and just how dedicated they would be to fighting IS rather than taking aim at their principal target, which is of course the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Additionally, at this point these groups, such as the Free Syrian Army, don鈥檛 appear to be anywhere near IS in fighting strength, meaning that聽it could take upwards of a year to train and equip them聽to the point where they鈥檇 even be able to begin to bring the fight. Finally, as聽Zack Beauchamp聽notes at Vox, there鈥檚 little chance that any American military action in Syria is going to be sufficient to change the factors on the ground that strengthen IS or turn the tide to the extent that the so-called 鈥渕oderates鈥� will be able to reverse a tide of rising jihadist victories in Syria that have been going on for the past three years.

The other important issue here, of course, is that the United States is now, effectively, aiding the regime of Bashar Assad in its civil war. The administration will deny this, of course, and point to our support, now authorized by Congress, for the 鈥渕oderate鈥� Syrian rebels. However, when you start attacking the military assets of one of the most prominent parts of the rebel alliance that is fighting against the regime in Damascus, it鈥檚 hard to argue that your actions won鈥檛, even in just some limited sense, have positive benefits for a regime that the president was talking about bombing just a year ago. This parallels our actions against IS in Iraq, of course, in the sense that our actions they are helping to strengthen Iran鈥檚 position both in the region and as a player in Iraqi domestic politics. What this suggests, of course, is that the end result of our war against IS is likely to be a Syria that, in the end, survives its civil war and an Iran that is even more influential in the region, both of which are likely to create their own forms of regional instability, not to mention concern on the part of the Saudis, the Gulf States, and the Jordanians.

As for the attacks themselves, it鈥檚 safe to assume that this is only the first round and that we鈥檙e likely to see the same kind of escalation that we have seen over the last six weeks in Iraq. Those attacks, you will recall started out as a supposed humanitarian effort and a need to protect Americans located in and around Kiruk, but have since quickly expanded to be a much broader attack on IS positions in the country. As it turns out, though,聽the attacks haven鈥檛 seemed to have much of an impact on IS itself:

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/