Why US air strikes on ISIS are right, and why the left should support them

It was right to oppose Israeli brutality in Gaza, but now it's right to support the use of force by the US in Northern Iraq.

The problem of ISIS won’t simply go away if we close our eyes to it

Overnight US President Barack Obama has ordered air strikes on Islamist militants in Iraq:

“Today I authorized two operations in Iraq — targeted airstrikes to protect our American personnel, and a humanitarian effort to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death.”

Meanwhile this morning PM David Cameron has made a statement in support of the action but has ruled out British military involvement in Iraq:

“…I fully agree with the President that we should stand up for the values we believe in – the right to freedom and dignity, whatever your religious beliefs.”

However a Downing Street spokeswoman added that the UK was “not planning a military intervention”.

The plight of the Yazidi community in Iraq is finally being taken seriously. More importantly, ISIS, the Islamist rabble that have taken over swathes of Syria and Iraq, are at last being seen for the civilisational threat that they are.

The left must in this instance put aside its reflex opposition to US military action (as a majority did over Rwanda and Kosovo) and try to ensure that Iraqis and Kurds are not left high and dry by Western governments out of sheer electoral expediency.

As seems quite clear, there is very little public appetite, both in the US as well as in the UK, for military involvement overseas. As such President Obama has ruled out the use of ground force against ISIS using the insular argument that ISIS are a problem for the Iraqis to sort out by themselves.

Yet the plight of the Yazidi should draw attention to the fact that, over the past 20 years, ‘keeping out’ has had consequences no less egregious than ‘going in’. For every Iraq and Afghanistan there has been a Srebrenica, a Rwanda and, more recently, a Ghouta.

Indeed, as many warned last year when the US and UK governments decided not to intervene militarily in Syria, there may come a point when an overspill of the Syrian civil war makes minding our own business impossible, just as the 9/11 attacks made a confrontation with the Taliban inevitable.

ISIS are probably best described as clerical fascists, and as the old left-wing slogan used to have it, fascism is war. In other words, and just as with European fascism during the previous century, there is no sitting on the fence on this one: when fascistic ideology is involved the war will invariably come to you.

The situation is such that the West either now helps the Kurds to hold ISIS (at the very least) or acquiesces in genocide – something that would offend any concept of international human rights.

As Sofia Patel has documented, there are around 500,000 Yazidisin living in northern Iraq along the Syrian border. The recent collapse of the Peshmerga defense (Kurdish defense forces) on Sunday means that both areas are now under IS control. 500 Yazidis have already been killed and ISIS forces are calling for the entire Yezidi people to be wiped out.

This is why President Obama has authorised air strikes as well as humanitarian assistance to those Yazidis currently stranded without food or water on Mount Sinjar, where they have fled to escape rampaging ISIS fighters.

Instead of dwelling on the rights or wrongs (mostly wrongs) of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, those who are usually so keen to ‘prove’ that ISIS are somehow a result of Western policy need now to decide how they want to deal with ISIS.

This means doing one of two things: either passively accepting what looks to be an imminent genocide and papering over any discomfort with unworldy pacifist slogans; or it means accepting the necessity of air strikes and persuading a reluctant electorate that international solidarity (in the form of decisive military force) is not simply another empty slogan.

We may live in another ‘low dishonest decade’, as W.H Auden called the 1930s, but if human rights are to mean anything there can be no sitting on the fence when it comes to the protection of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq. The question is not, ‘Will we end up in a quagmire/spend too much money aiding the Kurds and Yazidis?’ The question is, ‘do we put so little value on human life that we are willing to frivolously sit back and watch fascist forces exterminate it?’

Anti-fascism isn’t a purely negative idea that you can be vaguely ‘for’ without being in favour of any definite policy. If you say you are opposed to fascism then at some point you have to be prepared to fight it, rather than relying on other people in other parts of the world to do the fighting for you. Kurdish forces in Northern Iraq are being pushed back; now they need Western help.

It was right to oppose Israeli brutality in Gaza, but now it’s right to support the use of force by the US in Northern Iraq – even if you do find yourself on the same side as David Cameron. But then, if you really think that is the most important issue here you probably ought to reassess your priorities.

The challenge for progressives isn’t to ‘stop the war’ in Iraq – the war is happening whether we like it or not. The challenge is to make sure that war-weary electorates do not turn their backs on the people of Iraq as they have largely done with the people of Syria. The problem of ISIS won’t simply go away if we close our eyes to it.

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56 Responses to “Why US air strikes on ISIS are right, and why the left should support them”

  1. zeocrash

    While it’s true that ISIS opposed Assad and we also oppose Assad, surely ISIS’s current strength is because they filled a void in the Syrian conflict left by our inaction. If we’d stepped up and properly supported the FSA, there would not have been a niche for ISIS to fill.

  2. Andrew Coates

    As said here in crude terms,” Can we stand by, criticise Obama, and let nothing be done to come to their aid?

    Some of us would accept help from anyone if we were in the plight of the potential victims of the Islamist genociders.”

    : https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2014/08/08/obama-authorises-targeted-air-strikes-to-prevent-a-potential-act-of-genocide-in-iraq-where-does-the-left-stand/

  3. Ford Truck

    Politically, I am normally somewhat liberal, but I am far from a pacifist and I think time will show that we must be merciless with groups like ISIS.

    I disagree with those that say we need “boots on the ground” though. I think in modern warfare, we can do far more damage to ISIS (or other opposition) from the air. That means drones, bomber sorties, helicopter gunships, etc. But we should not stop with a few operations to slow them down, or try to protect the Yazidi or some other “friendly” group.

    I am also not suggesting we focus attention on overthrowing Assad or stabilizing some puppet government. Instead, we need to wipe ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and any other radical Muslim group and their supporters or sympathizers off the face of the earth! Wipe them out, no matter where they are, no matter who they are threatening.

    That was the goal in WWII with the Nazis, and Japanese! No mercy, no quarter!! And yes, there will be collateral damage, sorry, but that happens in war. Look at WWI and WWII. We accepted collateral damage as a fact of war and only the most uneducated (or outright stupid) would argue that the methods of those wars were wrong.

  4. Ford Truck

    Airstrikes yes, again and again and again! Arm the Kurds and christian forces to the hilt! But U.S. boots on the ground. NO!!

  5. Bret

    Cut and paste this one in your scrapbooks folks it’s a rare one… I’m thanking our president.
    THANK YOU! President Barack H. Obama for striking down on ISIS. That’s the way to do it!
    Let us all, and by all I mean, freedom loving people keep striking them with napalm, white phosphourus, whatever it takes to vaporize these monsters. Let us take food, water, medicine, medical aid, whatever is needed to those seeking refuge on that mountain.
    Remember 73 C.E. in the Holy Land… NEVER AGAIN MASADA !!!

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