By Noah
Rothman
Tuesday,
October 10, 2023
“I can
report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the
end of the year,” President Barack Obama
declared in
October 2011. “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”
The nation’s bitter experience in Iraq — from the invasion and occupation to
the insurgency and the surge to the Anbar awakening and the Arab Spring — had
exhausted Americans’ patience with the place. They were glad to be rid of their
obligation to safeguard Iraq’s sovereignty. And on the eve of Obama’s December
2011 withdrawal, three-quarters
of U.S. adults approved of the decision to withdraw.
But
America’s swift retrenchment left a vacuum in its wake. The unrest that erupted
throughout the region in that year gave rise to the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria. The brutal militia group cascaded over Syria’s borders, sacked Iraqi
cities, overwhelmed the Iraqi Security Forces, and established a medieval
caliphate typified by unimaginable brutality toward anyone whose creed or
ethnicity had no place in the world ISIS tried to build. Then ISIS started
killing Americans.
In
atrocities that shocked the global conscience, ISIS applied to Americans James
Foley and Steven Sotloff the treatment they had reserved for Iraq’s minority
groups — beheading them
on camera. With
that, American public opinion turned on a dime. By the time Barack Obama
announced that America would have to return to Iraq’s battlefields, ostensibly
to defend the besieged Yazidi population from imminent genocide, the voting public
supported the
effort to restabilize Iraq by force, and many changed their
minds about
the wisdom of the 2011 withdrawal.
As you
read this, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is
barreling its way toward the Eastern Mediterranean — a speedy redeployment that
reflects the urgency and gravity of the crisis in Israel and the war that is
soon to commence in the Gaza Strip. Its crew may not be tasked only with
supporting the evacuation of Americans in the region for long.
Having
captured many international civilians, Hamas reportedly has an unknown number
of American citizens in its custody. Efforts by relatives to make contact with their loved ones in captivity
have reportedly been unsuccessful. The relatives of the hostages are making
direct appeals to the White House to do something — anything within America’s
vast capabilities — to save their families. “I want to speak about the
responsibility that the U.S. administration — President Biden and the Secretary
of State Blinken — has for the lives of every U.S. citizen that is out there,”
one American
citizen begged
as his voice cracked. “They are responsible to bring the U.S. citizens back
home safe and sound.”
But what
if that is impossible? What if negotiations with Hamas via proxies in Qatar
come to nothing, or the price demanded of America and its allies sacrifices an
unacceptable level of security for their respective citizens? Hamas has already
threatened to reprise ISIS’s tactics. “From this moment on, we announce that
every targeting of our people who are safe in their homes without prior warning
will be met with regret by the execution of one or our enemy’s civilian
hostages, and we will broadcast this with sound and video,” announced Hamas
spokesman Abu Ubaida on
Monday. What if he means it? What if Hamas starts killing Americans?
The
prospect is too terrible to imagine, but that is what the Biden White House is
now confronting. How will the American public respond to such a grotesque
display of barbarity? Will the voting public sit mournfully by as its citizens
are slaughtered? Will they watch helplessly as their country is humiliated?
Will they continue to see Israel’s war as Israel’s alone?
It is in
the strategic interest of the United States to support Israel’s righteous war
of self-defense against the Hamas regime in Gaza, but it is not in America’s
immediate interest to become directly involved in that conflict. However,
disengagement may quickly become politically untenable if Hamas makes good on
its threats. The Biden White House should remember Obama’s experience in 2014.
They may soon face a far more terrible version of it themselves.
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