Loss of Connection

I’ve been reading all about ISIS. Mostly I’ve been covering the news on the fighting in Syria because it looks like it’s coming to an end. The ISIS part of it at least. I feel a little guilty about not following the wars we (Americans) are currently engaged in closer. It feels so far away. Not only far in distance terms but also far away in relevant terms. This is sadly true in too many of these wars. We, the American people, lose touch with the mission and the purpose of sending soldiers there in the first place. I don’t mean the mission isn’t worthwhile or critical to preventing strongholds of Islamic terrorists that can launch attacks from sympathetic governments in foreign countries. This is how we got into Afghanistan after all, take out Al Qaeda and prevent weak governments from inviting Osama bin laden types to set up camp.

My concern is that Americans are losing connection to the conflicts we’re involved in. We are able to fight them like on a small scale with limited loss of life (good thing) and little knowledge of the scope of the battle (bad thing). Syria sums this up perfectly. 

  

Syria is basically a mixture of groups and alliances all controlling different territories and with different ideologies. It’s the last of the Muslim countries to have a rebelling in what started during 2011 in the “Arab Spring”. It’s also had the toughest government response to the fighting. Egypt, Morocco, Libya and Yemen all forced their leaders out through popular will and violent street protests. Most of the rebellions played out in similar ways, a citizen gets punished unfairly with beatings or torture for some low level crime. Defiance on a small level (supposedly kids that used graffiti on official buildings) created a full scale insurrection that dragged other fighters, jihadists and regime supporters. The underlying resentment against officials created a spark that lit a powder keg. 

When we finally did send a contingent of troops the biggest questions was “OK, so who are we supporting exactly?”  I remember talking to a women whose husband was in Syria, this was probably 2016 or so. My response was “Wait, so we have troops there?” Maybe “troops” is the wrong word, more likely they were elite units and specialists.

To say the rebels we trained didn’t share our values is an understatement. I don’t mean in the “well I don’t approve of their methods” line we use when explaining support for non-democratic leaders. I mean cruelty on a ridiculous scale. I remember a video of a rebel who killed a soldier and cut his heart out Temple of Doom style. Unlike Temple of Doom the fighter did one better and actually ate it. Yep. Those were our boys alright, for a while anyway. No one was going to make the ‘he may be a cannibal but he’s our cannibal’ case at least. We abandoned the cause of training and equipping a lot of these groups shortly after.

The reality of most wars, conflicts, episodes and flare ups is they reinforce geopolitical realities rather than realign them. Countries need allies the way people need friends.  Friendly governments align based on tradition or pragmatism. The U.S. aligns with Western Europe because of traditions rooted in similar cultures, languages, legal and economic systems. We align with governments of Iraq and Saudi Arabia because of pragmatism and trade, often reluctantly. The House of Saud fights the regime in Iran (the Ayatollahs) which spreads terrorism around through the Middle East and especially against Israel. Russia supports both the government in Iran and Syria.

It’s a bit of mess on a global scale but if you follow the alliance it makes a lot more sense. Governments help each other when it’s in their interest. For all the talk about the Cold War being over much of the alliances post WWII are still in play.

I don’t subscribe to the knee jerk reaction that “Well that’s their problem, it aint our war”. It’s getting harder to define what is “our” war and what isn’t. Part of that is our fault, we need to pay attention. We have the luxury of not knowing where Syria is on a map, let alone being able to point out the factions and list the grievances. But if we string enough of these conflicts together year after year at what point is it no longer America’s military?

It could just become a rapid deploy force for America’s allies.

The way Congress gets around voting on each conflict is to give the president the ability to conduct it on his terms (called the Authorized Use of Military Force). Presidents get to manage the war and talk to generals about the progress. It makes sense to give this authorization for expediency’s sake, but voting to send in troops in the first place is the best option. I know it’s tough to get the legislative branch to agree to anything, but when presidents make unilateral decisions it creates separate tracks of responsibility. Wars are fought by the president and the Defense Department; domestic spending and investigation are done by Congress.

 If the future of warfare is going to consist of small groups of well-trained soldiers, like Army Rangers, whose missions are limited and opaque, we should know about it. Our representatives should vote on it and tell us why they did. Whose interest was served? Does the enemy represent a threat to American operations or some third tier ally? I’m not against being in Syria necessarily but I’m worried that our success creates the impression among our friends that we are the tip of the spear in every possible fighting scenario. 

 For all the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq we had some connection to both conflicts. We had family, friends and neighbors that served in both wars. There was home-front opposition to the war and messy results in both cases. But President Bush made a convincing case for both wars we sent our troops. He paid a price. Our soldiers paid a price. Their families paid a price. We did it the right way though, tell the American people, enlist allies, plan the war.

I think this is part of the reason for trying to keep conflicts small and impersonal. Don’t force the public to decide on sending a hundred thousand troops somewhere, keep it small, keep it out the news. I’m sympathetic to that line of thinking, but if we aren’t careful it can become a pattern. Maybe it already is.