"Feel's Good!" (Notes in anticipation of "the speech")

We’re angry and scared now. We want to fight. History suggests that we will rally behind the commander in chief in the immediate aftermath of tonight’s address. But it wasn’t that long ago—a matter of weeks, really—when “war-weary” was the go-to adjective for “Americans.” We will grow weary again, and Obama may need to draw on tonight’s speech to remind people, “This is why we must fight.”

Ahead of the president’s major address tonight, word has leaked that Obama is considering airstrikes in Syria as part of the military operation against ISIS:
President Obama is prepared to use U.S. military airstrikes in Syria as part of an expanded campaign to defeat the Islamic State and does not believe he needs formal congressional approval to take that action, according to people who have spoken with the president in recent days. Obama discussed his plans at a dinner with a bipartisan group of foreign policy experts this week at the White House and made clear his belief that he has the authority to attack the militant Islamist group on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border to protect U.S national security, multiple people who participated in the discussion said. The move to attack in Syria would represent a remarkable escalation in strategy for Obama, who has sought during his presidency to reduce the U.S. military engagement in the Middle East. 

I guess entering one failed state’s civil war wasn’t challenging enough! Let’s enter two while we’re at it. Exit strategy? Pshaw. That’ll be up to Obama’s successor. In a more granular must-read analysis of this clusterfuck, Marc Lynch stresses that while a strategy of airstrikes and supporting local ground forces may be able to help restore stability and sovereignty to Iraq, in Syria these options “offer no plausible path to political or strategic success”: 

A strategy predicated on the existence of an effective moderate Syrian rebel force is doomed to fail. Instead, the focus should be on shaping the environment in ways which will encourage the emergence of a politically legitimate and more effectively unified opposition. The destructive and radicalizing effects of uncoordinated flows of aid to competing rebel groups from outside states and private actors have long been obvious. The emerging regional strategy offers perhaps the first opportunity to unify these efforts to build rather than divide the Syrian opposition. The new coalition should expand on efforts to shut off funding and support not only for ISIS but also for the other powerful Islamist trends within the Syrian rebellion. 

This will take time. The immediate goal in Syria should be the securing of a strategic pause between the rebel forces and the regime in order to focus military efforts on ISIS. Crucially, this strategic pause does not mean cooperation or alignment with Asad, or a retreat from the Geneva Accord principles of a political transition. It should be understood instead as buying the time to shape an environment in which such a transition could become plausible. … The longer-term goal should be to translate this anti-ISIS tacit accord into an effective agreement by the external backers of both Asad and the rebels on a de-escalation of the conflict. Rather than a military drive on Damascus, the international community should support the delivery of serious humanitarian relief, security and governance to rebel controlled areas and refugees.

I simply do not believe we are capable of pulling anything like this off. .. 

Juan Cole lays out some of the inherent risks in a US military campaign against ISIS:

Obama appears to envisage arming and training the “moderates” of the Free Syrian Army, who have consistently been pushed to the margins by al-Qaeda offshoots and affiliates. Private billionaires in the Gulf will continue to support ISIL or its rival, Jabhat al-Nusra (the Succor Front, which has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda). 

Strengthening yet another guerrilla group will, again, likely prolong the fighting. Moreover, in the past two years, Free Syrian Army moderate groups have gone radical and joined Nusrah or ISIL at an alarming rate. Defectors or defeated groups from the FSA will take their skills and arms with them into the al-Qaeda offshoots. 

In Iraq, while giving the Kurds and the Iraqi army close air support against ISIL has already borne fruit when the local forces were defending their ethnic enclaves, it hasn’t helped either largely Kurdish forces or the (largely Shiite) Iraqi army take Sunni Arab territory. Several campaigns against Tikrit have failed. The only thing worse than this failure might be success. Success would mean smart phone video making its way to YouTube showing US bombing urban residential buildings full of Sunni Arab families in support for a motley crew of Kurdish (non-Arab) fighters and Shiite troops and militiamen. Helping such forces take Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, would make for a very bad image in the Sunni world.

But we never learn, do we? Robin Wright’s comparison of the best- and worst-case scenarios illustrates how tremendous those risks are: 

For the United States, the best possible outcome would be for the militants to withdraw from their illusory state in Iraq to bases in Syria, where they might wither in the face of strengthened Syrian rebels; ideally, the rebels would also bring an end to the Assad regime in Damascus. Iraq and Syria, with their multicultural societies, would then have breathing room to incubate inclusive governments. That’s the goal, anyway. The worst outcome would be another open-ended, treasury-sapping, coffin-producing, and increasingly unpopular war that fails to erase ISIS or resurrect Iraq. It might even, in time, become a symbolic graveyard of American greatness—as it was for the French and the British. The Middle East has a proven record of sucking us in and spitting us out 

Maybe it will take another humiliating, devastating defeat in an unwinnable war to finally get Americans to understand the limits of their military power – and the increasing toxicity of the American brand.