Islamic State Why Now
In this Sept. 15, 2014, photo, Kurdish citizens who live in Lebanon shout slogans and hold a photograph during a demonstration against militants who refer to themselves as the Islamic State, in front of the UN building, in downtown Beirut, Lebanon. Osama bin Laden is dead and al-Qaida dispersed, yet the horrors keep coming. Journalists beheaded on camera. School girls abducted by gunmen in the night. Families fleeing their homes in fear they might be executed because of their religion. The news from much of the Middle East and Africa is relentlessly brutal. The Islamic State group's rampage through Iraq and Syria has shocked the United States into launching expanded air strikes at a time when Americans were expecting to pull back from the Middle East after more than a decade of war.
(Associated Press/Hussein Malla)
President Barack Obama has announced a broad outline of the U. S. strategy for confronting the Islamic State, with a sense of urgency created by two beheadings of American journalists. The ultimate strategy should include some risk/reward analysis, versus one of victory at any price, especially since Osama bin Laden gloated in 2004 that al-Qaida is "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." We should not allow the Islamic State to succeed with that same approach.
Before President Harry S. Truman decided to drop atomic bombs in Japan, he made a risk/reward analysis that, although thousands of Japanese civilians would be killed, by ending the war sooner than later, possibly several million lives on both sides could be saved. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made an assessment of the cost of American lives and treasure when the United States decided not to intervene to help Hungary in its fight against the Soviet Union in 1956.
President John F. Kennedy had no idea how long the United States would have to lend assistance to South Vietnam, or what the ultimate price would be. He wrote President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam on Dec. 14, 1961, with high hopes:
When President Lyndon B. Johnson made the decision to send combat troops into Vietnam in early 1965, he did so not knowing how long the war might last and with little idea of the ultimate cost of American lives and treasure. No light could be seen at the end of the tunnel and there was no exit strategy.
What is the risk/reward in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria? Is keeping those countries free of Taliban rule, Islamic State rule, or rule by al-Qaida or affiliates worth hundreds or thousands more American lives and billions or trillions of dollars? Is it worth potentially bankrupting our country both in terms of money and military personnel?
Terrorists can train for and plan attacks on our country whether they locate in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia or Iran. Are we going to attempt to kill all the terrorists, or just enough so the remainder decide to call it quits? Would they quit? Should we risk trillions more dollars and possibly thousands more troops being killed, all because there is a perceived imminent threat to our national security? Could we ever get rid of all the terrorist groups that threaten us?
Some say we should have stayed the course and preserved South Vietnam's freedom. Suppose we could have declared victory after several more years and at a total cost of 200,000 lives and $2 trillion? Would victory have been worth the price? Or, if we had won the Vietnam War when it ended in late January 1973, would preserving South Vietnam's freedom at a cost of over 58,000 American lives and billions of dollars have been worth it? Perhaps we could have restored freedom for Hungary in 1956 after fighting the Soviet Union and winning, but in the process losing several hundred thousand American lives and at a cost of billions or trillions of dollars. Would that outcome have been worth the cost?
As President Obama further refines an Islamic State strategy, hopefully he and his advisers will engage in an objective risk/reward analysis. The final strategy should not be to spend unlimited amounts of money and risk losing an unlimited number of troops, all in the interest of making our nation only partially safer. We should not allow any terrorist group to engage in "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."
Our strategy should be limited, targeted and not one that risks burning down the barn to kill all the rats.
David Nelson of Houston served in the Marine Corps in the early 1970s and then worked for Cleveland-based Ernst & Ernst, later EY, until 1991, when he joined Houston Endowment as vice president and grant director.