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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Options and Obligations in the Fight against ISIS
00:16:24
Dexter Filkins and Nicholas Schmidle join Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the options and obligations in the fight against ISIS.
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- [00:00]
Asma Khalid
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- [01:14]
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- [01:49]
Dorothy Wickenden
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. DOROTHY It's Friday, May 22nd. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. This week, as Islamic State forces took the city of Ramadi in western Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, the Obama administration was heavily criticized for its policy in the region. Here's John Boehner speaking to reporters on.
- [02:11]
Dexter Filkins
Tuesday, we know that hope is not a strategy. The President's plan isn't working. It's time for him to come up with a real overarching strategy to defeat of the ongoing terrorist threat.
- [02:25]
Dorothy Wickenden
Dexter Filkins and Nicholas Schmiddel are here to discuss our options and obligations in the fight against isis. So, Dexter, the administration is trying to take the long view. They're doing their best. In an interview in the Atlantic this week, Obama described Ramadi as a tactical setback, but he's being heavily criticized. It's not a big surprise to hear Charles Krauthammer say that Obama is just pretending to fight isis. Representative Adam Schiff on the House Intelligence Committee called the fall of Ramadi a very serious and significant setback. Are we losing the war against isis?
- [02:58]
Dexter Filkins
I think at the moment, we are. Look, they've got all this territory. It basically stretches from Damascus all the way across the desert and then all the way to the outskirts of Baghdad. So as long as they don't lose and as long as they can hold onto that, then that's the caliphate, you know, that's the Islamic State. The tricky part, it's easy to criticize the president because of what's happening, but what's the alternative? Is Mr. Boehner suggesting, for instance, that we put troops on the ground? I think without troops on the ground, the United States is limited to airstrikes and whatever exists of the Iraqi army and the Shiite militias, and that's a horrible mess. And so good luck.
- [03:39]
Dorothy Wickenden
But let me ask you about troops on the ground. You have a fan, actually, it seems, in John McCain, who does believe in sending troops in, as do other Republicans. He retweeted your new yorker.com piece about Ramadi. What is it that he agrees with you about?
- [03:56]
Dexter Filkins
Look, it's a terrible situation. You've got a bunch of fanatics. You know, they're medieval fanatics who have conquered large parts of the Middle east, and nobody thinks that's a good thing. The question is, what can we do about it? And I think that if President Obama were to propose sending in American troops, he'd have a really hard argument to make. I mean, after, you know, nine years of war in Iraq. But I think there's something more fundamental here, which is what we're bucking up against, and that is these states all across the Middle east, but particularly Iraq and Syria, they're artificial states. You know, they were drawn up practically on the back of an envelope after the First World War, after the Ottoman Empire collapsed. They're not real countries, and they never have been. And there's always been a hope that people would set aside their more loyalties, like ethnicity and sect and that sort of thing, and then become nations. And that hasn't happened. And it's all moving in the other direct. And so I think the larger question is, you know, can these states be saved? And if they can't be, then what next?
- [04:59]
Dorothy Wickenden
You've written a lot over the years about how Prime Minister Maliki ended up radicalizing the Sunni minority in Iraq. Tell us a little bit about Haydar al Abadi, his successor, whose early months in office haven't exactly been auspicious, as we've seen. But again, he was dealt a very bad hand coming in.
- [05:16]
Dexter Filkins
Yeah, he was. He was dealt a bad hand. He was in Washington last month and I saw him actually at a dinner. He's a very serious guy. He's very sober. Whenever you saw Maliki, Malachi was the product of his upbringing and his past, which was dark and tortured and violent and rough. And so you kind of got that from Maliki. You know, Malachi was the iron fist, and he was going to hit the Sunnis before they hit him. Abadi is, I think, a much less tormented soul than Maliki. And I think he realizes the scope of the challenge in front of him. And I know, at least my impression was that the White House thinks really highly of him. I think he's starting from such a deep hole because he's picking up after Maliki, you know, really, really radicalized and alienated the Sunni minority in Iraq. And I don't know how you get them back. You know, that's what the United States spent years and years and thousands of, you know, casualties trying to do. And they kind of did it in 2000 by 2011, but then it got away. And I don't know how you reel that back in.
- [06:22]
Dorothy Wickenden
And what about the training of Iraqi troops? The US has been involved in that, although that doesn't seem to be going terribly well.
- [06:28]
Dexter Filkins
No, we did this once. We built an enormous Iraqi army and trained it and equipped it at horrific expense. And that army, when ISIS swept into northern and western Iraq last year, that army disintegrated. They ran away. And, you know, there were photos that you can see on the web of Iraqi soldiers running from ISIS in their underwear. You know, they were stripping their uniforms off and throwing their guns. We're going to rebuild that.
- [06:58]
Dorothy Wickenden
Okay, Nick, I want to switch to the good news for a moment. There was a spectacularly successful special ops raid on Saturday in eastern Syria which killed Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic State's so called Emir of oil and gas. Can you tell us a little bit more than what we've already read about what happened?
- [07:15]
Nicholas Schmidtle
I think that a couple of the interesting takeaways are what was different about this Delta Force raid inside of Syria in comparison to last July's Delta Force raid inside Syria, which was ultimately unsuccessful. This one was launched from inside Iraq, and the other one was definitely launched from inside of Jordan. So there are now multiple staging options that are available to jsoc. I think the other thing is that last July's raid, as of a week before that raid, there was absolutely no intelligence, no aerial surveillance of that area. Drones were moved into place, satellites were moved into place. You know, they were starting from scratch. I think that possibly what this raid indicates is the beginning of JSOC beginning to sort of do what it did in 2006, 2007, 2008, when it began sort of mapping out Iraq and beginning to chip away at Al Qaeda and Iraq's backbone. It did that, though, over the course of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, raisin night. So, you know, while this is a major accomplishment that they were able to get into this ISIS stronghold and be able to capture the wife, capture the Yazidi slave, and kill Abu Sayyaf, but it's also. It's a testament to JSOC's growing strength, confidence, and capabilities in that region.
- [08:36]
Dorothy Wickenden
Dexter's shaking his head. Why Dexter?
- [08:39]
Dexter Filkins
I don't know. What did it accomplish? I mean, so they went into Syria and they whacked this guy. You know, he's a. Already been replaced, no doubt.
- [08:47]
Nicholas Schmidtle
Right. So the problem is that if there's going to be an attempt to try and defile the organization, that you've got to start picking people out and hoping that you can get something out of them. So that was the accomplishment. I don't think that it dealt this massive blow to the organization by any means. And who he was and how significant he was also seems to have morphed a bit in reporting since the days after.
- [09:09]
Dexter Filkins
Yeah, I just. I'm really skeptical of this at the moment. I mean, look at what happened last week. Right? So Baghdadi, it looks like a month ago, the leader of ISIS was wounded. And so he. But he's still alive. He gave a speech and released a speech on audio. They killed the number two guy, and then they killed the emir in charge of oil. That's two senior guys dead and then one wounded. And what happened last week? Palmyra was conquered by isis and Ramadi was conquered by isis. And so if you look back to the Iraq war and how kind of the tide was turned against Al Qaeda, it wasn't just a bunch of JSOC guys running in and cutting people's throats. It was part of a much broader effort to assuage the justified concerns and anger of the Sunni population and to bring them in in this kind of enormous movement called the Awakening. And none of that right now is going on in Syria. And so I don't get it. I mean, they're not going to shoot their way to victory in Syria. And so I'm just a little, I'm actually a little surprised that they would order such a raid.
- [10:10]
Dorothy Wickenden
Let's take a break here.
- [10:12]
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- [10:53]
Dorothy Wickenden
Let's just back up for a minute. I want you to talk a little bit, Nick, about the biggest military success of Obama's presidency, the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. You wrote about that mission for the magazine. And this week, not coincidentally, the government released a huge cache of documents found in his hideout. Tell us a little bit about that operation.
- [11:14]
Nicholas Schmidtle
I think that what you saw in the aftermath of that was, I mean, I'm pretty sure chronologically that shortly after that was when they killed Ilias Kashmiri and shortly after that is when they killed Attia as well, that they were able to connect dots from, from memos and letters and some materials that were found inside the bin Laden raid. I don't know, I think they're just very different raids. And I think that there was no question that going into Pakistan was going to be worth the risk.
- [11:39]
Dexter Filkins
It's interesting. I mean, after bin Laden was killed, the administration, what they did release were, you know, photos of Osama watching himself on TV and suggestions that porn had been found on his computer. That basically he was sort of a washed up old guy who was just reliving past glories. And in fact, I had a conversation with a former CIA officer last week about this and he said that was a mistake by the administration to paint that picture because Osama was running a global jihad and he was very, very busy and he was sending mess to people in orders and he was getting information back. And I think that the reason why the administration did this is, of course, there's been suggestions that Osama was just kind of sitting around and not doing anything. And I think entirely the opposite was actually true.
- [12:25]
Dorothy Wickenden
Traditionally, they have been better at the propaganda wars than we have by far, I would say.
- [12:30]
Nicholas Schmidtle
We're talking about boots on the ground. And I think that the question sort of is, where would you even think to put them? Would you put them in Fallujah to begin sort of wresting back control over Mahdi, or would you. Would you focus on sort of retaking? What's the priority at this point?
- [12:45]
Dexter Filkins
One thing that's missing, as least as I understand it, is that you've got these American planes up, dropping bombs from 30,000ft up, and there are no what's called forward air controllers on the ground. And without that, if you want to limit civilian casualties, it limits your options about what you're going to bomb. And so if the administration decided to go down this road, they would put people out there to help the airplanes in the sky. But the other one, of course, is. And I think all this is off the books now, but the big event that was planned for later in the summer was basically an invasion and the reconquest of western Mosul by the Iraqi army. You know, everybody was gearing up for that, and I can't imagine after the past week that they're going to still go ahead with that.
- [13:33]
Dorothy Wickenden
Let's go back for a second to the domestic ramifications of all of this. In Reno last week, Jeb Bush said ISIS didn't exist when my brother was president. Al Qaeda in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president. Dexter, there is some truth to that.
- [13:48]
Dexter Filkins
There is some truth to that. This is a debate we'll be having years from now, but I think there's no denying that in 2011, when the last Americans were departing Iraq, ISIS, they were decimated. They were all but finished. They were in a couple of corners of Mosul and some other places. And basically two things happened. One is Maliki, the prime minister that we left in place, was free to do whatever he wanted, and he made a mess of things by alienating the entire Sunni population. And then the other thing that happened in 2011 is the great uprising in Syria right on the border. And so with chaos on the border and a huge uprising of the Sunni majority in Syria, and then with Maliki kind of, you know, wrecking all the furniture in Iraq, that just opened the door for isis.
- [14:38]
Dorothy Wickenden
But Jeb Bush didn't have the final word at that Reno event. A 19 year old political science student from the university there told him that your brother created isis. And I just. It was kind of an amazing moment and it's a soundbite that will never go away.
- [14:54]
Dexter Filkins
Well, I mean, it was one of those statements that, like, it sort of stops you because, you know it's not true, but it sort of sounds true. If you go all the way back to March 2003, April 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq. It took 19 days and the American army destroyed the Iraqi state. And then in probably the single most catastrophic decision of the entire war, the Bush administration decided to disband the Iraqi army. So you had suddenly overnight, 250,000 young men with military training who were humiliated and angry. And some of those guys are helping to run ISIS today.
- [15:37]
Dorothy Wickenden
I want to step back a little bit. I read a piece this week by Robert Grenier, who worked in the field for the CIA for many years and directed its counterterrorism office from 2004 to 2006. He wrote in the Times a few months ago that ISIS didn't pose an existential threat to Americans. And he says that the solution is neither ground troops nor isolationism. How do you pursue a moderate course against radical Islamic extremism? That's Obama's conundrum.
- [16:05]
Nicholas Schmidtle
It just goes back to there are no good options here in a significant way. Some of these more sophisticated JSOC raids have been successful as raids in accomplishing tactically what they set out to do. But are they accomplishing any strategic goals that the administration has set out? Hard to say. I don't know. Sort of. Certainly it hasn't worked in Yemen. Even the Al Shabaab raids in Somalia have been. It's been less of a concerted campaign than the one in Yemen. And the one in Yemen has backfired in a significant way, too.
- [16:37]
Dexter Filkins
Look, I think it'd be great if we could ignore isis. But if you just take the problem of the Europeans who are fighting with them, you know, they all have passports. The European governments, whether it's the UK or France or Germany or the Netherlands, they don't know who's fighting there. I mean, they have some idea. But these guys are all going to come home unless they're killed and they've got European passports that could come right to the United States. And I think that's what keeps people awake at night who are trying to defend Europe and the United States, that all these guys are going to come home one day.
- [17:08]
Dorothy Wickenden
Thank you both. This has been the political Scene from the New Yorker. Dexter Filkins and Nicholas Schmidtle are staff writers. This podcast is produced by Jill Duboff and Alex Barron. For newyorker.com I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
- [17:21]
Dexter Filkins
You can subscribe to this and other.
- [17:23]
Nicholas Schmidtle
New Yorker podcasts in the iTunes store.
- [17:25]
Dexter Filkins
The weekly audio edition of the New Yorker is available@audible.com this podcast is produced by Jill Duboff and Alex Barron of New Yorker.com.
- [17:39]
Asma Khalid
America is changing, and so is the world.
- [17:43]
Dexter Filkins
But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [17:51]
Asma Khalid
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [17:54]
Dexter Filkins
Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.
- [17:57]
Asma Khalid
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [18:03]
Dexter Filkins
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:11]
Nicholas Schmidtle
From. PRX.