So the US Is Single-Handedly at War Again

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2014/10/08/so-the-us-is-single-handedly-at-war-again/

For many Americans, it feels like 2003, though even more confusing.

So the US Is Single-Handedly at War Again
Published in Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) on 25 September 2014 by Jenny Nordberg [link to original]
Translated from Swedish by Grace Olaison. Edited by Nicholas Eckart.
Posted on October 8, 2014.

In the beginning of summer, the "War on Terror” was over. Our generation's great wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would soon be a memory. American foreign policy would take an entirely new direction, explained the president. Now, the U.S. is bombing not only Iraq again, but also Syria, without having presented any strategy on how long it will continue or what will happen afterwards. For many Americans, it feels like 2003, though even more confusing.

Misgivings are slowly beginning to rise in the United States: Is this really a good idea?

No one disputes that the Islamic State and their fantasy of a caliphate should be stopped. But are they really a direct threat to the United States, and it is reasonable to try to single-handedly bomb them away? Even if the Islamic State disappears, Iraq and Syria will remain as divided as before, and the United States would rather not spend the next few years trying to create completely new, Western democracies there according to a model acknowledged as unsuccessful.

~snip~

The internal political row, however, has begun to simmer in Washington, where Congress is divided over sending open support in varying forms to rebels in Syria and trying to get a handle on the “new” old ambition of trying to "root out" terrorism, and what the price will really be this time.

[DetlefK]

1. Tell that to the Kurds and the Yazidis.