Sen. Ron Wyden, Sen. Jeff Merkley, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici,
In a September 10, 2014 speech President Obama outlined his
strategy for combating ISIL which involves expanding airstrikes within Iraq and
into Syria and providing military assistance to the Syrian opposition. I urge
you to fight for a Congressional authorization vote on military action and then
to vote against such authorization. Further military involvement in Iraq and
Syria will only provide more fuel for death and destruction in the Middle East.
The President must not be allowed wage war without the approval of Congress.
Further
airstrikes within Iraq will serve only to embolden ISIL. It is important to
note that ISIL’s rapid expansion within Iraq is a poisonous byproduct of our
foreign policy. In a July 17, 2014
TomDispatch/Truthout blogpost,
for instance, reporter Dahr Jamail recalled how the group’s ominous black flags
were flown during a March 2013 protest against the sectarian Maliki
administration that we supported until August of this year. The Maliki
administration has been accused of using its security forces to crush democratic protests and arbitrarily arrest innocent
Sunnis who are
then tortured and raped repeatedly. ISIL was able to expand so
rapidly within Iraq because it exploited the anger of Sunnis who saw Maliki’s
government, our client regime, as an enemy of their faith. Further airstrikes
within Iraq will only allow ISIL to claim in its propaganda that we have
declared war on the Sunni sect.
Airstrikes
within Syria and support for the so-called “moderate” opposition is unwise as
well as it will only prolong the country’s bloody civil war. It is important to
note that the rebels we are currently arming are not “moderate” at all. The beheading
of Steven Sotloff, which Obama has exploited to rally more support for the
“moderate” rebels, only occurred because those same “moderate” rebels sold information about his
whereabouts to ISIL.
The Free Syrian Army has also been documented openly cooperating with ISIL in
Lebanon.
Furthermore, Joshua Landis’ analysis of propaganda released by the
Army of Islam, cited as a “moderate” group by US ambassador Robert Ford,
revealed that the group uses extremely racist and sectarian rhetoric that
deflates any pretensions of being moderate. Assad has maintained support among
Syria’s ruling Alawite minority by exploiting the fear of genocide should
Islamic rebels overthrow the government. Providing support for the radical
Islamists and expanding air strikes into Syria will only allow Assad to further
exploit external threats when arguing for his legitimacy as head of state.
Regardless
of whether we defeat ISIL, the seeds of the next insurgency are already being
sown through our support for the mislabeled “moderates.” The way to prevent the
spread of militancy in the Middle East can be found in the following words by Noam Chomsky: “Everyone’s
worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way. Stop
participating in it.” Funneling arms into conflict regions serves only to give
militant groups the capacity to grow. Weapons that we have provided to the Free
Syrian Army, for instance, have ended up in the
hands of ISIL. The flow of arms is under our control as the world’s
largest weapons supplier and, by stymieing that flow, we can stop the growth of
militancy. We also need to reconsider the alliances that we forge in the
region, particularly with Saudi Arabia. Congressmen who are familiar with the “Finding,
Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters”
chapter that was excised from the Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks
have claimed that it suggests the Saudi
government’s complicity in the attacks. The Saudi government is also responsible for
the spread of
Wahhabism, the extremely socially conservative Islamic sect that
breeds much of the militancy in the Middle East.
I
understand that you may be compelled by humanitarian impulses to allow for
military intervention in Iraq and Syria. But there is no shame in doing nothing
if doing “something” only creates more chaos.
