A Letter to My Congressional Representatives on War in Iraq and Syria

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.