West of Eden: It's the least you can do

Sumerian temple worshiper, alabaster with shell eyes, late 28th c. B.C.E. Via Wikipedia.

Major Lt. Col. Bateman chez Mr. Pierce falls, sadly, into McCain-style boilerplate:

Two major questions leap out: First, what exactly is the strategy? Second, before we put training troops into Iraq, has Iraq agreed to a new Status of Forces Agreement? The first problem is, perhaps, the more problematic. In part this is because the President really has not described one. Right from the outset he has not said what our new national military strategy will be in this new conflict. Although apparently that omission was entirely missed by the majority of reporters covering this story.

Incidentally can anybody tell me when this became a thing, that the authorities have to publicly detail and justify their strategy? "General Eisenhower, it's May 1944, we've been at war with Germany for two and a half years and they're still occupying most of Europe. What's your strategy for getting the Wehrmacht out of France?" "Sure thing, Chuck. Our atom bomb is a little behind schedule, so we'll be invading Normandy in a couple of weeks, depending on the weather. Just don't tell those Jerries! Anything else you need?"

President Obama has made it clear over and over again what the basis of the military strategy is: that there is no military solution to the complex of problems in Iraq-Syria. It follows that military tactics must be deployed (if they have to be deployed at all, which is a different question) in the service of a political strategy, which is to cultivate those political forces capable of working on a multi-ethnic, minimally sectarian basis (at least I hope that's what "moderate" really means in the White House and the Pentagon right now), so that in the fullness of time they will be able to assume the responsibilities of bringing a political solution themselves (because the US cannot impose it and must not try).

So he may not be able to say this out loud when Congress and the press are listening, or maybe even say it through to himself (he has an instinct, like Tolstoy's Field Marshal Kutuzov), but the use of military tactics isn't to "win the war". It is mainly to defend such parties, or rather to assist them in defending themselves, against military attacks, without doing anything to make the situation worse, such as backing forces that don't meet the criteria (like the Iraqi army, at least as long as Nouri al-Maliki was PM), spooking Iran, or above all killing civilians.

These are by the way all reasons why the US can, unhappily, do so little to assist the Sunni resistance groups in Syria and defeat the butcher Bashar al-Assad, because it's so unclear whether they can be trusted to be tolerant with respect to Syrian minority communities (who have looked to Assad as a protector from Sunni terrorists from the beginning, evil as he is, because there really were Sunni terrorists there, as we've finally begun to understand) or not to sell their weapons to the Da'esh, and because Iran is not ready to dump Bashar, and because there are civilians all over the densely populated areas they're fighting in.

As to the missing SOFA, it seems to me that 's not an important question as long as Prime Minster Abadi keeps asking for more. As soon as he starts saying, "OK, I'm good," then it's a time to start work on the SOFA. And isn't the problem of the SOFA in the first place always how the situation has to be settled by executive agreement because the Senate won't act on a treaty? Anybody? Senator Bueller?

"You are Abe Froman? The Sausage King of Chicago?" Result of Googling "Senator Bueller".

A secondary but by no means trivial use of the military is in Obama's political struggle in Washington, with Congress and the media and their incessant demands that he "do something" immediately, but only with the consent of a legislature that refuses to show up to vote on it. What Congress is after of course is less for Obama to fix things than just to look bad, and I'm afraid that includes a sizable number of Likud-lobby Democrats, but the public is right to understand that horrible, horrible things are happening west of Eden, and if we're not there to fix them what are we doing?

The current airstrikes regime is really the least something he can do under the circumstances, that is the least harmful way of doing something military—as I've said before the best approach would be the basically nonmilitary option of depopulating Syria by getting all the civilians to safety in really well-appointed refugee camps where they could wait out the war in some comfort, but nobody listens to me. It's terrible to use military power to achieve political ends, but if you could really ensure that the only people you killed were psychopath militants like the Da'esh, would it be that bad? (It is "degrading and destroying" the Da'esh, but it really is an agonizingly slow process, especially when US forces cannot and must not be in charge, and it's not going to be ready by Tuesday.)

And if the relatively non-lethal action were to forestall Congress from coming in and wrecking the whole project by cutting off cooperation with Iran, say, or by demanding either troops on the ground or all troops out (and I'm sorry but that last one is a pony we will never get, not from our politicians; they would be far more likely to force a ruinous "surge")—if it could create a timespace within which a true political solution could evolve, wouldn't it be in some sense even worthwhile?

Burney Relief, terracotta, sometimes identified as Ishtar or Lilith, ca. 1800 B.C.E. Via Wikipedia.