Bloomberg
By David Lerman and Tony Capaccio
Unlike the strikes that preceded the Iraq and Afghanistan ground wars, any air offensive this time would come with the encouragement and support of the Iraqi government, giving the U.S. virtually complete control of the skies to curb the Sunni militants’ offensive.
For all the available firepower of U.S. planes and missiles, with an aircraft carrier already in the Persian Gulf, airstrikes risk civilian casualties and may not be enough to defeat an irregular enemy moving through densely populated areas, defense analysts and administration officials said.
“One needs to be very careful about the downsides,” said Eric Edelman, a former Pentagon undersecretary for policy in President George W. Bush’s administration. Effective airstrikes “require some kind of U.S. presence on the ground” to discern militant targets from civilians.
Obama has ruled out sending U.S. ground troops back to Iraq, even as he opened the door to air attacks and increased military aid to help the Iraqi government defeat the militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL. Obama yesterday met with his security team, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
“They’re not the whole answer, but they may well be one of the options that are important to be able to stem the tide and stop the movement of people who are moving around in open convoys, in trucks, and terrorizing people,” Kerry said.
One important question for Obama to weigh is whether U.S. airpower is necessary to halt the ISIL advance, which appears to have slowed in recent days and so far hasn’t reached beyond majority Sunni areas where Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government is unpopular.
Colin Kahl, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington who oversaw Middle East affairs at the Pentagon in Obama’s first term, said that without local support, “5,000 or 10,000 guys with guns can’t occupy and control western and northern Iraq, because we had 50,000 forces, and we couldn’t fully control” the region.
Unmanned Aircraft
The U.S. has an array of manned and unmanned aircraft in the region. The aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush, now in the Persian Gulf, has 65 aircraft on board, including 44 F/A-18 fighter-bombers and five EA-6B Prowler electronic jamming aircraft, according to Navy figures.
The carrier is accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea and destroyer USS Truxton. Both are probably equipped with the latest-model Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are capable of flying to a target, then circling in patterns so they can be retargeted against mobile militants.
The U.S. Air Force has assets at bases in Qatar, Kuwait and other locations, including armed Reaper drones and 90 manned warplanes. The available aircraft include stealthy F-22 fighters, A-10 ground-attack aircraft, F-16 and F-15E fighter-bombers, and B-1B bombers all capable of dropping satellite- or laser-guided bombs.
Sunni Regimes
The Sunni regimes in the Persian Gulf have signaled their reluctance to let U.S. warplanes use bases on their soil to attack fellow Sunnis, even the extremists of ISIL, said one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic communications. Some regional leaders, the official said, have indicated that they also would consider U.S. military aid to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led regime to be indirect support for Iran, which they consider an enemy.
While the U.S. would have virtually unlimited ability to mount manned and unmanned airstrikes without significant resistance, the main obstacle to doing so remains a lack of intelligence on moving targets that in many cases are intermingled with civilians, said U.S. military and intelligence officials.
Although the militant group is said to number fewer than 10,000, it’s likely that other opportunistic fighters “may have jumped on the bandwagon,” making it difficult to estimate the force’s size, Kahl said.
Eroding Intelligence
American intelligence on Iraq has eroded dramatically since Obama withdrew the last U.S. troops from the country at the end of 2011, according to the U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss intelligence matters or internal policy discussions publicly.
Since then, they said, U.S. military and intelligence agencies increasingly have relied on the Iraqi military and government and on public sources for reporting on Sunni insurgent groups such as ISIL and Shiite militias, most of them backed by Iran. Many of the reports on Sunni groups, said two officials, have proved to be exaggerated, while those on Shiite forces and the role of Iran’s Quds Force and intelligence services in supporting them have been sketchy at best.
Further complicating matters, ISIL leaders communicate largely by couriers rather than making mobile phone calls that the U.S. National Security Agency can intercept, according to another U.S. official.
Damaging Losses
Some of the most damaging intelligence losses, this official said, have come in Sunni areas such as Anbar province, where the U.S. military and the Central Intelligence Agency built close relations with tribal leaders who now think the Americans abandoned them after 2011.
“Any solution to the current crisis has to recognize that the Sunni Arab community has to be part of a more inclusive government,” said Daniel Green, who worked with Sunni tribes in Fallujah, Iraq, as a Navy officer in 2007 and is now a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Obama has made a commitment by al-Maliki’s government to political reform a condition of any possible U.S. military action.
“The United States is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they’re prepared to work together,” Obama said June 13 at the White House.
Lacking Intelligence
The absence of reliable intelligence, the ability of militants to retreat to civilian areas and the danger of civilian casualties that would aid ISIL’s cause have made the Obama administration wary of launching airstrikes, all of the officials said.
“Many experts noted that ISIL has few clearly discernible targets that would not risk causing civilian casualties,” wrote Kenneth Katzman, a specialist in Middle East affairs at the Congressional Research Service, in a report to Congress.
Mistakes from the air aren’t hard to fathom, said Austin Long, a former analyst and adviser to the U.S. Marine Corps. The ISIL militants have captured American vehicles, while many former Shiite militiamen are showing up in Sunni areas to fight the militants.
“So say you get pretty good imagery off of a drone of some guys riding around in pickup trucks with AK-47s and no uniforms,” said Long, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York. “Who do you bomb? You might end up bombing Iraqi troops.”
Providing Advice
Small teams of special operations forces may be sent to Iraq, “not in a combat sense but away from the front lines,” to advise their Iraqi counterparts on operations, Kahl said. The administration was weighing such an option, the Associated Press reported yesterday, citing officials it didn’t identify.
Another obstacle is political, two U.S. officials said. ISIL is shipping substantial amounts of the weapons and equipment it seized from the collapsing Iraqi military across the non-existent border to Syria, where Obama so far has ruled out air attacks.
If Obama decides to launch strikes, he has the legal authority to do so under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al-Qaeda and related groups because ISIL is a direct descendant of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the officials said.
Militants have gained the sympathy of some Sunnis in the northern territories who don’t “feel fully included” in al-Maliki’s government, Kiron Skinner, a defense fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California, said in an interview.
Local Support
“You can’t underestimate the power of local support” so “that’s why you got a relatively small band of people doing enormous damage,” said Skinner, who was a member of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “There’s local support and lack of legitimacy in the central government.”
Whatever Obama decides, none of his options are good, said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University.
“There are probably military options that could stave off the collapse of the Iraqi government,” said Feaver, a former special adviser for strategic planning on Bush’s National Security Council. “But is President Obama inclined to run the risks associated with them, and can he mobilize public support for them?”
