War without a map

Before long Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and her Republican counterpart, Donald Trump, will begin receiving regular intelligence briefings. And those briefings are likely to include classified information about the planning of a U.S. military offensive against Islamic State in Iraq.

The United States begins a season of political transition at a critical moment of national security—and with too many questions about how the United States plans to fight ISIS. Deeds undone and decisions made or unmade by the Obama administration will come due, perhaps before the summer is out or the elections results are in. Enemies like ISIS will be alert to take advantage of America’s unmoored ship of state. The high cost of choosing tainted candidates, in both parties, suddenly becomes a high-stakes gamble. Lives, it turns out, are on the line.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, confirmed at a May breakfast classified national intelligence briefings could begin soon, but definitely by July when candidates are formally nominated at party conventions. “We have already established a plan for briefing both candidates when they are named,” he said. “We already have a team set up to do that and a designated lead.”

The high cost of choosing tainted candidates, in both parties, suddenly becomes a high-stakes gamble. Lives, it turns out, are on the line.

At the same time, U.S. forces appear destined to be part of a planned assault on Mosul and surrounding areas held by ISIS. Reports of additional deployments to Iraq suggest military action will escalate by late summer or fall. Iraqi forces are massed 40 miles south of the city, while to the north Kurdish peshmerga fighters hold a nearly 600-mile front against ISIS. The May 3 firefight in Iraq that resulted in the death of U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Keating IV was the clearest indication of expanded U.S. involvement close to enemy lines in the heart of Iraq.

Keating was part of a quick-reaction force sent to reinforce a team of U.S. advisers working alongside the peshmerga. The Americans and the Kurds faced a gun battle with Islamic State after an estimated 125 or more ISIS fighters, with vehicles, broke through the front lines undetected.

ISIS has used similar probing missions to determine weak spots in Iraq defenses. This time the weak spot was a bare 10 miles north of Mosul, near the now-abandoned Christian town of Telskuf. ISIS penetrated the Kurdish-held line despite U.S. airstrikes and helicopter support. For the Islamic militants, the assault revealed the presence of elite American forces embedded at the front line.

“Kurdistan right here is fighting on behalf of the whole world,” an Iraqi patrolling Telskuf told me when I visited there in 2015.

Captured by ISIS in 2014, Telskuf was retaken by Kurds and held by Christian militias (see “Battle ready,” April 18, 2015). In the distance, Islamic State fighters dug fortification trenches around Mosul. Such stasis, now going on two years, can’t last much longer. If we’ve grown accustomed to ISIS atrocities, though, a bloodier battle over Mosul, a city that currently numbers about 1 million, is likely ahead. We fiddle. They behead.

President Barack Obama has by increments committed the United States to a renewed war in Iraq—all the while telling Americans the growing U.S. force is serving “non-combat” roles. Video footage capturing the Telskuf gun battle shows that clearly is not the case.

Obama’s decision in 2011 to withdraw all troops from Iraq rather than continue negotiations toward a status of forces agreement—allowing a contingency force to remain in Iraq—stands as the chief reason for the rising threat of ISIS in the region and beyond. Making good on so colossal a mistake at the rump end of his presidency means Obama must turn over the military operation to a successor. One candidate showed feckless inattentiveness when it came to rescuing Americans in Benghazi. The other’s idea of an Iraq policy is to “bomb the [expletive] out of ISIS.”

American voters who confused politics with entertainment, who opted for the weakest of candidates, in the end will make Americans pay with their lives for their choices.

Email mbelz@wng.org