Last Wednesday, President Barack Obama laid out his plan to combat Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. His plan wasn’t too radical in terms of details. It mainly relies on bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria — even though Syria has repeatedly said no to the U.S. bombing ISIS in Syria — and creating a “coalition” of allies against ISIS. However, his plan has three gaping holes that might unravel it before it even starts.

One flaw in his plan is the arming of the Free Syrian Army. The FSA was started as a secular resistance against President of Syria Bashar Al-Assad’s brutal and authoritarian regime. However, now the FSA is mostly made up of various Islamic extremist groups and terror cells, with analysts reporting that there are virtually no moderates left in the FSA, according to a June 27 article from the Independent. If there were moderates, making sure the arms don’t fall into terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, who are members of the FSA, would be nearly impossible. We don’t want to arm them only to have to come back 10–15 years later and fight them in Syria.

On Friday, according to Agence France-Presse, ISIS announced it would devote more resources to fighting al-Assad and has a ceasefire with the “moderate” Syrian rebels. Then on Saturday, Middle East Eye reported that, “The Free Syrian Army has announced that it will not sign up to the U.S.-led coalition to destroy Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.” The FSA stated it will only work with the U.S.-led coalition only with “a guarantee that the U.S. is committed to his (al-Assad) overthrow.” While al-Assad is a brutal tyrant who uses chemical weapons against his own people, ISIS creating alliances with the “moderates” Obama wants to arm is not good at all. The war is shifting under Obama’s feet, with ISIS and FSA joining to fight against al-Assad.

The second is that Obama doesn’t want boots on the ground; this is a purely political move as he fears American war-weariness. However, military analysts repeatedly state that ISIS cannot be defeated without ground forces rooting them out and taking their territory.

In an August press conference, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said, “They’re beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded,” he said. “This is beyond anything that we’ve seen.” ISIS isn’t the JV team Obama has said they were. They are going to require a real commitment from the U.S. and arming militants with unclear allegiances is not the way to handle ISIS.

The third problem with Obama’s plan to form a coalition to fight ISIS, is that while many groups are fighting ISIS, there isn’t enough to bring these groups together. The FSA and the Kurds — a staunch ally of the U.S. and a minority in the Middle East directly targeted by ISIS — both hate al-Assad, but the FSA and ISIS now work together.  Iran is also fighting ISIS, but work and support al-Assad. In short, forming a coalition of groups to fight ISIS is impossible.

Al-Assad has been trying to court the West by saying he is the only alternative to ISIS and the numerous terrorist groups that make up the FSA. The U.S. has a long history of supporting brutal dictators like Pinochet of Chile, Saddam, the Shah of Iran, and Suharto of Indonesia; repeating history by supporting al-Assad would put us in a bad light.

Ultimately, Obama’s plan looks like it might fail. If he wants to defeat ISIS, he needs to be more decisive. He needs to arm the Kurds instead of trying to form a coalition and he needs to put boots on the ground.

Rami Jackson is a junior entrepreneurship and policy studies major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @IsRamicJ.

Published on September 15, 2014 at 12:24 am