The Reluctant Pledge

"Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, (Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy."
"This counter-terrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist."
U.S. President Barack Obama

US President Barack Obama delivers a live televised address to the nation on his plans for military action against the Islamic State from the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington, Sept. 10, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Saul Loeb)

"The US claims it's fighting terrorism while cooperating with those backing the terrorist groups. It's not only that; they want to arm other terrorist groups in Syria under the pretext they are moderate Islamists. Everyone knows who they are and what agenda they are serving."
Senior Iranian official

"I wonder how an international coalition can be formed and Syria, which is targeted by terrorism in depth, is shunned aside. [Violating Syrian sovereignty will have] negative repercussions on regional and international security."
Syrian lawmaker Sharif Shehadeh, Damascus

President Obama has unveiled the strategy that he admitted a short week ago eluded him and his advisers. The new strategy thus far is limited to American forces being given the power to strike Islamic State anywhere at any time as opposed to the airstrikes that were confined to protection of American personnel and in support of humanitarian missions. This is an admission that any strike against ISIS/ISIL, anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances represents a humanitarian mission in action.

ISIS is a grim threat to civilization and humanity wherever it exists. Primarily, for the present, within Syria and Iraq where it has relentlessly carved out its initial caliphate, declaring its caliph who will also be targeted for removal, as was Osama bin Laden. Patience will never be more of a virtue than what intelligence gathering, careful scrutiny and pinpoint planning and execution may produce in the elimination of the man who stands as the Islamic State figurehead of prime influence.

This, however, is not a war that the White House has pronounced though it is now "poised to go on the offence". This is a counter-terrorist offensive, one that will obligate American action only to a degree, excluding the previous deployment in Iraq of tens of thousands of American servicemen which extracted its wartime share of mortal casualties. The American public is enthused over the necessity of this limited, but powerful action by their country ... but there are limits.

The U.S. administration warns that there is no foreseen limit on the longevity of this commitment; it could very well last years ... as long as it takes. The question also is, should the Islamic State militias be destroyed in Iraq and Syria would that mean that IS support and cells existing throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and North America would dissolve miraculously? What happens to the many-headed hydra if the main beast is put out of commission?

Look at al-Qaeda which at one time was located in Yemen, as a discrete body, relocated to Afghanistan, then its massively psychopathic cancer of murderous devotion metastasized, and offshoots appeared everywhere. Where did ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State come from if not al-Qaeda after all? Only it's a bigger, better, as in more hugely terrorizing, jihad-ferocious, fanatical entity than its predecessor. And, as such, more of a success, one with a bigger draw from among the Ummah and its appeal to converts to Islam is huge.

Think of the vast riches amassed by the oil-wealthy Gulf States, in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, enabling them to amass huge stores of weaponry reflecting the most up-to-date technological advances. They enjoy these weaponized treasures as toys. Even though they have standing armies, it simply doesn't occur to the Arab League to take the initiative to clear out the Islamist fanatical threats to their own longevity. They regard the advances of IS with fateful passivity and look for salvation to the very source they both rely upon and detest.

And from within those oil-rich enclaves comes the support for the very fanatics that threaten their nations. While U.S. missions over Iraq flow out of an airbase in Qatar and aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet is based on Bahrain, while Western navy vessels dock at Emirati ports and Kuwait was a 2003 staging ground for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, they have no intention of taking direct action themselves to free themselves from the threat of the Islamic State.

Turkey, a NATO member and aspirant to the European Union, gave haven to ISIS/ISIL within its borders, and even now acts as middleman in helping to transport and sell their oil to fund their activities. Ankara is more concerned about the potential of Kurdish forces advancing their appeal for sovereignty than aiding the Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Regional Government and Turkey's Kurds in their defence against the Islamic State.

Jordan hosting a U.S.-led training of Syrian opposition fighters will not agree to having an active military role in a coalition to fight Islamic State, but puts its airfields and army bases at U.S.-led forces' disposal. Egypt? Its influential religious authority speaks against the Islamic State and the most populous Sunni Arab state in the Middle East is not prepared to mount a joint military assistance, but may provide logistical supports.

Middle East nations are not too keen on doing their own housekeeping. It's what they import foreigners to do for them. And when things go wrong, that's when they decry, deride and defame the outsiders who make such a hash of trying to bring order and discipline and tamp down tribal animosities and sectarian violence culminating in countless deaths of Arabs and Muslims at their very own hands, responding to the dictates of Islam and jihad.