Annotated Bibliography: The Military Escalation In Iraq And Syria

Professor Boujaber

POS 2041

14 November 2015

The Military Escalation in Iraq and Syria

Laura Villard: Sections A, E, D

John Gilbert: Sections B, F, D

Timothy Beltley: Sections C, E

Section A:

The New York Times Editorial Board’s main point in the article, “The Military Escalation in Iraq and Syria” is that the U.S. is too involved with the Syrian war with enticement from Congress without declaration of war or clear strategy.

Section B: The Editorial Board argues that the escalating American military forces in the Syrian war will only result in the U.S. being sucked into a war in the Middle East. The authors adds that the current administration has little legal framework or strategy for dealing with the Islamic State with even no declaration

President Obama and other heads of state have asked Assad to step down before, and was implicated of Syrian war crimes in 2011 by the UN during an ongoing effort to destroy Syrian chemical weapons (Black). The article describes the possibility of war with Russia and Iran while also bolstering Islamic State powers from his removal. From my research it would seem the accusations against Assad are difficult to substantiate because of the frequent denial from the Assad administration, but numerous enough to depict fault. It is one thing to liberate cities and incorporate no-fly zones that the authors vehemently consider too involved for our own good, but uprooting a state head is not in our country’s best interest. If there is anything that doesn’t paint a brighter picture of the author’s qualms against the strategies is Obama’s track record with not following them. The same chemical weapons in Syria mentioned earlier were noted by Obama as being “‘grounds for reprisal’ without doing the necessary diplomatic dirty work to get people in line” (Judis). “George W. Bush, for all his faults, proved adept at winning public backing for his invasion of Iraq,” a field of diplomacy Obama lacks (Judis). Obama “… [swings] abruptly from one overall strategy to another without fully appreciating the consequences” (Judis). With an administration rooted in an unstructured foreign policy, the ramifications depend on the possible