Leslie H. Gelb's op-ed in The New York Times this morning struck me as important. I don't know if he's right that Iraq needs some sort of unified, three state confederation.  It seems reasonable to me. I'm sure it's more complicated than it sounds. But, consider this:

“The second step of this strategy is to set President Bashar al-Assad of Syria against the jihadis in Iraq, an offensive he started on his own with airstrikes last week. This would acknowledge the reality of Iraq and Syria as one strategic, anti-jihadi battlefield.

But instead of capitalizing on Mr. Assad’s anti-jihadi instincts, the Obama team now proposes to do what it has resisted doing for almost three years — to send hundreds of millions of dollars in arms aid for the Sunni rebels battling the Assad government. This move has American priorities backward. It will turn Mr. Assad away from the jihadis in Iraq, and back to fighting American-backed rebels in Syria.

The greatest threat to American interests in the region is ISIS, not Mr. Assad. To fight this enemy, Mr. Obama needs to call on others similarly threatened: Iran, Russia, Iraqi Shiites and Kurds, Jordan, Turkey — and above all, the political leader with the best-armed forces in the region, Mr. Assad. Part of the deal would need to be that the Syrian regime and the rebels largely leave each other alone.”

Whoa, my friends!

The criticism of Obama's foreign policy from the activist left (Anne Marie Slaughter and her ilk) and the war loving right (Dick Cheney, people related to Dick Cheney and people who worked for Dick Cheney) is that Obama let ISIS get out of hand because he was too cautious about dealing with Syria.

Gelb is telling us that this is complete balderdash.  It might sound good on a cable TV show ("He ignored Syria and now a giant paramilitary group has sprung up there, just like how Al-Qaeda thrived in neglected Afghanistan," is a good TV line) but it ignores what anti-war liberals have known forever -- these religious zealot caliphate types do not get along with the mostly secular strongmen of the region.

Put another way, if in 2002 or 2003, Saddam Hussein could have regained his status as an American puppet by delivering Osama bin Laden to U.S. forces, he would have. Hussein considered bin Laden an enemy just like Assad considers ISIS an enemy.

I don't believe that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."  Life is more complicated than that.  But it should have come as no surprise that Syria bombed ISIS in Iraq.  If we had acted as Slaughter or Cheney suggested, if we had used our muscle to depose Assad entirely, than it strikes me that ISIS, deprived of its local predator would have flourished even more quickly.

Seems like there might be a lesson to be learned from recent history about deposing a dictator without a good plan for what comes next. Can't put my finger on it, though.

I also wonder if people who continue to criticize Obama for not acting forcefully enough against Assad will actually be questioned about this.  ISIS is stronger without Assad.  If ISIS is now our main security concern then any action we take against Assad undermines our ability to deal with ISIS. Unless, that is, the critic is advocating a perpetual occupation of both Iraq and Syria, something that nobody outside of the "foreign policy community" considers tolerable.

I definitely think this ends the question about whether or not Obama was "too soft" or too cautious about Syria.  Toppling Assad means empowering ISIS.  If we had toppled Assad a year ago we would have more ISIS to deal with now, not less.  

The hawks got this one wrong and here's the thing -- they repeated the Iraq mistake. Secular strongman dictators in the Middle East are the predators of religion-inspired terrorists and paramilitary groups.  That does not make those dictators our allies.  But if you remove them, their prey will surely flourish.