What will the new stage of “war” look like? If in fact the U.S. and France are now prepared to be “ruthless,” it means that French planes and troops can soon be expected in Syria and possibly Iraq, and in Washington the festering debate between the White House and the Pentagon over whether America’s few “boots on the ground” in those countries are to be used in combat or not will be resolved in favor of more aggressiveness.
That shift was already underway before the attacks: Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in late October that the U.S. would soon begin “direct action on the ground” in Iraq and Syria, and one result apparently was the success of Kurdish forces supported by U.S. special operations troops in retaking the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq. Now the slippery slope toward undeclared war between the U.S. and Islamic State—what Obama perhaps most wanted to avoid in his ambition to be remembered as the president who “ends wars”—will grow ever-slippier. Don’t expect to hear the president use the word “containment” again for awhile.
And as it was after 9/11, the biggest danger now may be overreaction in how far this new anti-terror alignment is prepared to go. The Islamic State and al Qaeda before it have proved adept at exploiting the perception that the West is at war with Islam, and now the rhetoric along those lines is heating up again. (Rubio, for one, dredged up a neocon locution from a decade ago, calling the fight “a clash of civilizations… and either they win or we win.”) How hot will it get? In their zeal to rid themselves of these killers, the question facing France and other European countries – and their allies in Washington, eager to prove their toughness – is how far they’re willing go in compromising the very values and liberties that they believe distinguish them most from the terrorists.
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