Christopher R. Hill

While the fight between ISIS and the forces arrayed against it rages on in the Middle East, another brutal battle is brewing in the United States over who is winning the war. In the U.S. these days, all issues – whatever and wherever – soon fall into the maw of the country’s polarized domestic politics.

Thus, the effort to contain and destroy ISIS has become yet another referendum on President Barack Obama’s stewardship of U.S. foreign policy. Is he “tough” enough? Or, as some of his opponents have preferred to frame the issue, does he really love his country?

The puerile level of the domestic debate should mislead no one about the seriousness of the crisis. For now, the main focus of ISIS is the creation of its would-be caliphate and the frenetic and bloody effort to force all those who are under its rule to live in accordance with the caliphate’s tenets. But the ideology of ISIS suggests far more ambitious projects, starting with war against the nearby Shiite populations, who, as apostates, must be slaughtered. There is no quarter in the worldview of ISIS; the organization’s interpretation of the Quran does not allow it.

ISIS may never achieve the global reach that its leaders seek; indeed, it may ultimately control only the Syrian and Iraqi badlands. But its effect across the Arab world has been profound, especially among a younger generation of Arabs that has lost hope and respect for the region’s secular authorities. Many young Muslims, including some who live in the West, have been highly susceptible to the slick and effective propaganda put out by ISIS.

A review of that propaganda recalls Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in the 1920s: an announcement of a far more ambitious set of objectives than the group’s current circumstances would justify. Beyond subjugating those in the caliphate, exterminating the Shiites, and gaining custodianship of Islam’s holy places in Saudi Arabia, ISIS ultimately embraces an apocalyptic vision, to be realized through a sectarian totalitarianism that embodies divine revelation – and thus envisions no compromise or competition.

Meanwhile, back in the frozen capital of the world’s remaining superpower, the political meat grinder has been readied. Obama’s draft authorization for use of military force (AUMF) – which is essentially a legal refresh of the last AUMF that was agreed in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks – has turned into another opportunity to showcase disunity in the face of crisis. Obama’s opponents are delighting in picking apart the threads of the draft resolution in yet another effort to discredit his administration.

Wordsmithing a draft resolution, it can be argued, is what legislators are paid to do. But the actions by some in Congress go far beyond showing the required due diligence. It seems that they are considerably more concerned about Obama than about ISIS.

Obama has sought, with some success, to marshal a multinational coalition to confront ISIS; most important, he has induced cooperation from countries in the Middle East that, afraid to speak and act clearly, had hoped that putting their heads in the sand would make the threat go away. To keep these countries on board, the U.S. president has been at pains to show that extremism is a universal concern that transcends the confines of the Muslim world.

But Obama’s effort to universalize the problem of extremism has exposed him to the charge of relativizing ISIS – and thus ignoring the true nature of the organization – by claiming a moral equivalence between it and political extremism elsewhere in the world, including in the United States. That is what has caused his detractors to question the president’s patriotism, a political capital offense in many countries, and nowhere more so than in America.

Given that Obama will leave office in less than two years, the drone of unending criticism is excessive. But it is also dangerous. For the rest of the world, and for ISIS, it creates the impression that America is a weak and divided country, as well as one that is unable to lead. For that, the blame falls not on the president, but on the entire U.S. political system and its media enablers.

It used to be America’s economic staying power that the world questioned. After all, it was the United States that first entered the terra incognita of the post-industrial era, in which manufactured goods were increasingly produced elsewhere, while employment and growth shifted to financial and other professional services.

But now the world worries – with considerable justification – about the American political system. The atmosphere has become so divisive that the U.S. Congress, it seems, cannot even ensure continued financing for the Department of Homeland Security, let alone approve an authorization for the use of military force.

The United States prides itself on its diversity and on the strength that has derived from it. Today, however, diversity no longer yields unity – the e pluribus unum that graces America’s coins and banknotes. Unless that changes, the United States will lack the strength needed to prevail over such singular threats as ISIS.