Millard Grimes: No easy answers in Mideast

Fear is the strongest motivator of human reaction, and perhaps there has never been a time in U.S. history when Franklin Roosevelt's simple words have been truer: "All we have to fear is fear itself."

At last count the number of Americans killed on U.S. soil by Islamic terrorists this year is Well, none that I can come up with.

The number of such victims in France remains fewer than150; the number killed in England: none reported.

That is not to say that ISIL, by whatever name it goes, is not a present threat and deserving of due vigilance, but the threat should be kept in perspective. The roots of ISIL need to be understood and ripped out where possible.

Most of ISIL's followers spring from two countries, Syria and Iraq. It has no national entity of its own, it has no history or organized body of principles around which to rally. It has no air force, which is one reason why the call for a so-called "no-fly zone" in the area of armed conflict makes little sense.

According to the best evidence, ISIL arose as recently as 2010 from the remains of al-Qaeda and of other Sunni jihadi groups formed mainly to oppose U.S. troops stationed in Iraq.

It is not useful to fix blame for ISIL on any U.S. policies or presidents, but our military ventures into Iraq in 1991 and 2003 obviously created the bloody soil in which ISIL has grown.

The first U.S. invasion of Iraq in January 1991 virtually destroyed the army of Saddam Hussein, then its dictator, but left Saddam and much of his military equipment in place.

In the next few years, Saddam rebuilt the army while waging war on the Kurds and other dissident groups in Iraq. By 2002, Iraq was again considered a military threat to its neighbors and the U.S. sent an army that devastated what was left of its government structure, including Saddam, in a search for "weapons of mass destruction" that still haven't been found in 12 years of war since.

President Obama, following a plan endorsed by President George W. Bush, withdrew most U.S. troops from Iraq by 2010, after installing a government dominated by Shi'ite Muslims, which angered Sunni-dominated tribes, who controlled most of the territory outside the capital.

ISIL - or the Islamic State - sprang from those roots and sought adherents and territory to establish a caliphate in the area. It found fertile ground and eager allies in neighboring Syria. This was at the time of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 when several Arab governments were overthrown, including those in Egypt and Libya. U.S. leaders struggled to identify which leaders they wanted in charge of the various governments.

Obama and his then-secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, sounded an uncertain trumpet and the result was an opening for non-government forces such as ISIL to attract extremists from the disparate groups in Syria, whose main goal was to overthrow the government of Bashir Assad, who has proved harder to overthrow than Mubarak in Egypt or Khadafi in Libya. His family has ruled Syria since 1970, and still does, with a reported army at 100,000 still loyal to his regime.

ISIL's official base, such as it is, lies there in Syria and Iraq, and it is there that it must be attacked and the roots of its appeal torn out. It is a small land area with an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 ISIL troops on the ground.

Currently the combined forces arrayed against ISIL consist of the Iraqi national army, the Iranian government, Russia, France, and U.S. air power, plus that 100,000 "boots on the ground" in the forces of Assad.

That should be enough. The war against ISIL's base is different from the war against scattered terrorists in the rest of the world, which must be dealt with by the nations involved, and which are being dealt with, most especially in the United States.

The will to oppose ISIL, and the forces to do so, are in place. Suicide bombers, who are willing to sacrifice their lives, are difficult to foil - but they are also rare and unorganized.

The first priority today for the U.S. is to decide whether it is willing to put aside its opposition to the Assad government in Syria, and join the forces arrayed against ISIL there, which should resolve the conflict in short order.

Neither the Obama administration or any of the Republican candidates has suggested that course, which hints of a deeper reason not yet revealed to the general public. Assad may be a dictator who has killed thousands of his own people but he is not a worldwide threat on the order of ISIL nor even a threat to neighboring countries.

A factor that must be considered in the Middle East is that none of the warring Muslim governments or factions, Sunni or Shi'ite, trusts the U.S. completely for a simple reason: its unwavering support of Israel, both militarily and financially. If anything unites the Arabs it is their hatred of Israel.

The U.S. will be the only nation to support Israel in the United Nations this month; it cannot count on the votes of a single other nation, Arab or any other. That is an unpleasant but enduring reality which must be considered in the Middle East conflict.

The U.S. can best help Israel and the cause of peace by pursuing the shortest path to peace - and at this time that seems to be support for the forces arrayed with Assad, which should bring a quick end to the ISIL insurgency.

Millard Grimes, editor of the Columbus Enquirer from 1961-69 and founder of the Phenix Citizen. is author of "The Last Linotype: The Story of Georgia and Its Newspapers Since World War II."

This story was originally published November 30, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Millard Grimes: No easy answers in Mideast ."