WASHINGTON – A glimpse of the anxiety sweeping the Arab world surfaced recently when an Arab woman complained during a talk in Amman at the Columbia Global Center for the Middle East. She said my speech’s title about the “crisis” in the region wasn’t accurate. The correct word was “disintegration.” The audience cheered loudly.
The Arab world is suffering a sense of vertigo these days. Extremists from the Islamic State have burst through the gates of power. Political elites are confused and frightened. They’re angry at the United States (as always). But at the same time, they want the United States to explain a strategy for combating a group that threatens every structure of stability, including borders.
This anxiety has been compounded by President Obama’s slow start in rolling out his plan to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State.
The strategy has a lot of “ifs” and “maybes,” and it’s definitely a “work in progress,” as one U.S. official admits. Among other drawbacks, it requires patience, in short supply in America and the Middle East; and it’s much clearer about Iraq than Syria. But the campaign plans do provide more clarity and allow for some needed public discussion.
For starters, this is an army at dawn, and U.S. commanders insist on taking little steps before big ones. The United States has posted a string of small successes, with air power backing Iraqi and Kurdish forces that liberated the Mosul and Haditha dams, freed trapped Yazidis on Mount Sinjar and successfully defended Irbil and Amerli.