Regime change is a complex and messy thing. Attempts at regime
change always involve three parties: the government who desires to carry out
the regime change, the regime it wishes to change, and the domestic group meant
to replace the current regime or at least facilitate the coup. The history of
attempted American coups is littered with disasters that resulted from a third
party that was as, or more, nefarious than the regime it replaced.
America’s initial reaction to the Islamic State’s (at the time first al-Qaeda
in Iraq then ISIS) attempts to topple the regimes in Iraq and Syria was bizarre
and unexpected. As the very force the war on terror was supposed to eliminate
from the region cut its own state out of the Levant, America was silent. In
ISIS:
the State of Terror, terrorism experts Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger
say that “the Obama administration gave the problem short shrift” and “dismissed
concerns about [ISIS] and other jihadists fighting in . . . Syria.” They cite
an interview conducted as recently as 2014 in which Obama compared ISIS to a
junior varsity team that was merely masquerading as major league player. The
Obama administration seemed not to be noticing ISIS and seemed to be “caught
off guard.”
Such a failing of intelligence would be bizarre enough; however,
it was not intelligence, but policy. What was really bizarre was not that America
hadn’t noticed but that it had. American intelligence had informed the policy
makers about ISIS, and the policy makers chose silence.