A House Democrat charged Wednesday that the Islamic State is getting free power from Iraq, and said “extreme” rules of engagement are preventing the United States and Syrian allies from ending that arrangement.
“Our rules of engagement in bombing have been so extreme that, I mean, we continue to see ISIS getting free electricity from the Iraqi government through generation [and] transmission facilities that we will not bomb,” Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Wednesday on C-SPAN.
Airstrikes represent the bulk of U.S. action against the Islamic State in Syria, but the President Obama’s team has taken criticism already for refusing to bomb oil fields, and only targeting fuel trucks in a limited fashion. Sherman broadened that critique to include the electricity supply while also faulting the administration’s ineffectiveness in arming Syrian rebels.
“Part of the problem with our policy in Syria is that we’re willing to arm those Syrians that are dedicated to democracy but only if they promise not to fight Assad,” Sherman said. “Well, Assad is a butcher who has killed hundreds of thousands of people. How are you supposed to find a reasonable Syrian who isn’t against Assad?”
Syrian President Bashar Assad has the support of Russia, which intervened in Syria ostensibly to destroy the Islamic State but carried out bombing runs against U.S.-backed rebels as well. “We really have 20, 30, 40 troops in the field that we’ve armed because everybody has to pass this incredible test where you have to be a patriotic Syrian dedicated to democracy, but not want to fight Assad,” Sherman said.
President Obama has decided to send 217 more troops to Iraq to fight the terrorist state there, bringing the total official number of Americans deployed above 4,000. Obama has the authority the do that under the 2001 authorization of the use of military force against al Qaeda and its affiliates, but Sherman said Congress needs to develop an Islamic State-specific policy.
“We passed a resolution in 2001 and haven’t spoken since, abdicating our responsibility,” he said. “We need to repeal what we did in 2001 and replace it with a good policy for 2016.”
That’s politically difficult, because congressional Democrats and Republicans are split on the matter, which leaves Obama to manage the terrorist threat. “This is yet another example of the kind of grudging incrementalism that rarely wins wars, but could certainly lose one,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in response to news of the new deployment.
