I’m all-in on destroying ISIS. It is a sick, destabilizing movement. I support using U.S. air power and special forces to root it out, but only as part of a coalition, where everybody who has a stake in stability there pays their share and where mainstream Sunnis and Shiites take the lead by demonstrating that they hate ISIS more than they hate each other.So, Friedman agrees with Obama we have to get Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to agree to a unity government first. But earlier in the column he writes:
Power-sharing doesn’t come easy in a region where kinship and sectarian loyalties overwhelm any sense of shared citizenship.If that wasn't enough to keep a unity government from happening, Friedman chronicles:
The three civil wars raging in the Arab world today: the civil war within Sunni Islam between radical jihadists and moderate mainstream Sunni Muslims and regimes; the civil war across the region between Sunnis funded by Saudi Arabia and Shiites funded by Iran; and the civil war between Sunni jihadists and all other minorities in the region — Yazidis, Turkmen, Kurds, Christians, Jews and Alawites.Let me summarize: Friedman favors military action if all the non-jihadis in the region will work together, except he says they almost certainly won't work together, cannot work together. So what do you recommend Tom? Do nothing?
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