Robinson: What alternatives are there in fighting Islamic State?

The president’s approach — U.S. airstrikes plus support of friendly ground forces in Iraq and Syria — clearly has not worked, at least to this point. The Islamic State is no longer gobbling territory and, in fact, has lost a bit, but its leaders can still claim to have established and defended an Islamic “caliphate” that serves as magnet and inspiration for jihadist militants around the world.

Moreover, as we have seen in recent weeks, the Islamic State has expanded its focus to include targets abroad. The group has claimed credit for the downing of a Russian airliner in Egypt, deadly bombings in Beirut and, of course, Friday’s merciless killings in and around the French capital.

Obama’s tone in addressing the Paris atrocity was all wrong. At times, he was patronizing, at other times annoyed and dismissive. He said, essentially, that he had considered all options and decided that even a large-scale terrorist attack in the heart of a European capital was not enough to make him reconsider his policy.

Establish no-fly zones? That would have little effect on the Islamic State, which does not have an air force. It would have an impact on the forces of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, so maybe this is something Obama could have done before Russia intervened with air power to support Assad’s regime. But creating a no-fly zone would have plunged the United States headfirst into the Syrian civil war.

Create safe zones for Syrian civilians and “moderate” rebels? Once again, we would be in the middle of the war.

Republicans talk big

The Republican presidential candidates talk a tough game, but only Lindsey Graham — who has so little support that he didn’t even make the most recent undercard debate — lays out an honest alternative to Obama’s policy. He proposes that the United States lead a coalition of as many as 100,000 troops to eliminate the Islamic State and pacify Syria.

That’s a plan worth debating. My biggest question is whether this would, in the end, make the world a safer place. The experience of the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrates how good the Western alliance is at creating power vacuums in the Middle East and how bad it is at filling them. It is hard to imagine that a new generation of jihadists would not quickly emerge, with a new set of grievances against the United States and its allies.

Presidential candidate Jeb Bush says we should “declare war” against the Islamic State, which our airstrikes have already done. Republican Ted Cruz and others rail against Obama for not more stridently defining the enemy as “Islamic,” as if fighting terrorism were a matter of semantics.

“Every few months, I go to Walter Reed (Army Medical Center), and I see a 25-year-old kid who is paralyzed or has lost his limbs, and some of those are people I’ve ordered into battle,” Obama said, “so I can’t afford to play some of the political games that others may.”

Critics should offer viable alternatives, or they should stop playing their games.