And, in Iraq, the United States had, again and again, for what has now been 20 years, used short-term military might to solve long-term political problems. And, every time, that made the political problems worse.
First it was President Clinton bombing Iraq in 1998 to punish it for refusing weapons inspectors. Saddam Hussein, Iraq's leader, had refused the inspectors, internal documents later revealed, out of misapprehension that Mr. Clinton had been sincere in his threats to remove that leadership by force. The bombings did not exactly dissuade Hussein of his paranoia.
Then, in 2003, President Bush invaded Iraq, supposedly to remove an imminent threat to the United States, in the process creating a generation of much bigger threats.
By the time Mr. Obama bombed platoons' worth of his own military's equipment in Iraq, the country had been "saved" by American military action so many times that it was no longer able to provide for its own basic security. The result was a situation in which American intervention to roll back the Islamic State's advance really had become the only way to fill the security vacuum there.
