Choosing our enemies

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, goes the old saying. But it's hard to apply that doctrine to the turmoil in Iraq and Syria.

After months of depicting Bashar al-Assad's tyrannical regime as a cancer that must be removed, the Obama administration is faced with possibly helping the Syrian government fight a common foe - the Islamic State terrorist group.

It may serve as a useful history lesson to blame the rise of the Islamic State on President Obama's earlier reluctance to provide decisive military assistance to the more moderate groups rebelling against Assad. But hindsight won't resolve the current situation.

U.S. air strikes against IS could well help Assad win Syria's three-year civil war. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said "any effort to combat terrorism should be coordinated with the Syrian government." But if air strikes help Assad's forces, what would the United States do next to support non-IS Syrian rebels?

There are no easy answers to such a complex predicament. Air strikes in Syria are a reasonable step to stop IS's advances. Obama's interest in involving Congress in that decision seems politically calculated, but it's understandable that he wants those railing for air strikes and more to share responsibility for the consequences.

Neither politics nor emotionalism should dictate the U.S. response to IS, which sickened every rational person with its beheading of American journalist James Foley. The subsequent release of U.S. journalist Peter Theo by an al-Qaeda faction seen as a rival to IS only served to confirm just how hard it is to keep track of alliances.

Foley's death, which was video-recorded for the Internet, has brought needed attention to the plight of reporters and photographers covering the combat in Syria and Iraq. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 80 have been kidnapped in Syria since the war began, including about 60 in the last year, and some 70 journalists have been killed.

Americans have heard little about this peril. Most of the abducted journalists were locals. Plus, U.S. news organizations have kept quiet for fear of upsetting negotiations to free their own kidnapped staff members or freelancers. Foley's death may change that. Robert Reid, a former Associated Press Middle East editor, told the Wall Street Journal that he doesn't know whether anything is gained by keeping kidnappings quiet.

Speaking up is also what Muslim leaders, particularly in the United Kingdom, must do to help counter the recruitment tactics of terrorist groups. The United Kingdom estimates that more than 500 British men and women have joined the militants in Iraq and Syria, presumably including Foley's executioner, who spoke with a British accent.

In a very real sense, terrorism must also be fought by peaceful Muslims who are tired of seeing young people indoctrinated in Western mosques leaving their homes for Iraq or Syria to die in a war. Radicalization leads youths to websites where extreme interpretations of the Quran encourage them to become jihadists. Addressing their disaffection is as important as air strikes in ending terrorism.