Kaine's proposal makes sense

Every teacher at some point gets tested by their students. Someone will act up in class or do something because they think they can get away with it. How that teacher handles the situation most of the time sets the tone for the rest of the school year. In many ways, it’s the same with our country’s foreign policy. There comes a time when threatening speeches just aren’t enough, you need to take action. That’s why, with a few qualifiers, we support the legislation Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine introduced Wednesday, a plan that, if approved by Congress, would authorize continued military action against the Islamic State militant group.

Kaine’s legislation calls for airstrikes on Islamic State targets, with language that would strictly limit the use of American ground troops. The idea would be to limit U.S. casualties as much as possible, while taking out important targets. It bans the use of American troops, except for rescue missions and limited operations against what Kaine deems as “high-value targets.”

Here’s the problem and where one of our qualifiers comes in. Airstrikes alone simply won’t work. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey explained that on Tuesday, when he told reporters that airstrikes were not as useful as they were originally. When airstrikes started, pilots had easy targets because the militant groups drove around with black flags on their vehicles. Not so much anymore.

“What we’ve seen so far is a lot of the black flags have come down, a lot of the convoys have dispersed, a lot of the assembly areas have been moved into urban areas,” Dempsey told reporters during a press briefing Tuesday.

That pretty much makes it clear airstrikes alone won’t work. There have been a little more than 160 airstrikes over the last month, according to the information released by the military. Islamic State forces have adapted and now we need to use a new technique.

Also, we would suggest not placing a “sell-by” date on the legislation. As it stands, the bill would allow military action to continue for a full year. It’s like announcing in a city or county that certain rules are in effect, but only for the next three months. Sure, crime might go down during that period, but once the time is up, nobody should be shocked to see more police reports in the news. Limited actions have limited impacts. The same is true in this case. If Congress says they’ll support military action, but only up to a year, we will no doubt see improvements over the next few months. The question is, will they be lasting ones or are the militants just sitting back, waiting for the deadline to pass?

Still, to do nothing isn’t an option. It just puts our troops still in Iraq and other Americans in the area in danger. Currently there’s a little less than 2,000 American soldiers still stationed in Iraq. Much like Kaine and his fellow Virginia senator Mark Warner, both of whom have spoke out on the issue repeatedly, we don’t have a stomach to see more Americans beheaded or other people injured by this group. Military action is needed and it’s a goal worth supporting. But we need to make sure we do it right, because there are rarely second chances in these situations. 

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