The war against ISIS gets all the media coverage, but the lack of a comprehensive strategy by the U.S. is allowing equally important and complex issues to fester in the Middle East, Sen. John McCain wrote in a column for The New York Times.
Front and center: Why are Iraqi Kurds, longtime allies of the U.S., getting attacked near Kirkuk by Iraqi security forces with weapons provided by the U.S.?
"These clashes also emblematic of a broader, more troubling reality: Beyond our tactical successes in the fight against the Islamic State, the United States is still dangerously lacking a comprehensive strategy toward the rest of the Middle East in all of its complexity," McCain wrote in The Times.
"This is the unfortunate legacy that the Obama administration left for its successor."
Though President Donald Trump's administration recognizes the problem it was handed, McCain writes that Part I of a broader strategy has to include helping our allies, the Kurds.
The U.S. supplied weapons to Iraqi security forces to fight against ISIS, not the Kurds, "some of America's most trusted and capable partners in the region," McCain writes.
The Trump administration remains "singularly focused" on defeating ISIS, essential, of course, McCain writes.
But it's going to take more than that in the Middle East, where "American power and influence is diminishing," McCain writes.
"If we keep sleepwalking on our current trajectory, we could wake up in the near future and find that American influence has been pushed out of one of the most important parts of the world," McCain writes.
"That is why we need to stick with our true friends, like the Kurds. And that is why, now more than ever, we need a strategy that lifts our sights above the tactical level and separates the urgent from the truly important," McCain concludes.