Obama Still Has No Strategy Against Islamic State
10/27/2015 07:06 PM ET
What we learned from Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s testimony
to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday is that the Obama
administration says it is willing to conduct “direct action on the
ground,” but it still hasn’t settled on how to fight the Islamic State.
A year and four months of fighting a newly formed monster that has consumed large parts of Iraq and Syria, claiming to be a new country, a global caliphate attracting jihadists from all over the world, and the United States still has no strategy against it.
Still, President Obama’s promise seems to be fraying. “I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said a year ago September. “It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”
When the success of President Bush’s 2007 surge in Iraq is contrasted with the vacillation and lack of confidence in our role we witness today, it becomes harder to make the case that IS is the creation of Bush rather than Obama.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, asked by CNN last week if the Iraq invasion brought IS into being, answered, “I think there are elements of truth in that,” but also added that “we have got to be extremely careful, otherwise we will misunderstand what’s going on in Iraq and in Syria today.”
According to Blair, who worked closely with Bush on ousting Saddam Hussein, “you can’t say that those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015.”
It would have been truer, however, to say: “You can’t say that those of us who weren’t in power from 2009 to today bear most of the responsibility for the situation in 2015.”
The 2003 invasion removed a thug from Iraq whose nuclear reactor has to be destroyed 35 years ago and who used chemical weapons on his own populace. The 2007 surge saved Iraq from going under. IS emerged in 2014 under the U.S. leader who squandered those gains, refused to finish the job, then underestimated IS in its formative states as a “jayvee” team.
As President Obama rethinks his no-ground-troops promise, he faces a mess of his own making.
A year and four months of fighting a newly formed monster that has consumed large parts of Iraq and Syria, claiming to be a new country, a global caliphate attracting jihadists from all over the world, and the United States still has no strategy against it.
Still, President Obama’s promise seems to be fraying. “I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said a year ago September. “It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”
When the success of President Bush’s 2007 surge in Iraq is contrasted with the vacillation and lack of confidence in our role we witness today, it becomes harder to make the case that IS is the creation of Bush rather than Obama.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, asked by CNN last week if the Iraq invasion brought IS into being, answered, “I think there are elements of truth in that,” but also added that “we have got to be extremely careful, otherwise we will misunderstand what’s going on in Iraq and in Syria today.”
According to Blair, who worked closely with Bush on ousting Saddam Hussein, “you can’t say that those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015.”
It would have been truer, however, to say: “You can’t say that those of us who weren’t in power from 2009 to today bear most of the responsibility for the situation in 2015.”
The 2003 invasion removed a thug from Iraq whose nuclear reactor has to be destroyed 35 years ago and who used chemical weapons on his own populace. The 2007 surge saved Iraq from going under. IS emerged in 2014 under the U.S. leader who squandered those gains, refused to finish the job, then underestimated IS in its formative states as a “jayvee” team.
As President Obama rethinks his no-ground-troops promise, he faces a mess of his own making.
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