Posted on 10/14/2014 4:58:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
Hardest hit: Donna Brazile, who argued on Twitter this week that the criticism over the Obama administration’s handling of ISIS was just a scare tactic for the midterm elections. Eugene Robinson’s essay at the Washington Post shows that concern over the strategy in dealing with Iraq is not limited to one side of the political spectrum, although Robinson has a much different prescription for a strategy. Robinson first points out “the obvious”:
It’s not too soon to state the obvious: At this point, the war against the Islamic State can be seen only as failing.
U.S.-led air power has barely been able to keep the jihadist militants from capturing the Syrian town of Kobane, near the Turkish border — and the besieged city may yet fall. Far to the southeast, Islamic State fighters have come within a few miles of Baghdad and threaten to consolidate their control of the vast Anbar Province, the Sunni heartland of Iraq. The self-proclaimed “caliphate” remains intact, and its forces are advancing.
As we have noted for quite some time, Robinson’s assessment is correct. More to the point, the current strategy couldn’t have produced any other outcome. Air strikes on small-scale terrorist networks make sense, as dropping an army into places like Waziristan to find a few needles in a haystack can create more problems than it solves. When one wants to “degrade and destroy” a marauding army that has seized significant amounts of territory, it takes an army to push them off of that ground. Air strikes in civilian areas won’t force that army to move out where they can be more easily targeted, after all.
Barack Obama and John Kerry keep counseling patience, but Robinson has run out of it:
But patience is justified only if there is a reasonable expectation that the myriad political obstacles barring the path toward success can be overcome. I’m not sure whether the president and his aides are guilty of optimism or self-delusion.
Robinson’s convinced it’s the latter — and the actions of the Turks certify his conclusion. The White House announced that Turkey had agreed to allow us to use Incirlik as a base for our operations against ISIS, and the Turks immediately disputed that report. They won’t attack ISIS to save Kobani, but they allow Islamist fighters to cross the border to fight Assad, or did until very recently. Finally, he seizes on a point that gets to the heart of the issue without perhaps realizing it:
In Iraq, the Islamic State will not be defeated as long as it has the support, or at least the acquiescence, of large segments of the nation’s Sunni minority. This will not change as long as Sunnis view the jihadist militants as a bulwark against the Shiite majority and its sectarian militias.
Obama knew from the beginning that these — and other — problems in Iraq and Syria are essentially political and can’t be solved by military action alone.
He didn’t — but he should have. That is precisely why Leon Panetta and Robert Gates kept advising Obama to find a way to keep American troops in Iraq. Had we kept that force in place, we could have put more pressure on Nouri al-Maliki to integrate the Sunnis into the public life of Iraq. Instead, we walked away and allowed Maliki to purge the Sunnis, creating exactly the conditions that Robinson now laments.
Robinson wonders why we’re bothering to fight this war at all, which is an honest position to take, even though it’s just as honest to believe that it’s short-sighted and dangerous. What isn’t honest is pretending to try to “degrade and destroy ISIS” while employing a strategy that has no hope of success, and no hope of creating a ground force among allies to push ISIS off its ground and into the open for its destruction. One can disagree with Robnson’s overall opinion while agreeing that doing what we’re doing now is worse than either of the alternatives.
I read the same words in the UK from blokes posting emails as well as journalist Peter Hitchens, who calls the actions of David Cameron all bluff and bluster.
The phony nature of the situation is proved by what has happened and is happening at Khobani on the Turkish border with Syria.
For weeks the IS guys attacked and pushed the Kurds back into the town, then the airstrikes begin. Meanwhile the Turkish tanks standby overlooking the town while the Kurds are crushed.
Peter Hitchens put it this way in a recent column....
“Almost everything you thought you knew about the war with IS has been proved untrue by the absurd stand-off at Kobane on the Syrian-Turkish border.
Turkey isn’t our ally, even though it’s in Nato. On the contrary, it’s an increasingly Islamist state run by a dangerous demagogue who should worry us as much as IS does.
That’s why the Turkish tanks stand and watch as IS overwhelms the brave defenders of Kobane.”
Could it be because we really haven’t started to fight them.
Exactly what 0wanted.
Donna Brazile has her head so far up that wide caboose of hers it’s pathetic. So is the wide caboose.
You said it
The “O” ‘sterile’, ‘war from a distance’ is not going to work with THIS enemy.
Maybe he thinks if he keeps US military opposition nominal, grudging and at a ‘remove’, failure will not touch him …. and he can STILL say he tried.
The whole thing is typical of an irresolute and out–of-his-depth Liberal community organizer who finds himself in a REAL job with REAL accountability.
Liberals always want it BOTH WAYS! This works best for them because they are paralyzed with fear at having to take command of a situation, make a decision, then ACT responsibly and decisively.
I used to be like that… then I grew up!
Kind of hard to win when the administration is made up of Muslims.
There are Robinsons, and there are Robinsons.
Some (hey Yoo-Jeen!) are a little slower than others.
All that sounds familiar. I don't think it will work any better this time around than it did in SE Asia. But then, if liberals actually learned from history, they wouldn't be liberals and support such blatantly socialist/fascist ideals that have been proven to be bad over and over and over again.
Yup!
This is BS. We could stay there 500 years and we would never be able to "put pressure" on Shia and Sunnis to work together.
This is just more pie-in-the-sky gobbledygook speak.
Whenever we left Iraq it was going to fall apart. Whether that was under Obama or anyone else. Same thing happened in Egypt. Same thing happened in Libya when their dictators fell.
These people cannot get along. Period. They've been fighting each other and chopping off heads for over 600 years.
It is not our fault they are like this.
Ed Zackery. And the leftist press has acted as though every war or conflict led by a Republican is Viet-Nam II. Now they have a rat president trying his best to create another Viet-Nam and the press is silent. Evil bastards every one.
neither . . . the word is "TREASON"
Treason is practiced openly now ... there are no consequences and no convictions. A country that does not punish treason cannot long stand.
Most conflicts have been very different and a comparison to Vietnam is meaningless. However, obama's handling of ISIS is starting to smack of the same fundamental incompetence and incorrect assumptions that made Vietnam such a charlie-foxtrot. In that regard I think the comparison is valid and that there are a lot of parallels.
1) Bombs do not win wars.
2) ISIS is very capable, militarily.
3) It is possible for us to lose the war, of which Mesopotamia is a battle. Especially if we don't fight.
Just cut off all access to drinking water. Should only take a few weeks for things to shake out. Use the military to capture remote areas near rivers. Dam them up and sit back to pick off the desparate attempts to search for water. Should be SOP in the Middle East.
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