http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/10/obama-reportedly-willing-to-authorize-airstrikes-against-isis-in-syria/
Tonight, President Obama will address the nation on his suddenly-discovered strategy for dealing with ISIS in Syria. He won't say it, but he will also be conceding that his policy in Iraq has been a colossal failure. He pulled out every last troop from the country, which had been stabilized at great cost in American blood and left it to be overrun by ISIS. Well done, Mr President. Now we are going to provide more tanks and vehicles for Iraqi troops to abandon to ISIS.
As for Syria, we are going to provide aid to those famous Syrian rebel moderates, but not to the wrong rebels, mind you. We will probably launch air strikes against ISIS while helping the right rebels fight Assad (and ISIS).
Do I have that right? What a policy.
Don't get me wrong. ISIS must be destroyed, and I don't see it happening without the US playing a leading role. I do hope that whatever this lost president does he will do with the authorization and support of Congress.
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He won't say it, but he will also be conceding that his policy in Iraq has been a colossal failure. He pulled out every last troop from the country, which had been stabilized at great cost in American blood and left it to be overrun by ISIS. Well done, Mr President. Now we are going to provide more tanks and vehicles for Iraqi troops to abandon to ISIS.
A statement like that strongly suggests that you owe Lance an apology. Further, you have contradicted yourself. We should have stayed on in Iraq and provided more tanks and vehicle for Iraqi troops to abandon to ISIS? Or should we have done all the fighting ourselves on behalf of an Iraqi regime that couldn't get its own army to fight at all? (That's what we ended up doing in Vietnam... our gallant "allies" conceived that the war was the Americans' idea, so they should do the fighting, and the role of the ARVN was to soak up American money, and send their wives on shopping trips to Paris).
President Obama's policy has not been a failure at all. President Bush's decision to go into Iraq in the first place has been a failure. The decision to pull out American troops was made before Obama ever took office. In all fairness, it was not made by Bush, but by the government of Iran, which told Maliki he was NOT to sign a status of forces agreement that would have kept American troops in the country.
We could have avoided that in only two ways: (1) by not going in at all, (2) by sending in a million or so troops, taken complete control of everything that moved, and not allowing any Iraqi prime minister to take charge until someone we liked could be elected.
It was inevitable that something like ISIS would emerge in the vacuum of Maliki's bull-headed policies. The template for what to do about ISIS is in what went right the first six months in Afghanistan. We provided air cover, ammo, and special ops, to battle-hardened, motivated soldiers who had their own reasons for wanting to wipe out our common enemies.
When American troops are on the ground, they become the issue. That is why we should not have put them in, should not have kept them in (thank you President Obama) and should not send them back in. We should give all possible support to those on the ground who are native to the region, and are motivated to kill ISIS thugs. Which isn't far off from what our president is doing.
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