Dithering
Let be me clear, in no way do I want to advocate for US troops or contractors in Iraq. However, there comes a point of no return when that is the only answer. All of us saw this return to Iraq in our future from the time that our sole strategy in Iraq became withdrawal, when it was clear that this administration wanted to abandon Iraq so the end of our participation in the war could be a bumper sticker slogan for reelection. It was made more clear last January when ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State forces took Fallujah with barely a shot fired.
This administration promised support for the Iraqi government to help them defeat the Islamic State. No one was more surprised than me that the promised aid had not even left for Iraq when the Islamic State cut a wide swath across northern Iraq pointed at Baghdad in June. And, so here we are, three months after that eye-opener and the Obama Administration is still dithering.
The Obama White House talks out of both sides of their collective mouth – one official will tell us that IS is the most dangerous threat to the US since September 11th, 2001, across the Potomac River, another will tell us that it is no threat to Americans.
Today the President told the few viewers remaining on “Meet the Press” that he will have a major policy speech on IS come Wednesday, according to Yahoo News;
“Our goal should not be to think that we can occupy every country where there’s a terrorist organization,” Obama continued. “Our goal has to be to partner more effectively with governments that are committed to pushing back against the kind of extremism that [IS] represents.”
Obama said he is planning to outline the U.S. strategy on IS — also known as ISIS and ISIL — in an address to the nation on Wednesday, a day before the 13th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
“This is not going to be an announcement about U.S. ground troops,” Obama said. “What I’m going to be asking the American people to understand is, number one, this is a serious threat. Number two, we have the capacity to deal with it.”
The President says that his plan won’t include US forces on the ground in Iraq, but, the longer this dithering goes on, the less likely it is that US troops won’t be needed.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz accused Obama of not “taking ISIS seriously,” saying the United States should strongly consider military action against the Islamic extremists.
“What we ought to have is a directed, concerted, overwhelming campaign to take them out,” Cruz said. “The focus should be Iraq, but the real focus should be taking out ISIS. Within Syria, it should not be our objective to try and resolve the civil war.”
There comes a point when we can’t back off from the use of US troops and if we haven’t crossed that point yet, it’s not too far into our future.
But, as with everything else in the last few years, I expect more dithering after this policy speech. It seems that by just tacking together pretty words into a microphone, well, this White House considers that the extent of their involvement in foreign affairs. I don’t think that the aircraft and ammunition which was promised to Iraq last February has even arrived yet. Even Iran thinks we’re not serious about fighting IS.
Category: Terror War
The President, and most of the left generally, represent the culture of academia (they are both products of that corrupted institution and the gatekeepers of current campus culture). In academia verbal dexterity is of the highest importance, what you say-and how you say it-are at least as important as what you do. So, of course, he dithers and double-talks and does nothing while our enemies gather strength. He, and the vast majority of his true believers, know nothing else.
Related:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/when-you-challenge-islam-you-are-attacking-multiculturalism
Money quote-“When American and European leaders insist that Islam has nothing to do with the latest Islamic atrocity, they are not referencing a religion practiced by Muslims, but an imaginary religion that they imagine Muslims must practice because the alternative is the end of everything that they believe in.
Their moderate Islam is light on the details, beyond standing for social justice, fighting Global Warming and supporting gay rights, because it is really multiculturalism wearing a fake beard. When a Western leader claims that the latest batch of Islamic terrorists don’t speak for Islam, he isn’t defending Muslims, he’s defending multiculturalism. He assumes that Muslims believe in multiculturalism because he does.
“Moderate” Muslims believe in multiculturalism so long as it benefits them in pulling the wool over libtard eyes.
While the chattering class yammers on and talks, our enemies learn. And wait. And act.
And we die.
The problem, NHSparky, is that the current Administration lacks understanding of one basic fact: national interests sometimes must be defended by force. Instead, they’re fixated on the potential political cost of doing so.
It’s the same reason that they’re looking at putting contractors in Iraq vice military personnel. Bluntly: dead contractors are much more palatable, politically, than dead soldiers. (To a somewhat lesser extent, the same is true regarding government civilian personnel.)
Defending national interests sometimes requires putting people in harm’s way. Government employees (civilian and military) understand and accept that risk.
Many senior personnel in this Administration apparently don’t.
Here’s a news flash for ya, buddy & the chorus: We Americans, at least we sane Americans, already know how serious the situation is and how capable we are of neutralizing the threat. We also understand that if you and your fellow diddlers don’t quit stalling, our abilty to neutralize the various threats from our collective enemies, be they drug cartels, terrorists, or any other thug on the planet, will disappear.
Gee, thanks, buddy. Kinda looks like Nero redux. At least we are comforted in the knowledge that most of us are not really in the crosshairs but the special interest groups you support will keep them busy a long time. You can safely bet that we who can and do take care of ourselves will survive much longer than all the special snowflakes who demand that others take care of them.
To say that we can assist them by providing materiel and logistics requires either willful ignorance or outright lying to themselves. Iraq has proven incapable of retaining possession of much of the materiel we have thus provided to them and incapable of maintaining what they have not abandoned on the battlefield. Providing them with modern technology and expecting them to sustain it with computer networks and database supply chain management tools is unrealistic… you’d think this would be obvious by now. There will have to be many western boots on the ground, rented or otherwise, just to effectively support the overhead of having a capable military force. Expecting contracting companies to make it work will be a very long and expensive commitment with no certain outcome, other than cash flow. Given that immediately after 9/11 we were all told to go shop, it could be argued that the bigger threat to our country is economic collapse. If so, that might explain some things. I don’t know.
Since when has B. Hussein 0bama done anything other than just run his mouth from the teleprompter in between golf games and vacations?
I’ve said this before and will continue to say it: we are on our own. Do not look to this government/administration for any kind of help when it comes to defense from the crazy people, here at home. It won’t happen. The police will be powerless to stop them, too.
This is probably the worst uncertainty any of us have ever had to face. It does not mean we have to bury our heads in the sand the way this idiotic administration has done.
Jonn, I still say that before we commit any conventional ground units that we should mount a massive air campaign that hits any damned thing that moves. And once we put the fear of movement in them we target all those areas where they could possibly be hiding and we saturate bomb those areas. But most importantly, we don’t limit that aerial war to a pre-invasion softening up of the target. We make it ongoing and unrelenting in intensity until the bastards’ capability to do anything other than hunker down is zip, zero, nada. As someone who has seen firsthand the massive destruction of B-52 carpet bombing, and that in the days before we had today’s cluster bombs and MOAB’s, I’m all for turning this one over to the blue suiters and see if they can, in fact, win a war with minimal ground involvement. This would be a great time to test that often-repeated hypothesis that you can’t win a war strictly with air power. The Japanese, the Germans and even the North Vietnamese might offer different perspectives on that bromide. Yeah, I know that Japan required nukes but we could have continued conventional fire-bombing until they capitulated. And yeah, we had to go into Europe with an invasion force but that was primarily because if we hadn’t the Iron Curtain would have been erected along the French coast. As for the North Viets, their leaders have themselves said we had damned near bombed them into submission before we foolishly let up on them. And that makes my point: make it a massive, ongoing bombing campaign and don’t let up until their organization is nothing but disorganized rabble wandering dazed, their shattered eardrums leaking blood, in the smoking rubble of their so-called caliphate. Let them contemplate the reality that Allah just may have a real rival in that Judeo-Christian God with his thunder and lightning. As for the civilian casualties that someone here will surely condemn me for disregarding, I would counter that they are dying every day right now. At least we wouldn’t be decapitating them, crucifying them,… Read more »
My apologies for leaving Navy and Marine Corps aviation out of the equation. They would naturally play a very large part of any such air campaign.
We pretty much did that Gulf 1. The politics once again got in the way (remember the highway if death?). This time, let’s do war without the embedded reporters and let the military do what it can do, with its gloves off.
HAH!! As if our vaunted CIC (Clucker In Chief) and his current crop of hand picked politically appointed Pentagon sock puppets would ever let our military “off the leash”.
Jonn,
I advised the best unit in the Iraqi Army for a year. They were magnificent, and I am proud of my time with them, but I must disagree with you on the advisability of sending in US ground troops.
We gave them several years of advisors and combat troops, and the shabby, cowardly army they have now is all they were able to take from that massive effort.
We are partly, perhaps mostly, to blame. We ran the advisor effort badly, and did a crappy job of setting the Iraqis up for success. But we will not do any better in a second go-round. And again, as badly as we did, they didn’t bother to take our efforts seriously as an institution and learn what they could. Certainly there were exceptions, but it would be insane for today’s US Army to go back in and try again to improve today’s Iraqi Army.
What makes anybody think we would do it right this time, given how our best efforts last time went?
By all means continue to bash the president–he deserves it, and is so far out of his depth he will never be able to articulate a sound policy for dealing with ISIS. And bomb the bastards to the stone age–the fewer survive, the better off we’ll be.
But the US Army is not competent to win this war. We can, have, and will win the battles, but there are some serious issues above the CPT level that we must (and probably cannot) fix before sending our troops back into harm’s way other than in a straightforward conventional fight.
You’re not disagreeing with me, Fury. I didn’t say it was advisable, I said it’s inevitable unless the President gets off his tired ass and does something to influence a favorable outcome of events in Iraq and Syria – something besides talk.
Lets assume that this administration does what we all expect – avoid the conflict, do something that they can hold up as “we did something” but not do anything that actually makes a difference. What will Iraq and the region look like in a year? I can see a range of choices from “they get more conventional and behave like they are trying to run a country” (this seem pretty unlikely to me but it is a legit choice) to Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot and millions dead (also unlikely, but small scale “ethnic cleansing” seems highly likely). I would guess that ISIS will control more territory – they will have taken Baghdad by mid-2015, Iran will oppose them in the Shia areas, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States will try to buy them off, the US and NATO will still be dithering because doing something effective would offend their political base. Conservative opposition will continue to gain strength but US and European administrations will work to discredit them and deflect the conversation. The US response to ISIS will consist of a bombing campaign, advisers, special forces, and contractors. In a year, it will be obvious that this isn’t working, the Iraq government in exile and other regional governments will be under more attack so there will be a better SOFA but the administration will still avoid sending troops. During the winter (not the fighting season), ISIS will consolidate their position, resupply, and start behaving more like a government. Next fighting season, their fun will start again. The US will still be talking about the administration’s immigration plan (announced in January 2015). Without the ability to override a presidential veto, Obamacare will still be in effect and the Republican-controlled house and senate will be frustrated and still unpopular. Benghazi and the IRS scandals will have calmed down after the election. What are the chances of a terrorist attack against the US mainland? Would that provoke “boots on the ground”? In the meantine, Mr. Putin will control about half of Ukraine, he will have road access to the Crimea. Iran will… Read more »
Pretty accurate I say.