Obama: “We don’t have a complete strategy” to fight ISIS. State Department: Yes we do.
Yesterday in a press conferance at the G7 meeting in Germany the President admitted that “we don’t have a complete strategy” in regards to fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, a year-and-a-half after the fall of Fallujah. Yeah, well, tell me something I don’t know.
The State Department immediately sent out John Kirby, their newest talking face who just left the same job at the Pentagon to do it for Kerry, to counter the President’s statement, according to The Hill;
“We do have a strategy, the president was referring to a specific plan to improve training and equipping of the Iraqi security forces,” department spokesman John Kirby said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Kirby told the panelists that the strategy covers “ends, ways and means.”
“The ends are very clear, we’ve said this all along, the goal is to degrade and defeat ISIL, to remove them as a threat in the region and frankly, around the world. The ways we are going to do that are through obviously airstrikes. We have to train and equip Iraqi Security forces, this is their fight on the ground. We have to stem the flow of foreign fighters,” he said, using the administration’s preferred acronym for ISIS.
Yeah, but they’re not real serious about it. I read the other day how four separate airstrikes took out one ISIS fighting position and an anti-aircraft artillery piece. That doesn’t sound like a force that wants to “degrade and defeat” ISIS. I’m not saying that we, the public, need to know what the strategy is, but we do need to see an administration that means what they say. And, oh, by the way, someone should tell the president that we need to see that he’s confident about the way we’re conducting the war.
Category: Terror War
We’re conducting a war? Where?? /sarc
No “/sarc” necessary, PN.
We’re not fighting a war against ISIS. That requires goals and objectives; a strategy to reach those goals and objectives; sufficient forces committed to make that strategy a reality; and the political will to do or use all of the above. Against ISIS today, we have none of those engaged.
Against ISIS today, we’re not fighting a war. What we’re doing is letting people play with toys that go “boom” as a form of political theater.
Word
If by strategy you mean a cohesive plan to address through violence the expansion of ISIS troops throughout the middle east then no we don’t have one is in fact the correct answer.
If by strategy you mean allowing ISIS to expand unfettered while offering useless platitudes and hyperbole, or drawing yet another pretend line in the sand while ignoring the “success story” that is Yemen, then perhaps the answer is yes we have a strategy that’s a piss poor option in foreign policy as it lacks any meaningful outcome for the middle east.
Clearly all we are doing is a giant pissing in the wind non-effort without long term meaning.
No long term plan to stabilize Iraq exists consequently, as we will soon learn in Afghanistan, there are no good actors to fill that power vacuum that a lack of stabilization creates there are only variations on a theme of bad actors intent upon inflicting their brand of a malevolent, fundamentalist theocracy on the populations they desire to oppress in the name of their mountain moving little prophet whose face must not be drawn.
Veritas Omnia Vincit, Thank you sir and again, well said.
The only thing that has been degraded by this mealy-mouthed, incompetent C in C is the world’s view of the United States of America.
Hey! Poetrooper! The only thing? Give credit where credit is due, will ya. You can easily name at least a dozen or more other things he has degraded since 2008.
Indeed, the economic recovery they keep touting that has been good for basically the top 1% and not a whole lot of other folks is a classic example of degradation of effective economic policy.
The lost of almost 50 regional hospitals while 283 are hemorrhaging so much money they won’t last another 24 months is a direct result of the strategy he had for reducing costs. He worked a program that just decided to pay less to hospitals that are mandated by law to treat folks with shitty medicaid/medicare plans…so the hospital can’t turn these low/non paying patients away and the government won’t reimburse the full cost and that’s considered a rousing success by the lying sacks of shit on the left who tout the large numbers of insured now…you are right AC the list goes on and on but the outcome is virtually the same at each step, downward slopes with little opportunity for real change.
I think what is really happening is that he has been told by his military advisors that what he wants to do is not going to accomplish the ends he says he wants.
The strategy he would put into place lacks a foundation in fact, and therefore it does not exist.
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The ineptitude of this entire administration is something out of a bad dime store novel from the early 20’th century.
All of them are useless, completely useless.
This is a dangerous time for all of us.
Just one more example that the man is flat-out incompetent. January 20, 2017 cannot come soon enough. Just hope there’s something left by then.
I’m convinced that the American people can pick someone worse for the job than Obama. Look at the current field.
But, it’ll be another “First”, odds are, Jonn. The first Womyn pResident.
I’m hoping for our first trangender president. That’s change we can believe in. Right now, I see definitely one, possibly two, who fit.
Transgender. That person could be both President and vice-president. Or maybe first lady and first man??
2/17 Air Cav, it’s good this one is not of the persuasion you describe. Probably more than a few of us that, if we knew possible, we’d likely have the urge to tell him to go f__k him/her self. When are we EVER going to wake up and tell ANY politician at ANY level………If you have not served, you are not fit for any office?
If anybody here sees a candidate worth voting for in the next presidential election, please point them out. So far, it looks like I’m going to stay home and work on a crossword puzzle.
Jonn. You Hit a grand slam Home Run with that statement. Talk about boring as hell. Zero leadership potential.
TASK
PURPOSE
END STATE
No strategy? This is my shocked look. No, really.
/sarc
So, we are to believe that ignoring them is not a complete strategy? Well, then, maybe they aren’t lying some more still.
Bush had us fighting with one hand tied behind our back, barry has our military fighting with both hands tied along with a blindfold and he can’t handle hurting his boys the headchoppers
Here is the DoS strategy:
– Hold presser
– ?
– WIN!
“. . the goal is to degrade . . ISIL, . . ”
Correction: The goal is to “D” Grade ISIL. Meaning that we will flunk them out of jihadi school, and send them back to herding goats. To all goats of the world, fear and beware!
B. Woodman….Do you suppose by “degrading” ISIL, he means something like calling them offensive names, unloading B 52’s from high overhead and dropping large bombs full of pig excrement on them, or maybe dropping leaflets having pictures of 72 virgins on them naked as a jaybird, each one perched on the back of a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig?
B. Hussein 0bama’s strategy (IMHO):
1. Go to golf course/next fundraiser.
2. Play golf/ schmooze for donations/party
3. Blame Bush for the whole mess.
Do you really need a strategy to defeat the JV squad?
A plan for new base & 400 trainers in Anbar Province…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/world/middleeast/us-embracing-a-new-approach-on-battling-isis-in-iraq.html
“And I feel like I’ve been here before
Feel like I’ve been here before
And you know it does make me wonder”
-CSN&Y-
I thought the strategy was to still blame Bush.
I guess I need to wake up and get with the program.