Obama’s Pathetic Iraq Strategy
The Wall Street Journal evaluates Barack Obama’s latest effort to combat the Islamic State by sending another 450 American “advisers” to train Iraqi troops. In short, it’s not enough. “The fundamental problem with Mr. Obama’s strategy is that he is so determined to show that the U.S. isn’t returning to war in Iraq that he isn’t doing enough to win the war we are fighting. In September he pledged to ‘degrade’ and ultimately ‘destroy’ ISIS — the kind of commitment a U.S. President must never make lightly. But his fitful bombing and timid special-forces campaign hasn’t been able to stop the jihadist advances, much less drive it out of Iraq’s western cities. Islamic State also isn’t merely an Iraqi problem, as Mr. Obama likes to say by way of minimizing the threat for his domestic political purposes. ISIS is a radiating danger to the region as it attracts new loyalists, and a terror threat to the United States through Internet recruitment and incitement. Since it declared its ‘caliphate’ last June, Islamic State has expanded beyond its bases in Mesopotamia into Lebanon, Libya, Afghanistan and Nigeria. The longer ISIS stands up to a U.S. President pledging its destruction, the more of a magnet it becomes for young men willing to die for its perverted form of Islam. Every day that ISIS’s army of 30,000 irregulars holds its conquered territory against the world’s most powerful military, it becomes a greater threat to American security.” More…