Defeating ISIS by Max Boot, Council on Foreign Relations
President Barack Obama's strategy in Syria and Iraq is not working. The president is hoping that limited air strikes, combined with U.S. support for local proxies—the peshmerga, the Iraqi security forces, the Sunni tribes, and the Free Syrian Army—will "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). U.S. actions have not stopped ISIS from expanding its control into Iraq's Anbar Province and northern Syria. If the president is serious about dealing with ISIS, he will need to increase America's commitment in a measured way—to do more than what Washington is currently doing but substantially less than what it did in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past decade. And although President Obama will probably not need to send U.S. ground–combat forces to Iraq and Syria, he should not publicly rule out that option; taking the possibility of U.S. ground troops off the table reduces U.S. leverage and raises questions about its commitment…
Comments
What's changed is that the Russians have decisively shown that Syria is still a client state. That really doesn't give the Russians any advantage they didn't have before, nor does it take anything from us. Hopefully, the other thing that's changed is that the chattering class inside the Beltway will stop pushing us into a Syrian civil war we didn't need to be involved in to begin with. Yes, Assad is a bad guy, and if the rest of Syria can unite and overthrow him, great. But the outcome doesn't really improve our position one way or another, and involving ourselves sows friction into the more important effort of stuffing ISIS into a box.
It pays to revisit this every year. And again nothing new.
Wrong.
The Russians are now dictating the dance.
Although it was reported they would withdraw incrementally after the announcement Russian Air Power was credited with assisting Assad's forces in retaking an important Syrian city, crossroads.
ROEs help explain the Russians are not as constrained by carpet bombing civilian villages and disregarding human shields.
The Russians have poured in T-90s even the nuclear capable Iskander M missiles as well as finally getting their S-400s in place. The Russians have secured their oil monopolies in the region and control of pipelines.
I'm just surprised President Obama did not give them an aid package to accomplish the abandonment of so many non-Muslim minorities to the acknowledged genocidal maniacs that constitute the Muslim believers in the Islamic State or the more secularist? Army of Assad also cited as being genocidal.
Back when Clinton turned tail and ran out of Somalia and could think of nothing to do to stop the genocide in Rwanda, President Obama has spread the reach of not caring and he is has done it so very effectively in the name of an inane socialist ideology and "peace" sic.
Max Boot had it right maybe he failed to see how bad it could get and what it would do to Europe and perhaps America with new waves of rape'ugees and terrorists backing out of the bowl.
It is interesting that this article was written in 2014---here we are one year later and still not a single response from the WH and or Kerry and or the NSC which has over 700 working for it.
In the same amount of time the US have been bombing IS the Assad AF has been flying over 8000 air strikes largely against civilian targets, he has dropped tens of barrel bombs many with chlorine gas and hundreds of Syrian men, women and children have been killed or driven out as refugees.
NOW Putin has gotten into the mix and the threat of a East West confrontation is now real to even the Russians parking a ICMB capable nuclear sub off the Syrian coast to give him a nuclear threat if the West does not respond to what he wants---just as he parked tactical nuclear capable missiles in the Crimea when he annexed it.
AND yet still not a single reaction by the WH/NSC other than words.
Slowly coming to the same opinion Putin has of Obama--he is weak and afraid to confront even a church mouse.
In four years of fighting in Syria--the US has had multiple opportunities to undertake actions that would not have cost the US much but would have gained the US creditability in the eyes of the ME.
One can judge Obama but these two statements;
1. 2013 the US President cannot answer all the problems of the ME
AND
2. 2014 we will judge Putin by his actions not his words.
As anyone seen anything resembling an Obama response to either of these two points?
BUT is it not the responsibility of a leader to craft some sort of an answer? One's legacy does not replace leadership.