Steve Hayes has a long piece (necessarily, because it’s such a target rich environment) on how it is chock full of fail.
[Update a couple minutes later]
This isn’t from the essay, but rather from Jonah Goldberg’s latest “newsletter” (so no link), but it seems apt:
Islamic State took Fallujah and Mosul months ago and he kept calling it the “jayvee team.” As recently as August, he was telling Tom Friedman that it was ridiculous to arm the Syrian rebels. In September, he was wistfully complaining that the Islamic State made a mistake in beheading those Americans because it aroused U.S. public opinion for war. In other words, doing nothing about the Islamic State was Obama’s foreign policy until the domestic political situation made his foreign policy untenable. Chess Masters think many moves ahead, novices respond to whatever their opponent’s latest move is. Total amateurs just move pieces based on shouts from the crowd watching the game. Obama’s like a kid looking for approval every time he touches a piece.
It’s sad because it’s true.
“In other words, doing nothing about the Islamic State was Obama’s foreign policy until the domestic political situation made his foreign policy untenable.”
Obama was dragged kicking and screaming into this by the public’s outrage over tens of thousands of people being crucified and beheaded. Had they just shot people and dumped them in mass graves, it is unlikely Obama would have done anything. It was telling when Obama complained about social media being the cause of this. In Obama’s world, no one would know about what is going on in the world or the dangers we face if knowledge was bad for him politically and this is the same way he runs the domestic media. Now, we get some token airstrikes for media consumption, just enough to keep Democrat critics off his back.
“Total amateurs just move pieces based on shouts from the crowd watching the game.”
He is like a contestant on the Price is Right trying to get closest without going over but he doesn’t know the value of common day goods so has to rely on an audience made up of his hand picked sycophant yes men who also do not know the value of common goods.
For me, the worst aspect of the Obama administration is the outright lying on things that are easy to check – such as when he lied to the German head of state, Chancellor Merkel about US spying on her office (she already had evidence at the time that he had approved the spying in question, but he claimed that he had no knowledge of the spying in question).
Well, it’s just a giant bag of fail. I was arguing with some Obama believers over our ISIS strategy, saying that it’s crazy to be fighting the Syrian army (helping ISIS) on one front while fighting them on another. Helping the FSA is just helping ISIS’s allies against Assad, allowing them to free up troops for attacks in Iraq. I also pointed out that attacking ISIS in Syria just frees up Assad’s forces to crush the FSA. Obama’s brain can barely encompass a conflict between two groups, much less many, and that’s left us with an incoherent policy that has everyone involved scratching their heads. How can they figure out our goals if not even Obama knows what his goals might be, other than getting through another election cycle?
As I’ve said, comic books use fighting to show which superheroes are on each others side in reality, as opposed to what they’d been claiming. In this case, a similar test would be to see which side of the Syrian lines a Western pilot would try to eject over if they got into trouble. The territory the pilot is trying to reach before pulling the loud handle would be our ally in that particular fight. Brawls are confusing, yet simple like that.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the war isn’t going as planned, that everyone has figured out that allied bombing is helping Assad, and that nobody can make sense out of what we’re doing.
It closes with this:
Obama’s always a day late and a dollar short, without any coherent plan, and no idea what he’s doing. He’s also surrounded himself with people who are dumber than he is.
Meanwhile, Iraq is asking the US for ground troops to save Baghdad link.
Kobani seems to be a diversion from their coming assaults on Ramadi and Baghdad. We’re the only people in this conflict that don’t use clever strategies.
That the ISIS is able to clean up Kobani while simultaneously pressuring Iraq is not a good sign.
I wonder if ISIS will move as fast as it can prior to the 2014 US election and then negotiate a Iraqi front cease fire right after. I think that Obama won’t escalate US military efforts prior to the election. But a cease fire right after the election might short circuit US escalation altogether. Obama probably is looking for any excuse to avoid getting involved.
ISIS can consolidate their holdings (which probably will include a bunch of massacres and other ethnic/religious cleansing, getting oil infrastructure repaired, and pushing hard on the remnant of the Assad regime) and then resume the invasion once the US gets distracted by something else.
Obama’s like a kid looking for approval every time he touches a piece.
Trouble is, in chess if you touch a piece you have to move it, even if it harms your position.
“Chess Masters think many moves ahead, novices respond to whatever their opponent’s latest move is.”
I looked, but can’t find the term for a Chess Player, who is touted to be the Bobby Fisher of his ‘group’, but who not only doesn’t react to his opponents moves, but takes a ‘pass’, and allows his opponent to take two moves. Or three moves. Or allows his opponent to take a bunch of moves, without ever reacting and playing the match, while simultaneously saying the moving opponent is not a real threat.
I wonder of the term ‘schmuck’, is too overused to use for said Bobby’s Fisher?
Would any of this crap in Syria and Iraq be happening if Obama had just left a sizable American presence in Iraq?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Iraqi government tell him to get lost?
Besides, the only ways to have anything like stability in Iraq were far more troops than the US government would be willing to keep there long term, or far more money than they’d be willing to pay long term. You can’t have a single nation built from three geographically separated groups who hate each other without overwhelming force or bribery.
Somehow we manage it in Canada.
1. French Canadians aren’t going around beheading English Canadians.
2. The government bribe them not to make a fuss.
3. Every once in a while the government gives them a chance to vote to leave.
Holding Iraq together is in a whole other league. Which is why a brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein was needed to do it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Iraqi government tell him to get lost?
Well, that is the official administration position. But they could have negotiated continued troop deployment, probably at little cost to the US.
Besides, the only ways to have anything like stability in Iraq were far more troops than the US government would be willing to keep there long term, or far more money than they’d be willing to pay long term.
Well it is true in that any positive number of troops is far more than zero, the number of troops Obama was willing to keep their long term in 2011. But I can’t help but think that even a small number of US troops would have both been a good unifier (being an independent party mediating between said three groups) and provide some on the spot muscle to help resist the initial ISIS invasion. Meanwhile, a US presence would have discouraged the original ISIS invasion of Iraq, which was opportunistic, taking advantage of Iraqi weakness.