Well they were wrong. His chief military advisors called for a minimum of 10,000 for a SOFA and Obama wanted between 3,500 and 5,000.
Obama had different positions at different times. Just like he's done with ISIS in the past few weeks. Haven't you been watching tht?
I got that; I'm quoting his last position before SOFA was declared a failure. I don't believe he will get any backing from congress because he's shown himself to be an unwilling leader - and that's why his "broad coalition" will fail to win members; for lack of trust. Unlike Bush II which fielded troops from 38 countries, he can only claim the Kurds, a reconstituted Iraqi contingent, and some folks from the Free Syrian Army.
Nothing's going to happen and it's better that it doesn't. Leave it for a real leader in 2017. The American people don't trust him to fulfill a military mission and that's reflected by congress .
Holy shit.... a post I almost agree with. I agree that no matter what O does, it will only embolden ISIS because they don't fear him. And I agree we have to wait for the real leader in 2017.
The only problem is we can't just do nothing. Just since June they've tripled their recruits. Our weakness only emboldens them. Doing nothing at all is even worse then O doing little.
Trouble is he can do worse than nothing. He can get Americans killed by doing too little. He can get some American military's heads lopped off through bad policy in not following his military advisors.
We really can't conduct a proper air attack on ISIS unless and until thye become concentrated for such attack, and even then that will take Americans to provide accurate intel which as of now can only be provided by Special Forces units.
The Kurds won't leave their own territory I defended to go into Syria .
We can trust the Kurds but can we trust our people in the field with Iraqi or FSA troops with the possibilities of green on blue attacks?
Like it or not - and I suspect Obama prefers it to not get off the ground - Obama hopes nothing will materialize from his call to action.
We can't even use our USAF air base in Incirlik, Turkey because the Turks disallow it. We'll need to build an air base in Kurdistan - aka north east Iraq.