Oh, and American Horse....I meant you had a great grasp of details and I somewhat agree with you except for the key point that we can't afford to do nothing.....
Iraq is the only country in the entire region that has asked for our help in dealing with ISIS. The Kurds and Syria appear to be the only ones directly engaged in fighting them.
OP- $1000
This hands off approach has convinced the area that fundie terrorists suq and Iraq that to pander to one religion is a bad idea. No drama Obama scores again, hater dupe ugly American jingoist/isolationist dumbells...
Then why is Obama re engaging in Iraq ?
Dillo, the Kurds asked for heavy and high tech equipment and aircraft, as well as intel.
Obama wants all that to be channeled through Baghdad so as to keep up the pretense of a united Iraq, IOW the status-quo-ante.. But the Kurds would take support any way they can get it. They did not ask for American troops (aka "boots on the ground") however.
But in the greater conflict, Kurdistan is looking after Kurdistan, not the whole of Iraq, that is the purview of Iraq, in particular now that they have a new government.
But al Maliki destroyed the effectiveness of the Iraqi army by removing the competent Sunni officer corps and putting in their place crony Shia officers. That's why the Iraqi army in northern Iraq dissolved when ISIS came across the border from Syria in spite of all their training by the US military. Even good troops cannot perform without competent leadership.
Had we finalized a Status Of Forces Agreement for a sufficient force to protect our investment - as we did with 50,000 in Japan, 50,000 in S. Korea, 50,000 in Germany - ISIS would never have crossed the Syrian/Iraqi border.
Obama says a SOFA wasn't signed because the Iraqi government would not indemnify American troops against any criminal actions they might commit on Iraqi territory, but we didn't get that kind of indemnification from Japan, Korea, and Germany, and besides that indemnification only applies to acts committed while off duty. (I recall several instances of US Marines standing trial in Japan for rape of Japanese women, an example of that type of violation we wanted to preemptively indemnify with Iraq)
But if we stuck with that, than a alternative solution would be a soldier's or Marine's tour of duty could've been limited to 6 months and home again, and they could've been required to spend their liberty time on-base, perhaps with a 20 day leave back home to the states in the middle of the 6-month tour.
If Obama had wanted it he could've had a SOFA, with an air base and a operating base, but he announced before the election that he would bring all the troops home from Iraq and that was his overriding obsession to complete.
Why is Obama engaging in Iraq. Because there is a huge billion dollar embassy in Baghdad, and he in the worse way doesn't want another Benghazi or a scene like we witnessed in Saigon and the evacuation of the embassy there in 1975.
He'll string things out and let the Republican's take the blame It's Bush's fault.