Obama’s failed leadership led to rise of ISIS

[American_Jihad]

Hagel Slams Obama on Syria
“We kept kind of deferring the tough decisions.”
12.18.2015
News
Brian Lilley

Chuck Hagel, the Vietnam war hero turned Republican senator turned Obama administration Defense Secretary, took some shots at his former boss this week. As The New York Times reports, Hagel wrote in a op-ed that President Obama's decision to ignore his own "red line" on Syria hurt the administration's capability:

In a Foreign Policy article published on Friday — his first extensive comments to the news media since he resigned under pressure in November 2014 — Mr. Hagel also echoed other former colleagues who do not like the way the president’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, has run internal deliberations on top foreign policy issues.

“For one thing, there were way too many meetings,” Mr. Hagel said, describing a process in which officials mulled issues without ever getting “to where we needed to be.”

“We kept kind of deferring the tough decisions,” he said. “And there were always too many people in the room.”

Hagel was pushed from office over disagreements with Rice and his slow pace at releasing terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Hagel Slams Obama on Syria

 

[American_Jihad]

Kicking the Can in Syria Down the Road to Damascus
The Obama administration’s latest diplomatic placebo.
December 23, 2015
Joseph Klein

The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a resolution, on December 18th, which purports to set out a framework and timetable for ending the nearly five year war in Syria and establishing an “inclusive and Syrian-led political process.” Negotiations between selected opposition groups and Syrian government representatives are slated to begin in January. Within 6 months, a transition government with full executive powers is supposed to be established. Within 18 months, under the terms of a newly drafted constitution to be negotiated, UN-supervised “free and fair” elections are to take place. There is also supposed to be a parallel UN-monitored ceasefire in Syria, while the political talks are underway, except with respect to the ISIS-controlled territories where military efforts to degrade and destroy ISIS will continue. As many UN resolutions do, however, this resolution papers over key issues still dividing the warring parties. The elephant in the room - the fate of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad – was sidestepped, completely.

Hours of last-minute negotiations among the countries comprising what is known as the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) took place at a Manhattan hotel before agreement was reached on the final wording of the Security Council resolution. The Obama administration is thrilled. So is Hillary Clinton, who said during the Democratic presidential debate on Saturday that, thanks to the UN Security Council resolution, “We now finally are where we need to be” in the fight against ISIS and in “bringing the world together to go after a political transition in Syria.”

Unfortunately for President Obama and his wannabe successor, agreement on the UN resolution has not suddenly created a Road to Damascus moment. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who along with Secretary of State John Kerry cosponsored the ISSG discussions, said, “I’m not too optimistic about what has been achieved today.” Even Kerry conceded the limitations on what the resolution has accomplished: “No one is sitting here today suggesting to anybody that the road ahead is a gilded path. It is complicated. It will remain complicated.” Furthermore, refusing to admit that the Security Council resolution simply kicked the can down the road with regard to the major issues, Kerry said, “This is not being kicked down the road; it’s actually being timed out.” In full spin mode he added that “this at least demands that the parties come to the table.”

The parties who will be representing the fragmented opposition at “the table” are still being sorted out. And whether they will actually agree to sit down at the same “table” across from Assad’s hand-picked negotiators, while Assad himself remains in power during a transition period, remains a big question mark.

Moreover, beyond treating the Islamic State and the al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra group as “terrorists,” who will not be invited to participate in the Syrian negotiations (as if they were the least bit interested), no consensus among the ISSG participants has yet emerged on all of the other groups considered “terrorists.” Iran, an ISSG participant, is unlikely to accept the designation of its surrogate Hezbollah, which is operating in Syria in support of Assad, as a terrorist group. On the other hand, Turkey, another ISSG participant, deems the armed Syrian Kurds, who are fighting alongside the United States against ISIS, to be terrorists.

Jordan has been assigned the responsibility to compile a list of groups that could qualify as “terrorists,” with few criteria to guide it. The result so far is “very contradictory,” Lavrov said.

As for the armed opposition groups who will participate in the talks, they agree on only one thing - get rid of Assad. However, the jihadists and the secularists who will be participating in the political negotiations have nothing else in common. They are far apart on what kind of political system Syria should develop. The secularists’ desire for a pluralistic, secular government is in direct opposition to the jihadists’ insistence on an Islamic state based on sharia law. These goals are fundamentally incompatible with each other. The Assad loyalists with whom they will supposedly negotiate want simply to hold onto the status quo. Combined with the fact that ISIS, and al Nusra, will not be participating in the talks at all for obvious reasons, the political dialogue envisioned by the Security Council resolution has little chance of succeeding.

The display of camaraderie by Kerry and Lavrov at their joint press conference following the Security Council vote did not mask the stark differences remaining between Russia and the United States on Assad’s fate and the approach to dealing with “terrorism.”

...

Kicking the Can in Syria Down the Road to Damascus

 

[American_Jihad]

From "Assad Must Go" to "Assad Will Outstay Obama"

Obama leaves us with his most precious gift, plausible deniability

January 12, 2016
Daniel Greenfield

In all fairness to Obama, he does have fewer political options than Assad. If he started dropping barrel bombs and poison gas on Americans to stay in office, he might lose 4 or 5 percent of the media. But I bet the explainers would be great. Just think of Vox's "Gassing Americans is Actually a Great American Tradition" or Politifact's "Dropping Barrel Bombs on Americans is Unconstitutional: Mostly False".

Still so far Obama's great foreign policy accomplishments involve achievements or blame due to some other administration once he leaves office.

The Obama administration has a vision for Syrian leader Bashar Assad's departure. Even if it works, the president won't be around to see the plan through.

An internal U.S. timeline for a best-case Syrian political transition, obtained by The Associated Press, sets a date of March 2017 for Assad to "relinquish" his position as president and for his "inner circle" to depart. That is two months after President Barack Obama leaves office and more than five years after Obama first called for Assad to leave.

Syria, according to the would-be American strategy, would hold votes for a new president and parliament in August 2017 — some 19 months from now.
​

This is convenient because it allows Obama to claim that he made all the arrangements for Assad to leave, but his successor failed to carry it through. Rinse and repeat for Iran's nukes and the defeat of ISIS.

...

From "Assad Must Go" to "Assad Will Outstay Obama"

 

[American_Jihad]

Military Commanders Speak Out About Obama Admin's Ridiculously Restrictive (and Deadly) Rules of Engagement

Unfortunately, they're only deadly to OUR troops.

1.18.2016
News
Caleb Howe

The war in Afghanistan - the "Good" war as Democrats used to be fond of calling it - is almost over, if one believes President Obama. But we still have men and women in uniform in the country. We have assets and allies in the country. And there is another presence in the country that doesn't get much press: ISIS.

Military leadership is speaking out about the fact that the rules of engagement in Afghanistan are not only hobbling our troops in terms of general warfare, but are specifically preventing them from properly engaging ISIS at all, focusing almost entirely on Al Qaeda, whom you may recall the President likes to characterize as "on the run."

From Stars and Stripes:

...

Thornberry tells Stripes that in addition to the rules of engagement, American forces are held back by "White House micromanagement."
The President very much wants combat to be over, or at least "over in the public eye," in order to burnish his peacemaker legacy.

Unfortunately his dreams for how history will be written do not reflect the reality that the troops face in Afghanistan:

...

As with our military engagements elsewhere around the world, in Afghanistan the President is far more focused on his agenda than on the facts and the reality of the situation as his military commanders both understand and relay to him.

As long as the American military is facing combat in Afghanistan there should be support and proper strategy by the Commander-in-Chief. Right now, according to those who are there, this is simply not the case.

Military Commanders Speak Out About Obama Admin's Ridiculously Restrictive (and Deadly) Rules of Engagement

 

[American_Jihad]

ISIS: The Latest Phase of the Jihad
How Western acquiescence to al-Qaeda’s “grievance” narrative paved the way for the Islamic State.
February 9, 2016
Raymond Ibrahim

...

The Obama administration’s weak responses feed into AQ’s narrative that Islamic terrorism at least in part reflects Islamic grievance; and it refuses to connect the actions of any jihadi organization—whether ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, et al—to Islamic teaching.

Time will tell whether the next administration will remain willfully ignorant of the nature of its jihadi enemy—which is fatal in war according to Sun Tzu’s ancient dictum, “know your enemy”—or whether reality will trump political correctness.

Notes:

[1] See “An Analysis of Al-Qa'ida's Worldview: Reciprocal Treatment or Religious Obligation?” Also, The Al Qaeda Reader, which separates the organization’s communiqués into two groups: “Propaganda” messages to the West portraying jihadi terrorists as mere freedom fighters, and “Theology” messages to fellow Muslims, preaching the same Islam of ISIS.

[2] See “Al-Qaeda: Defender of Christians?” for a more elaborate explanation of this theme.

[3] For the Syrian Free Army’s role: “Largest Massacre of Christians in Syria Ignored.”

[4] “Pew poll: Between 63 million and 287 million ISIS supporters in just 11 countries.”

[5] “New Islamic Caliphate Declares Jihad on … Muslims.”


ISIS: The Latest Phase of the Jihad

 

[elektra]

I thought it was Comgress who failed to Impeach Obama that led to ISIS.

 

[American_Jihad]

Obama Lies, Tries to Blame General for "ISIS JayVee Team" Line
March 16, 2016
Daniel Greenfield

One of the many low points of Obama was his description of ISIS as a JayVee team after the terror group took over an entire city. Now in Jeffrey Goldberg's latest PR piece for Obama, the Nobel Prize winner has located a new scapegoat.

...

There's plenty to criticize General Austin for, but if you believe Obama then General Austin completely misled him about ISIS. And so Obama put him in charge of fighting ISIS.

...

So Obama's claim, via Jeffy Goldberg, is that General Austin is an idiot who is clueless about ISIS... and Obama is the idiot who put him charge of fighting ISIS.

That barely makes sense even by the standards of Obama's usual lies.

And General Austin had warned about the rise of Al Qaeda on leaving Iraq. In 2013, he was correctly warning about a struggle that could last a decade.

...
That doesn't sound like Austin thought it was a "flash in the pan". So Obama is lying. Again.

Obama Lies, Tries to Blame General for "ISIS JayVee Team" Line

 

[American_Jihad]

I could have bumped the thread with ... like some of the leaderboard folks do...

ON THE LATEST UN REPORT CLAIMING ISIS FIGHTERS AREN'T REALLY MUSLIM
August 6, 2017

Daniel Greenfield

...

Understanding of Islam is also relative.

The real question has never been whether ordinary fighters are experts in Sharia law. They're not expected to be. Islamic law is a dense and complex subject. And ordinary Muslims are expected to rely on Islamic rulings. It's the Islamic knowledge of the ISIS leadership. Ground troops in any cause are not expected to be wealthy or experts in a topic.

Furthermore the insistence by the study that ISIS' actions are un-Islamic itself demonstrates either an ignorance of Islamic law or a desire to obscure it.

The study is largely an excercise in denying the obvious. And pointing Western governments toward the same blind alley of deradicalization through more government programs rather than addressing the Islamic source of the problem.

On the Latest UN Report Claiming ISIS Fighters Aren't Really Muslim

 

[my2¢]

I never have been convinced foreign policy is McCain's forte. I'd also add GW Bush and Obama to that list. With Trump it has been so far so good even though I'd put his policies closer to Obama's than with the other 2. With ISIS it was obvious from the start of the Iraqi war that we'd make more terrorist than we could kill. Hagel makes a great point about Obama's red line in the sand. It is just basic logic to never make a treat that you won't carry out.