Maybe Obama can read about this during a storm break on the links
-Geaux
America's plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group's fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.
The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama's plan to "degrade and destroy" Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.
War against Isis US strategy in tatters as militants march on - Middle East - World - The Independent
Several points here, all of which are pretty common sense:
1. Do not enter combat with a plan to win and the resolve to win. Obama's plan is half-assed. Every military person says that the stated goal of "degrade and destroy" cannot be accomplished with the current plan.
2. Never take action that will give the other side a victory and make you look weak. Despite our presence and declaration to degrade and destroy, ISIS is doing what they want with impunity. They are capturing strategic locations and winning control over resources such as water, both clear gains. They have done this despite US presence. In other words, not even the best military in the world can stop them at this point.
3. You must act decisively in combat situations. Right now OBAMA and his nitwit minions at the State Department are equivocating. This makes us look weak.
4. Leaders make political decisions, not military decisions. The political decision is to degrade and destroy ISIS. Obama should direct the military to do this if he is going to stand by his stated goal. The Military can devise and execute a successful military plan. Obama is trying to micro manage the situation, which is, again, making us look indecisive and it is handicapping the military.
5. While it is now too late, I will point out that you have got to act quickly on these matters. We should have, and could have, acted against ISIS months ago. If we had then we would not be where we are today, and all of the mass murders of innocent people in Northern Iraq would not have taken place.
6. It is our national interest to stop ISIS. If not stopped, then northern Iraq and Syria become another Afghanistan: a safe harbor and staging area for a terrorist group that is openly hostile to the west. We cannot rely on others like the Kurds or Iraqis to be the ground forces in this action. That would me that we are putting the security of the United States into the hands of foreign nations. That idea itself is repulsive, unconstitutional, and constitutes malfeasance on the part of the president.
7. If you repeatedly fail to do what you pledge to do then your credibility will be lost. Nobody in our so-called alliance is risking ground troops or pledging much else. Turkey is very capable and could easily swoop down with ground forces to assist in this endeavor. However, they will not because they fear that Obama will not hold true to his word and provide necessary support.
Obama has already fucked up big time once in the region with that red line clusterfuck. Now he has done it again. The current air strike are futile. He is just pissing away very expensive weapons right now. There is virtually no ground intelligence needed for proper targeting in the air strikes. The missions is to degrade and destroy. Now here we are, many weeks later, and not a damn thing has changed.
Did OBAMA hope that his speech followed by a nominal show of force was going to accomplish something? Was the real plan to just make this nominal show of force and then see what happens, hoping for the best? That is chicken shit stuff if that was the plan. Was the plan to make slow, incremental steps and then thoroughly assess each step as we go? That is NOT how a military planner would go at this. Again, a president has got to make a political decision, such as to degrade and destroy the enemy, then approve a plan drawn up by the military to accomplish said objective, then turn the military loose to execute the plan. Obama does not need to be in the way calculating every possible political affect of each and every action, thereby holding up the mission. Military planners do not go at something like this ad hoc. If OBAMA really meant to degrade and destroy, then turn the matter over to the military to execute a plan to do just that.
Obama is squarely at fault in this ISIS matter. From the moment he announced that the U.S. will act to degrade and destroy ISIS it became Obama's conflict. He owns it. Now he is ******* it up as he had fucked up so many other things overseas. His foreign policy skills are worse than those exercised by Jimmy Carter. Obama is ******* up this whole region and is making the U.S. look weak and indecisive in the process.
To make matters worse, as the ISIS matter continues to worsen notwithstanding a US commitment, not too far away Iran continues balls to the ball with expanding its nuclear program to such an extent that it is now almost a certainty that they will possess nuclear weapons very, very soon. I have not heard much on this lately. Have you? Kerry is still engaged in talks, but that means absolutely nothing. Iran plays Kerry and OBAMA like a violin.
In short, we are fucked. Obama is going to leave us with such a ******* mess in the Middle East that our involvement in armed conflict in the region is a certainty. During Obama's reign the following has occurred in the Middle East:
- The Syrian war has been allowed to rage on despite pressure from the US, including the red line fiasco. It had now spilled over into Iraq and threatens to spill over into other countries.
- Weapons of mass destruction have been used by Assad in Syria to kill countless numbers of innocent people.
- ISIS, a terror group more dangerous than Al Qaida, has emerged and seized land, threatening to create another safe haven and staging location like Afghanistan.
- OBAMA has stunningly failed to get a Status of Forces agreement in Iraq, then opted to pull out. This made it impossible to keep the Shiite Maliki in check, thereby causing a sectarian shift of power in Iraq which cause great unrest, the killings of many, many innocents, and strongly contributed to the rise of ISIS.
- Obama let Mubarak fall in Egypt, despite the fact that he has been a long time and staunch ally to the United States. He kept the radicals under an iron fist. To let him fall was a crime.
- OBAMA openly encouraged the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group of Islamist radicals. By supporting a democratic form of government in the Middle East, and ultimately moving toward the same, the Brotherhood was able to get a foothold in government. This sounds fine, except for the fact that the Brotherhood is anti-democratic. How did this work out for Egypt? Not too dam well.
- Obama negotiated an agreement with Iran that allows them to continue building centrifuges. Now a year later they are closer than ever to having a viable nuclear weapon.
- Obama has alienated Israel, a crucial ally in the region. We need them. Yet OBAMA never passed up an opportunity to snub Israel and to diminish them.
- The Palestinian peace talks have always been tedious and difficult. However, now they are especially fucked up after Kerry tried his hand at it. It will be years now before this effort ever gets back in track after Kerry insulted and alienated everyone involved.
- The extremely wealthy families in Qatar now have an unprecedented amount of influence with certain jihadist groups in the region, including financing them. Once upon a time there was severe consequences for doing this. Obama has done nothing about it. In fact, his detachment from the Middle East has enabled jihadists to now be better funded and better armed than ever before.
- Our dependence on Middle East oil has not gotten any better due to OBAMA domestic policy against domestic exploration and drilling. Further, if he would get the EPA out of fracking then we would have more natural gas on the market, thereby lowering its price and lowering the income and influence of Qatar, whose income is derived from natural gas.
I could keep going. Suffice it to say that Obama has fucked up at every turn when it comes to the Middle East. A regional international war in the Middle East is a very real threat, moreso now than ever before. Obama is enabling the instability in the region. You really have to wonder whose side is OBAMA on when you look at the current state of affairs there.
