Obama’s Blinkered Generals.

JED BABBIN: Obama’s Blinkered Generals.

Earlier versions of the NMS have followed the guidance set in Obama’s National Security Strategy and the National Counterterrorism Strategy by avoiding mention of Islamic ideology in an effort to avoid the responsibility of having to plan to defeat it. The 2016 version evidently won’t be any better. It will, for example, use the bowdlerized term “violent extremist organizations” instead of “Islamic terrorist networks.”
(This is more than a semantic exercise. The Department of Homeland Security has defined Violent Extremist as “an individual who supports or commits ideologically-motivated violence to further political goals,” thereby including right wing extremists having no connection to Islamic terrorism.)
Since 9/11 we haven’t defeated any of the terrorist networks in part because we haven’t even attempted to defeat their ideology. President Obama, in July 2009, said that he is uncomfortable using the word “victory” to describe the United States’ goal in Afghanistan. He said the U.S. fight there is against terrorism and not a nation.

Read the whole thing.
I’d add that there doesn’t seem to be much threat of a “victory” in Afghanistan, and that there never was. The war there has been largely a distraction since about mid-2002, and an increasingly expensive distraction since about January, 2009.
I’d also add that Obama has doubled down on Bush’s failures (as described above by Babbin), and purposely squandered Bush’s successes. That’s one hell of “a mess” Obama’s successor will inherit in January.

Obama’s Blinkered Generals.

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