May 20, 2015

ANDREW MALCOLM 

Obama White House declares war with ISIS a 'success,' but for whose side?

 

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted with permission from Investor's Business Daily

 

A year ago today President Obama had no strategy to address the rampaging terrorist army of ISIS because he deemed it a JV team. Late last summer, after the public beheading of an American and his island golfing vacation, Obama announced his strategy to "degrade and ultimately defeat" ISIS:
Obama's strategy involved no American boots on the ground. And it was based mainly on air power, mostly U.S. but also a coalition of Arab states.
Last weekend an unspecified number of American Special Ops boots landed on the ground in Syria and killed a senior ISIS commander and about a dozen others. The same weekend a relatively small number of ISIS troops captured Ramadi, the major provincial capital of Iraq's Anbar Province.
This despite allied air power.
And the world watched the flight of thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi troops, abandoning additional fleets of U.S. military vehicles to the enemy.
Obama's press secretary was asked if this sort of event constituted the kind of "success" the administration has touted against ISIS? "Overall, yes," said Josh Earnest, earnestly.
He added, "We have seen a lot of success. But we've also seen significant periods of setback."
No kidding. The loss of Ramadi. The loss of Mosul. The loss of Falluja, each of which required significant investments of American treasure and lives to capture in the first place. Poof. Lost, just like that. (The full Earnest press briefing for May 19 should be posted here sometime today.)
We have no way of knowing what kind of glue this White House staff is sniffing. But they're taking something powerful to so seriously distort their thinking. They talk of the ebb and flow of protracted battle. This one has been mostly ebb.
An ISIS affiliate is now firmly rooted in Libya, which turned lawless after Obama's optional war to oust Moammar Gadhafi. The U.S. lost $500 million in military equipment this winter when it fled Houthi rebels and abandoned Yemen, which Obama had cited as a counter-terrorism success story as recently as last fall.
In deference to Turkey's domestic concerns, Obama has dithered arming Iraq's Kurds, who want to fight ISIS unlike Iraq's army. Obama drew an imaginary red line over chemical weapons in Syria, announced an attack when it was violated, then backed down to Assad and Putin. Now it turns out Assad didn't turn over all his chemical weapons.
Obama never did arm moderate Syrian rebels. Remember he ....

....dismissed them as a ragtag band of doctors and bakers? So, they were basically annihilated by the Assad regime and other feuding factions. Now, Obama talks of training some remnants.
The nuclear weapons giveaway talks with Iran continue unabated. Russian President Putin defied Obama's ineffective sanctions and empty threats to successfully annex Crimea and now foments armed rebellion in eastern Ukraine. Obama sent field meals for Ukrainian troops. Still, no significant weapons for them.
Obama has basically frozen relations with Egypt's new president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. As Army head, he responded to mass civilian demonstrations by ousting the Muslim Brotherhood government. And this year he bombed ISIS troops in Libya when they beheaded dozens of Egyptian Christians.That attack drew public criticism from Obama's administration.
If we didn't know better, we'd suspect the president is trying to run out the clock, hoping to escape Dodge in 610 days, leaving this colossal mess for others. Maybe even Hillary Clinton, who played such a large role in making it.
On so many occasions Obama has acted or not acted in ways that damage American power, influence, credibility and standing in the Middle East and beyond.
The D.C. media have been consumed in recent weeks re-litigating the Iraq war by getting every prominent Republican on record on what he or she might or might not have done had they been president 12 years ago and known or not known about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Those news people should now watch the video above -- to the end. And then pose this question to that speaker:
"Mr. President, you were briefed before the 2012 election on the looming threat of ISIS.
"Knowing what you know now about that brutal group and its murderous takeovers in Syria and Iraq, would you still proceed with the precipitous political withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011?
"Or would you insist on a status of forces agreement with Iraq, to protect our forces' hard-won gains and sacrifices and allow some to stay behind and prevent or prepare for the lethal onslaught we're now witnessing?"
RELATED: