When Barack Obama announced that our military strategy in Iraq would be driven by the Democrats' favored political narrative - that the worst thing in the world would be for U.S. troops to be engaged in ground combat, and this would never be allowed - it raised the somewhat obvious question of what we would do if ISIS took the fight to us.
The answer should have been obvious, of course. With Obama as commander in chief, we would run from the fight. Or be airlifted as the case may be . . . and is:
In Iraq’s western Anbar province, more than 300 U.S. troops are posted at a base in the thick of a pitched battle between Iraqi forces, backed by tribal fighters, and well-armed Islamic State militants.
The militants, positioned at a nearby town, have repeatedly hit the base with artillery and rocket fire in recent weeks. Since the middle of December, the U.S.-led military coalition has launched 13 airstrikes around the facility.
U.S. troops have suffered no casualties in the attacks. But the violence has underlined the risks to American personnel as they fan out across Iraq as part of the expanding U.S. mission against the Islamic State, even as President Obama has pledged that U.S. operations “will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”
In a sign of the risks, military officials said American soldiers have been transported to the Ayn al-Asad base under the cover of night by helicopter — partly to maintain a low profile for the renewed U.S. operation in Iraq but also to protect U.S. personnel amid fierce fighting west of the capital, Baghdad.
Under Obama’s plan to aid the Iraqi government, the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is expected to grow to about 3,000 from just under 2,000 now. Not only have they been deployed in Baghdad and the northern city of Irbil, but in recent weeks they also have been sent to Anbar and to training sites flanking the capital.
The Post's story goes on to explain that Baghdad would be in serious jeopardy if ISIS were to take Anbar, simply because it would make it much easier for ISIS to bring in supplies and reinforcements from Syria.
This story really highlights the absurdity of Obama's vow that the U.S. will not engage in ground combat. That is a promise you can only keep if the enemy doesn't decide to take the fight to you. ISIS may consist of monsters, but they can read, and they surely understand that the one thing Obama wants to avoid most of all is to have U.S. troops engaged in actual combat. When we're airlifting our troops under cover of night to make sure they stay out of combat, we're making it clear to the enemy that they can dictate our movements. All they have to do is bring the fighting near where U.S. troops are stationed, and U.S. commanders under orders from the commander in chief will have no choice but to pick up and move somewhere else.
This is simply astonishing when you really think about it. When else in the history of the United States have we presumed to stand up to an enemy, only to cut and run whenever the enemy gets close so as not to have to actually fight?
Let's never forget, by the way, that this idiocy came about precisely because Democrats decided to use the difficulty of the Iraq War as a political weapon to bludgeon George W. Bush. They turned the notion of any U.S. troops in combat into the most beyond-the-pale situation imaginable, and convinced much of the American public to vote, if not entirely think, like isolationists. This was in reaction to the rise support for America's global leadership role that occurred under Bush and Cheney in the aftermath of 9/11. The Democrats realized that if the public wanted an aggressive American leaadership role in the world, they would have little chance in national electoral contests because everyone knows they have no stomach for any fight. So they fought the narrative hard and with the media's help they convinced the public to see things their way. Our troops must no fight. Anywhere. Ever.
It succeeded in getting Obama elected, but once he was in office, he had to actually deal with real threats around the world - like ISIS. To some degree this happens to every president. He has to deal with the realities of the job and the conflicts between these realities and some of the rhetoric he employed on the campaign trail. Most presidents fall on the side of reality, but not Obama. He said no U.S. troops in combat. There will be not be U.S. troops in combat. If there's a fight to be had, we'll come up with some sort of dumbass concept whereby we send "advisors" to foreign nations who are not nearly as well equipped as we are to engage in the fight, but we will not fight.
If that means we sacrifice victory, then fine. Victory is not as important as Obama's political narrative. That's the same thinking that saw us pull our troops out of Iraq in the first place, and the same thinking that's got us doing the same thing in Afghanistan.
Obama is committed to the fight against Republicans, but not against anyone else. And ISIS is smart enough to know exactly how to use that fact to its advantage.
