Let's go through a timeline, shall we? It was September 2014 - nine months ago - when ISIS beheaded James Foley and released a video of the barbaric murder to the world. But even before that, ISIS was well on its way to overrunning much of Iraq. In response to these events, President Obama declared that under no circumstances would U.S. ground troops be involved with fighting ISIS, but not to worry. We would provide air support for Iraqi troops and others in the region, and would also train these troops.
So nine months later, with ISIS having overrun both Mosul and Ramadi and remaining at Baghdad's doorstep, how are we coming on that training?
Yeeeaaahhh . . . about that:
President Obama took heat Monday for admitting he doesn't yet have a "complete strategy" in hand for training Iraqis to fight the Islamic State -- months into the coordinated campaign to defeat the deadly terrorist network.
"When a finalized plan is presented to me by the Pentagon, then I will share it with the American people," Obama said, adding, "We don't yet have a complete strategy."
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in a statement: "It is no surprise this administration does not have a 'complete strategy' for training Iraqis to fight ISIS. What is surprising is that the president admitted it."
The president addressed the ISIS fight during a press conference on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Germany. He appeared to be speaking specifically to a new strategy for accelerating the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces. "We're reviewing a range of plans for how we might do that," Obama said.
Classic Obama
This is classic Obama in so many ways. First, he lays it on the Pentagon for not having a plan ready, as if the Pentagon doesn't work for him. If training these troops to defeat ISIS was a priority to Obama, and he had given the Pentagon a hard and fast deadline for having the plan ready, then it would have been on his desk when he told them to have it on his desk. They don't care because he doesn't care.
Second, Obama displays his usual sense of urgency - read, none at all - when it comes to matters of strategic importance to our allies, especially those in the Middle East. Are there no protocols already in place for how you train people to fight? Is there nothing that could have been chosen in a matter of weeks and implemented months ago? Facing a threat to the survival of ObamaCare, or to the NLRB's ability to tip the scales in union elections, or to his ability to release illegal immigrants with criminal records, do you think Obama would have spent nine months "reviewing a range of plans"? Of course not. ISIS has made significant strategic gains during the time the Pentagon has been reviewing those plans.
Third, Obama loves to simply not make decisions when he can find no political advantage to deciding. Why do you think he's dragged his feet on the Keystone XL pipeline for more than six years? Because he figures he can't win if he makes a decision either way, so the path of least resistance is to do nothing. In the same vein, he doesn't pull the trigger on a strategy for training the Iraqis because he really wants nothing to do with Iraq, and doesn't see how the U.S. is any better or worse off if ISIS controls Iraq. He thinks that if George W. Bush hadn't invaded Iraq in the first place, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and ISIS wouldn't even exist, so therefore it's not his responsibility to solve the problem because another president caused the problem.
Of course, even if you accept Obama's assessment of how and why the problem came to be (which you shouldn't, because it's wrong), the fact of the matter is that you decide to take on such problems
when you run for president. If you don't want to solve the problem, don't seek the office.
But good luck telling that to President Selfie Stick, and good luck to the Iraqis, because they're going to need it. They're not going to get any real help from the United States as long as the current occupant of the Oval Office is making the decisions.
By the way, further down in the story Fox News quotes an unnamed "military official" as dropping an exasperated F-bomb and declaring that the Pentagon has given Obama lots of options, which he has simply declined to act on. I rip on the Associated Press endlessly for quoting unnamed sources, so I can't be any less stringent about it when the offender is Fox News. But my personal opinion, and that's all it is, is that Obama wouldn't hesitate in the slightest to just flat out lie about this because he's that confident no one under his command would call him on it. Because if they did and he knew who it was, he wouldn't spend nine months, or even nine seconds, deciding what to do about it.
