War is hell. So go big or go home, Mr. President. Big means bold, confident, wise assurance from a trustworthy Commander-in-Chief that it shall all be worth it. Charge in, strike hard, get out. Win.I will leave it to the interested reader to see Reason's separate read of the post. But first of all, before we start talking about war, where is Congress' constitutional role being referenced? I searched her post and didn't see Congress mentioned once. Whereas the President certainly has authority to defend all direct attacks on the US, that isn't at stake here. When we start opening the Pandora's box of preventive warfare, all sorts of nations, some with nuclear arms, could be relevant. In fact, the President does not have a blank check to get us into war; only Congress has that authority.
Palin's assumption is that the US should be involved; her issue seems to be more with Obama's micromanagement of the war; her position is that Obama needs to empower the military professionals do their jobs on the battlefield and he has muddied the water with his apparent indecisiveness. A few points: first, the situation isn't black and white on the ground. Consider the fact, for instance, there were radical elements among the coalition resistance in Libya and Syria. Second, there are unexpected consequences to US meddling; consider, for instance, how the Iraq military and government bureaucracy collapsed after the 2003 invasion. Bush had run against Clinton-style nation building and found himself caught in the middle of long-standing sectarian differences. Third, the type of military initiative had implications on the battlefield; in particular, without boots on the ground, which Obama is loathe to do, it's difficult to secure the area. And make no mistake; for many natives, occupiers are the enemy, not liberators. Fourth, it's not clear that the military can and will secure early victory; let us not recall the Pentagon quickly drew down manpower in Iraq after the successful invasion, often seeing territory retaken after pulling back troops needed elsewhere, and was slow to implement counter-insurgency tactics. It wasn't until after Bush's long overdue change in military leadership and strategy that the situation started to stabilize, relatively speaking. Finally, success, knowing just when to leave can be illusory; many neocons argue that our vacuum in withdrawing from Iraq contributed to the conditions leading to the rise of ISIS. In reality, the idea that the US military could resolve sectarian disputes, in some case going back centuries, is pure hubris.
But as George Will recently noted the surrounding region nations have up to 2 million soldiers, not to mention air forces that could put a stop to ISIS, which has no air force and maybe 20,000 troops; why is this America's problem? This policy is morally hazardous; why are regional powers going to act if the US is going to jump in? In fact, the Washington Post reports:
“A lot of this is still in the discussion phase, but I want to be clear that there have been offers, both to Centcom and to the Iraqis, of Arab countries taking more aggressive kinetic action against ISIL,” including airstrikes, a senior State Department official said in Paris, using an alternative acronym for the militant network.I am more sympathetic to the criticism that Obama's foreign policies have been highly nuanced, unprincipled, and logically incoherent. Contrast, for instance, the muted reaction to Iran's green revolution and the sharp contrast to the Arab spring, the flip-flop on Egypt. It's also disingenuous to take credit for ending the war in Iraq and then using the Congressional mandate authorizing Bush's intervention as a pretext for his own intervention; note that Bush 43 did not try to reuse his father's mandate for the first Gulf War. [Revision note: a recent article points out that Obama thinks that he has a mandate under a 2001 referendum to use force against the terrorists involved in the 2001 attacks.] Obama has argued (despite the War Powers Act and the Constitution) that he has the power to intervene as he has without Congressional approval, so he hasn't made the case to the Congress or the American people. I went back to the ISIS strategy transcript: "I have the authority to address the threat from ISIL." He only makes a few passing remarks about Congress: he wants funding support for Syrian rebels; he "consulted" with Congress; and he would welcome Congress' (unnecessary?) support of his strategy. He does pay lip service to the concept that the US is not the world's policeman: "We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world, and small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm." But then some magic happens, and ISIS is our problem.
As to the use of the terms "trustworthy", "bold", "confident", "big": they are highly subjective, some involving Obama personally but remarkably unspecific: what would she have us do? Use nukes? Put thousands of troops on the ground to fight ISIS? What's her exit strategy? Sunni and Shiite leaders together singing "Kumbaya"? Was Bush right or wrong in staying in Afghanistan and Iraq after rogue regimes were overthrown? Is she applying differing standards to Bush and Obama?
He sure wasn't concerned about "optics" when he let the crisis starring this Islamic death cult reach this point as he dithered and danced and golfed the time away while the Middle East exploded into chaos.Obama "let the crisis reach this point"? The US is responsible for resolving long-standing conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world? Where exactly does Palin find this interventionist responsibility/authority under the Constitution? Also, Palin seems to mix substantive comments with personal shots ("dithered and danced and golfed the time away"); I personally don't care how the President gets his daily exercise, and I don't know his schedule. I do know that he has state-of-the-art communications, even while he exercises. I would prefer that he does not make an impulsive, wrong decision.
No, he announced military options in Iraq and talked about arming and training the Syrian opposition (not including ISIS). It is true that Obama was talking about military intervention in Syria but backed off after Britain's similar initiative got negated by Parliament and some resistance in Congress--more against Obama's refusal to acknowledge the need for Congressional approval. Obama, in fact, has consistently called for backing the "moderate" Syrian resistance. [Revision note: it is true that Obama has changed his tune on arming the rebels after recent developments, including the execution of Americans. See above link] If anyone has flipped, it was non-interventionist Rand Paul, who was endorsed by Palin in 2010 and recently called for military intervention against ISIS. And it's hard to call Obama a non-interventionist given his expanded drone activities in Yemen and elsewhere, not to mention Africa.
Tonight he announced he’s flipped and will finally militarily engage inside Syria – the red line he’d set and then forgotten about surfaced again.
Tonight, President Obama pledged to fight Islamic militants “wherever they exist” with a very small coalition of the willing...It's not clear where Palin is going with the coalition point--Bush 43 also had a much smaller coalition than his Dad in the first Gulf War; I think she's trying to use it to make an unfavorable comparison of Obama to Bush.
The rise of the animalistic terror group, ISIS, is the result of Obama’s lead-from-behind foreign policy. He had broadcast his war strategy for all the enemy to see in Iraq, so the enemy could wait us out and strike as soon as America turned tail and turned away from all we’d sacrificed there. Terrorists who we had under control got to regroup and grow after Obama’s premature pull out.Let's not forget that the power vacuum in Iraq originated with Bush's intervention in 2003, which exacerbated sectarian issues in a subsequent power struggle. It's also true that Obama worsened matters by arming the opposition in Libya and Syria, a significant portion of which ended up in the wrong hands, but let's point out Palin's neocon allies had also supported arming the rebels in question.
It was Bush who agreed to the exit schedule; both he and Obama tried to convince the Iraqi leadership to extend, but failed for similar reasons; Obama simply acted on Bush's negotiated exit. What led to ISIS' growth was existing sectarian differences, not to mention blowback from questionable US interventions.
ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.
You must acknowledge reality: the organization calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is, in fact, “Islamic.” Not many of us pretend to be experts on the Muslim religion, but these terrorists obviously consider themselves Muslim and they believe what they’re horrifically doing to innocents is part of their “religion of peace.”Just as Christians themselves have had their own sectarian differences (think Northern Ireland), so do Muslims. Obama is playing disingenuous word games here. ISIS has, in fact, proclaimed a caliphate: "Conceptually, a caliphate represents a sovereign state of the entire Muslim faithful, (the Ummah), ruled by a caliph under Islamic law (sharia)." I think what Obama is trying to do is avoid the impression that this is some sort of a Christian crusade against Islam. (The fact that many social conservatives try to characterize the US as a "Christian nation" compounds the problem.) I do think that in terms of understanding things like suicide attacks, you need to get real about distinctive religious constructs. Obama is right: there are a billion peace-loving Muslims in the world, and this radical group does not represent them.
ISIS must be stopped in Iraq and Syria before we need to stop them anywhere else. As they dominate the region they head for us; we're next on the hit list.The domino theory has just swapped 'communism' with 'radical Islam'. As mentioned earlier, this is a group of 20-30,000 fighters, no air force. Taking on a superpower that could nuke them into the Stone Age? But make no mistake; just as this group has filled the gap left by Al Qaeda, others will spring up even if ISIS is crushed, agitated by US intervention and related collateral damage.
Thank you, military, may you be heard when you pray America’s leadership understands that if we’re in it, then we're in it to win it; no half measures. Troops, we are always with you.Let's hope that our troops are not needlessly called into dubious wars by political interventionists using them as pawns of ill-conceived, futile foreign meddlesome adventures. It's more the wisdom to choose our battles wisely.
