Pressure Builds On Obama To Take ISIS Fight Into Syria

by JASmius

Operation Syrian Freedom?  And/or are Republicans attempting to enjoy a potential, rarer-than-hen's-lips opportunity to make The One squirm?:

"I don't see how we can defeat ISIS without going into Syria," New York-4 Representative Peter King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN. "I believe in massive airstrikes.

"This is not about Syria. This is not about Iraq," King added. "It's about our national security. The president has the obligation, if he is serious about going after ISIS, to go into Syria."

Florida-27 Representative Ilena Ros-Lehtinen later told CNN that "I believe that the president should do that.

"He should have done it when he first announced it when he said Assad has crossed a red line in the use of chemical weapons," she added, referring to Obama's speech in June 2013 when it was confirmed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used the arsenal against his own people. "In fact, they used chemical weapons twice and still we did not do what we said we would do.

"It was a mistake for us not to act then," Ros-Lehtinen said. "We cannot let this cancer grow."

Actually, no, Congresswoman Lehtinen, it was not.  You see, and as a refresher to you, since you and so many others appear to need one, it was not Bashir Assad who crossed that "red line" a year ago, it was ISIS and/or al Qaeda.  The Sunni jihadists have overrun most of Syria, including a large portion of Boy Assad's (and which was once Saddam Hussein's) chemical weapons arsenal.  They used a portion of it to gas the Damascus suburb of Duma in order to frame Assad for the atrocity and lure Barack Obama into attacking the Assad regime and knocking it out for them.  Indeed, there were reports at the time that the White House knew about the Duma gassings in advance and was even complicit in them.  Whatever the plausibility of that - which I think is at least possible but which I understand that you can't afford to touch with the proverbial ten-foot pole - President Red Lines or somebody in his Regime appeared to belatedly realize that they were being played by the enemy they're now pin-pricking and back-pedaled before they too-publicly tipped another domino into the Sunni jihadist camp.  Which is to say, they left Syria in the Shiite jihadist camp.  Which is to say, we had no friends in the "Syrian civil war" and still do not.  Which is to say, however stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day-esque it was, Barack Obama made the right call in not intervening in Syria.  Unless, of course, you were advocating a full-scale invasion, a la Operation Iraqi Freedom, that would have eradicated both Assad and the jihadists.  That I would have supported.

But then, if there had been, or were now, any chance of that happening, we never would have abandoned Iraq in the first place.  Which is also why, Congresspeople King and Lehtinen, your appeals will fall on deaf ears now.  A reality of which I hope you're aware, even if you can't publicly admit it.

Now please don't misunderstand me, I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't be making said appeals - you absolutely should, given your positions.  High elective office and the accompanying responsibilities at times force those who hold them to say some really silly, foolish, futile things.  You'll never see, hear, or read me urging Barack Obama to undertake actions that we all know he'll never touch in an eon of epochs, because it would make me sound....well, silly, foolish, and futile.  Although I do know that other center-right pundits do so - even Dr. Krauthammer succumbed a couple of days ago - but I prefer not to waste time pontificating on things that have less than no chance of happening.

Oh, certainly I'm aware of the White House signaling last night that they're "willing to consider" attacking ISIS in Syria as well as Iraq, but that's just bloviation designed to buy time for all of this to blow over.  See, that's the difference between ISIS now and, say, Operation Lead From Behind in Libya three years ago.  The latter was a proactive offensive operation designed to advance jihadism in the context of King Hussein's "Arab Spring" narrative.  The former is pure, put-upon defense-playing.  What Barack Obama wants more than anything else is for the Islamic State crisis to go the bleep away, because it's tromping way too close to exposing beneath five megawatt klieg lights how completely wrong he is, was, and always will be about the Middle East, about Iraq, about the Obama Doctrine, about his entire misbegotten, Ameriphobic foreign policy - but even worse, how it utterly and completely vindicates George W. Bush.  That is the nightmare that would be keeping him awake nights if not for his strutting, superhuman narcissism.  He would rather undergo testosterone therapy than make that confession.  It would combust his very identity and self-image.  It would humble him.  And gods are not humbled.

But also understand this, Congresscritters King and Lehtinen - and Senators McCain and Rubio, since they weighed in as well: even at best, Barack Obama will never be more than a reluctant warrior, and we all know that he doesn't like making bold, firm decisions outside of his ideological predilections.  Launching a few pinprick air strikes in Iraq for public consumption is embarrassing but it's not a commitment.  He doesn't want to defeat ISIS, or even fight them; he just wants to create the appearance of same for PR purposes, and keep up that façade long enough for the kerfuffle to fade.  Expanding those pinpricks to a serious air campaign, much less extending it to Syrian territory, would be a commitment, one that, even if he was willing at some point to make, he would do only vacillatingly and half-heartedly.  Which is what "getting sucked in" would look like in practice, Senator Rubio, since you don't seem to grasp that yet.  And that would be a formula for yet another unwinnable quagmire.  The proverbial policy burro that starved to death between two bales of hay.

I also fully understand, my fellow Republicans, that the boundaries of the electoral Overton Window will not allow you to say what I'm about to tell you and (I hope) you already know: Air power alone will not defeat ISIS.  Air power alone has never won any war.  In order to defeat a powerful, well-armed, and highly-committed enemy, you have to put boots on the ground.  It's like the old expression about how the chicken is involved with breakfast, but the pig is committed to it.  I said and wrote over a decade ago that if American national security interests were to be fully and maximally served, Operation Iraqi Freedom could not stop with just Iraq.  It had to liberate Syria and Iran as well.  Make a clean sweep of the entire "Arab Crescent".  That truth has not changed.  If the United States is to crush the Islamic State, the United States must re-invade Iraq and "cleanse" Syria as well.  With overwhelming air, land, and sea-borne force that will remind the Russians and the mullahs in Tehran that, to borrow Mark Twain's famous quip, reports of the death of the American superpower have been greatly exaggerated.

Regrettably, the sort and magnitude of decisive action that can actually accomplish the goals for which you all are calling will never come from this president.  So if I were y'all, I'd be preparing for ISIS actions a lot closer to home....