Obama: "We Still Don't Have An ISIS Strategy"

by JASmius



And that, of course, IS the strategy:

State Department official and ISIS expert Brett McGurk laid that out on NPR: “It’s a three-year campaign to degrade the organization.”

i.e. To run out the clock while making ourselves look like we're resisting ISIS while not actually doing anything to "degrade" or impede their advance in the slightest.

Three years marked from mid-2014, of course, falls after January 20th, 2017, the date Obama leaves office.

Translation: The strategy is to avoid sending ground troops for the remainder of his term. So stop asking.

Assuming O does leave office.  That's half of the magic equation.

And the other half?

This is a legacy issue for Obama, an actual red line. Iraq is already in the win column and only becomes a loss if he listens to Republican advice and orders combat troops to return, the White House thinking goes. [emphasis added]

Haider al-who?

In other words, The One's "win" in Iraq was undoing George W. Bush's "Surge" victory from 2008-2009, resurrecting al Qaeda-In-Iraq as the Islamic State, and siccing them and the Iranians on each other to quarrel over the Iraqi state's corpse.



And it only becomes a "loss" if he reprises what George W. Bush did to restore the Iraqi state, eradicate ISIS, and strip the mullahs of their twenty-seventh province (correction: twenty-ninth; Lebanon and Syria are twenty-seven and twenty-eight, respectively).

Put another way, in the Obama White House, losing is "winning" and winning is "losing".  Depending, of course, on which side you're backing.

And, of course, the Islamic State sprawls far beyond "the Levant":

The Libyan affiliate does not occupy large amounts of territory as the Islamic State does in Syria and Iraq.

Yet.

But in the past few months, the local group has seized Sirte, the coastal city that was Gaddafi’s last redoubt, as well as neighborhoods in the eastern city of Derna…

Although the Islamic State claims allies in many countries, the Libya branch is especially close to the main organization. Its core fighters in Libya are veterans of the Syrian civil war.

Security experts estimate there are as many as 3,000 fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Libya. The country has become one of the primary locations to train with the group outside of Syria and Iraq. Volunteers from Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries have flocked here to fight with the extremists and other jihadist organizations. The Islamic State also has succeeded in pulling away members of other Libyan extremist groups. [emphasis added]

"Degrade" ISIS in Syria, ISIS survives and thrives.  "Degrade" them in Iraq, they survive and thrive.  "Degrade" them in both, they....survive and thrive.

They're like Hydra....



And instead of Captain America, we have President Jihad, giving them all the time and resources (via the "Iraqi Army") they need to survive and thrive.  And expand and conquer and slaughter....without limit.

Ditto the mullahs.

And that is the Middle East policy straitjacket into which he will stuff any GOP successor.

Assuming he ever voluntarily relinquishes power.

Hail Obama?

Nah, calling him "the Black Skull" would be racist.