The New York Times\’ Peter Baker wrote a news article after President Obama authorized the airlifting of supplies to Iraq\’s Yazidi sect – tens of thousands of whom are trapped by the terrorist lunatics of ISIS and, without help will all be dead in a matter of days.
Here are the first three paragraphs of Mr. Baker\’s article – in rust, with my comments in blue:
Insending warplanes back into the skies over Iraq,PresidentObama on Thursday night found himself exactly where he did notwant to be. Hoping to end the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama became thefourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyardof American ambition. Here\’sa question for you, Peter: If Barack Obama, who bragged aboutremoving troops from Iraq, found himself forced to do this, would itbe fair to say that his predecessors are owed a bit of belated understanding for the military actions they ok\’ed there? At the very least, it would be nice to see some mention that a) the troop withdrawal President Obama bragged about wasnegotiated and agreed to by President Bush before Mr. Obama ever tookoffice and b) when it took place, if Mr. Obama – holding all the cards as he did – had required that there be a smallresidual US force in Iraq, it might have caused ISIS to thinktwice about what it is currently doing there.)
The mandate he gave to the armed forces was more limited than that of his predecessors, focused mainly on dropping food and water. But he also authorized targeted airstrikes “if necessary” against Islamic radicals advancing on the Kurdish capital of Erbil and others threatening to wipe out thousands of non-Muslims stranded on a remote mountaintop. I love that “If necessary”. If, without action being taken, tens of thousands of Yazidis are about to die at the hands of this lunatic-asylum terrorist group, how is it not necessary? And if a few bombs at a few convoys doesn\’t stop the slaughter, how could it not be necessary to do more?
As he explained himself to a national television audience, Mr. Obama made a point of reassuring a war-weary public that the president who pulled American forces out of Iraq at the end of 2011 had no intention of fighting another full-scale war there. Yet his presence in the State Dining Room testified to the bleak reality that the tide of events in that ancient land has defied his predictions and aspirations before. Translation: Circumstances might suck President Obama into an unwanted military campaign. Just like they did his predecessors. Will the Times, along with the left, attack Barack Obama for this as they attacked the two President Bushes? Or is it now time to recognize that the leader of the free world sometimes has to act, even when it wishes it didn\’t have to?
Let\’s all hope that President Obama truly follows though here – that the politics of this situation – i.e. pleasing the left wing base at the expense of untold human lives – is trumped by the duty to stop this ISIS lunacy before it takes over entire countries, kills everyone it considers an infidel, and then takes aim at us.
