President Obama has ordered the commencement of air strikes on presumed ISIS targets in Syria.
First things first: whatever I think of this as a strategy, I hope it works, and works fantastically well. The objective is to minimize the world of murdering fanatics, and if Mr. Obama\’s way of doing it works, my imaginary (I rarely wear them) hat will be off to him – heck, I\’ll even put a hat on do it.
That said, however, I see no realistic way this can achieve anything remotely close to that objective.
How many military people have to tell us that, without significant ground troops, you cannot stop these people, before it sinks in?
My expectation is that, day after day, Mr. Obama\’s accomplice media will regale us with stories about “23 ISIS members killed”, “storage depot successfully hit”, etc. Just like we heard about every great air strike success in Libya – which, once the bombing was over, immediately became what it is now: a lawless terrorist hellhole and breeding ground for these lunatics.
In fact, it\’s already started. On this morning\’s Today Show, Andrea Mitchell informed us that President Obama would be “thanking the Arab Allies”….which sounds pretty impressive. Hey, there\’s that broad coalition, right?
Except then, after setting the table, she follows up by admitting there are only 5. And that the extent of their participation was “some only by bases” – in other words, no soldiers, no planes, no bombs. Tell us, Andrea: if you subtract “some” from 5 what do you wind up with?
Helluva coalition.
Maybe part of the problem is that, for years, Barack Obama did nothing as ISIS, once little more than an al-qaeda offshoot even more brutal than the parent organization, grew exponentially into a mass-murder machine, currently in control of something like 75,000 square miles of Iraq and Syria. And – let\’s be entirely honest here – his sudden interest in hitting ISIS targets comes quickly on the heels of several new polls showing that voters\’ opinion of how he handles foreign policy in general and the terrorist threat in particular have fallen off the end of the earth.
If you were a potential coalition member, would you be impressed? And would you be impressed with his telling ISIS in so many words that we would put no boots on the ground – i.e. that you were expected to do all the ground fighting and dying while the Americans watched on TV, and from planes, high above the carnage?
Let me end with the political component of this action.
Do Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats think these attacks will turn that around? I suppose it is possible, in the sense that anything is possible. But to me:
-Republicans, for the most part, have derided his lack of action for years. This will be seen as too-little-too-late.
-Democrats, certainly the Democrats\’ hard-left base (and it is substantial) will hate the fact that he is doing anything at all.
In other words, it looks like a loser – not only in terms of what he is doing, but in terms of how it will play out politically as well.
Time will tell. And I doubt we\’ll have to wait very long to find out.
