In October, President Barack Obama ruled out a shift in strategy in the fight against Islamic State despite the deadly attacks in Paris, saying putting more U.S. troops on the ground as sought by his political critics “would be a mistake.”
Speaking after a G20 summit in Turkey, Obama described the attacks in France that killed 129 people as “a terrible and sickening setback” and vowed to redouble efforts to destroy Islamic State, even as the group threatened to strike Washington.
Question is, what Islamic State are we looking to conquer?
Mindful of the difficulties that the United States had in controlling Iraq after its invasion in 2003, Obama is very reluctant to commit American ground forces to Middle East conflict zones.
Obama has stated that he he is going to pursue the strategy that has the best chance of working but has yet to unravel such strategy but adds such dogma about an intensification of the effort against the Islamic State.
Obama has been criticized for his administration’s handling of the current turmoil in Syria and Iraq, along with this author as he waivers more than others and back peddles on policies that do not seem to be in the best interests of the American people and it coalition forces.
Obama ruled out a shift in strategy in the fight against Islamic State despite the deadly attacks in Paris, saying putting more U.S. troops on the ground as sought by his political critics “would be a mistake.” A posture that seems to change at will.
Speaking after a G20 summit in Turkey, Obama described the attacks in France that killed 129 people as “a terrible and sickening setback” and vowed to redouble efforts to destroy Islamic State, even as the group threatened to strike Washington.
Obama is mindful of the difficulties that the United States had in controlling Iraq after its invasion in 2003 and is therefore very relunctant about making commitments. This clearly delineates his greatest weaknesses as Junior President in his commitmennt to foreign policy and National Security.
“We are going to continue the strategy that has the best chance of working,” he tells media, adding that there would be “an intensification” of the effort against Islamic State. Obama does a well crafted dialogue about being very vague and unavailing.
The White House has now given U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan the legal authority to pursue and attack ISIS militants in Afghanistan. The troop size is the Middle East stands at 50. That’s FIFTY! You get more first responders to a bank robbery.
The new authorization, the Military Times reported, allows U.S. forces to target groups linked to al Qaeda in addition to the ISIS offshoot in Afghanistan, which was established last January. The change, however, does not give to the Taliban a “hostile-force” designation. Last time I checked, the Taliban was clearly a “hostile-force” designation a ranking terrorist organization.
This means that U.S. personnel cannot target Taliban insurgents unless they directly threaten American or Afghan forces. The Taliban has been fighting successfully to regain control of key districts in the Helmand province.
The count of ISIS fighters in Afghanistan lies between 1,000 and 3,000, according to an estimate from Gen. John Campbell, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. However, back in late 2014 as stated, the CIA and the Kurds have that number stated that they have hugely underestimated the number of Jihadis, who now rule an area the size of Britain and senior Kurdish leaders claim have an army of over 200,000.
Kurdish President Massoud Barzini said in an intewrview with ‘The Independent’ that “I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters…” He estimates that ISIS rules a third of Iraq and a third of Syria with a population of between 10-12 million living in an area of 250,000 sqaure kilometers, the same size of Great Britain. This gives the Jihadis a large pool of potential recruits.
The new authority to target ISIS in Afghanistan precipitated from the State Department’s designation of the ISIS offshoot in Afghanistan and Pakistan–namely ISIS-K (ISIS-Khorasan)–as a foreign terrorist organization. This, in turn, led White House lawyers to designate the group as a hostile force, a defense official told the Military Times.
Back at the end of 2014, Previously, U.S. forces were only allowed to directly target ISIS fighters in Afghanistan when evidence showed that the fighters were targeting American or Afghan forces.
The new authorization led the Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee to criticize the White House for not sooner changing the rules of engagement.
“It shouldn’t have taken a year for the White House to identify ISIS as a threat in Afghanistan and authorize our forces to engage them. In fact, the committee understands that our military made two requests last year to combat this emerging ISIS threat, the first dating back to February 2015,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R., Tex.) said in a statement, according to CNN.
Once again, the president’s inaction and denial of the ISIS threat has only resulted in its growth and put our troops and our Afghan partners at greater risk. What is proven far greater is putting the very citizens of the world including ourselves at peril.
Facts speak for themselves. Obama has not provided this nation with leadership and ISIS and all splinter groups have a shared agenda. ISIS has it’s Jihad – all has its mission to destroy everything in its path. Agenda- Annihilation.
“One of my superstitions has always been when I start to go anywhere or do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished.”
Ulysess S Grant