So, 4 More Wars

My son turned 15, and we took him out to dinner last night, so I did not watch Obama's speech last night.

Reading the transcript has lead me to agree with Dan Froomkin, who described his stated strategy as a, "Hot Mess."

The New York Times rather pithily observes, "American intelligence agencies have concluded that it poses no immediate threat to the United States. Some officials and terrorism experts believe that the actual danger posed by ISIS has been distorted in hours of television punditry and alarmist statements by politicians."

That's my analysis in a nutshell:  Obama is a prisoner of "inside the Beltway" conventional wisdom, which is, "Something is wrong with the world, we must bomb it."

I would note that, rather unsurprisingly, the Saudi offer of "support" is to set up training camps for "moderate" rebels, where the US military will train them to "fight ISIS".

Considering the fact that it was Gulf state support for the rebels in the first place that turned a brutal crackdown on protests into a civil war, and Saudi Prince Bandar bin al Sultan was ISIS's primary patron, and we're going to help them to continue the Sunni-Shia "great game" there.

I also think that the course of action proposed by Obama is far more optimistic about the facts on the ground than is justified, and as blogger Pat Lang observes, the strategy that Obama is promulgating has, "Too many moving parts."

He notes that Obama is assuming that the Gulf states and Turkey will blithely work with the Shia government in Iraq, that the new government in Baghdad will be inclusive enough to bring Iraq's Sunnis back into government, that we can fight ISIS in Iraq while supporting the "right" rebels in Syria, and rebuild the Iraqi army, and continuing to show implacable hostility to Iran, all while not putting any American "feet" on the ground.

Also remember that we are not targeting isolated cells of insurgents, ISIS is effectively a government in the areas that it controls.

It won't be driven out by airstrikes.

We are back in Iraq, and we will have troops in combat situations on the ground before Obama leaves office.

So much for Obama's opposition to "Stupid Wars."