“We don’t have a strategy yet.”
President Obama, Press Conference,
August 28, 2014
From Bagdad on the Tigris to Kiev on the
Dnieper U.S. foreign policy is in disarray. At his press conference President
Obama noted that he was awaiting a strategy from the Pentagon to deal with
ISIL. Wrong!! It is the civilian leadership who makes strategy. Therefore it is
up to the Pentagon to come up the appropriate military response to achieve the
political ends dictated by the strategy. Simply put the President has it
backwards.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, hardly
a hawk, referred to ISIL “as sophisticated and well- funded as any group that
we have seen…beyond anything we have seen.” If that is anywhere close to being
the case then a clear and present danger exists to the national security of the
United States. Up to now the President has authorized air strikes in Iraq, but
not in the ISIL heartland of Syria. I fear that will not be nearly enough and
that both air strikes in Syria and ground combat troops will be necessary as
well. ISIL is too well entrenched to be handled by air power alone.
Yes the American people are war weary.
But it is up to the President to make the case. Great leaders don’t follow
polls they change them and the sooner the President lays the groundwork for
action the sooner it will happen. He has to remember he is President first and
party leader second.
He has to spend the time to do the hard
work of coalition building that will be necessary to dislodge and ultimately neuter
ISIL. President Bush ’41 was successful at
it, but it took real work internationally to create it and he also had to
overcome real opposition in Congress. In order to this the President will have
to spend less time on the golf course and schmoozing political contributors and
more time with foreign leaders and members of Congress.
Meantime Russia has all but formally
invaded Ukraine and is now talking about a creating and independent state in
the eastern part of the country. Such an open act of aggression must not go
unpunished. It is now time for very real and very hard sanctions on Russia that
would end all technology transfers and their access to the western banking
system. Further NATO should send advanced weaponry to the Ukraine so that the
can defend their homeland against the onslaught of Russian tanks and artillery.
Hopefully there will be the will at the upcoming NATO meeting in Wales.
The White House has become a theme park
of strategic indecision. The President has to snap out of it quickly because we
do not have the luxury of waiting more than two years for a new president. The locomotive
of history waits for no one. Just as reminder 75 years ago today, after several
years of watching Britain and France vacillate, the German army crossed into
Poland starting World War II.
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