After keeping his promise to avoid American involvement in extended wars for nearly six years, President Obama on Monday began a military engagement that he acknowledged is likely to far outlive his time in office.Extended wars, as opposed to kinetic military actions, or drone strikes in countries that are supposed to be allies. No bias here!
The launch of airstrikes in Syria and expanded U.S. action in Iraq, at the head of a dozens-strong coalition of nations, is by far the biggest commitment of U.S. might Obama has made, far beyond 2011's limited air action in Libya or the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.
A coalition something like half of Bush's....
Yet his decision seemed all but inevitable as Islamic State militants publicly executed U.S. hostages and it became clear that extremist advances in Iraq --
My head is certainly awhirl.
Barely a month ago, there wasn't even a plan.
That's Champ's fault.
To Obama's frustration, according to participants in extended national security discussions on Syria in late August, advisers who recognized that something had to be done had presented him with a disparate collection of actions but no coherent blueprint that would address military, diplomatic and political aspects of the problem and could be explained to an increasingly worried American public.
Champ is frustrated that his staff couldn't do what he never expected them to do. So who's fault is that?
There were proposals, but no agreement, to attack the Islamic State in Syria. There were plans, ignored by Congress as it left on summer vacation, to ramp up aid and training for U.S.-backed rebels fighting on the ground.
If only we could find any left after two years of being ignored by the hero of this article (The Lightbringer).
Everyone agreed that more aggressive international action had to be taken to stop the flow of foreign fighters and money to the militants.
Much the same as the agreement in 2003, maybe not quite as unified. Remember, The Hidabeest voted to attack Iraq.
For a president who is
Finally, an admission about dithering!
Obama had said repeatedly that he did not believe U.S. airstrikes would substantially change the trajectory of a raging three-way civil war among the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the so-called moderate rebels and a bewildering array of extremist groups. Justification for action was also considered questionable on both domestic and international legal grounds.
Let's see if the legal grounds have changed, shall we?
But there were rapid and ominous changes in August. Although limited U.S. air power was deployed to
Remind anyone of safe havens in Pakistan? Cambodia?
U.S. and European intelligence agencies were seeing a rapid rise in the number of Western passport holders among the thousands of foreigners joining the Islamic State. The
Leading from behind again, are we?
The day after Obama�'s late-August news conference, a Friday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry -- a longtime and strong advocate of more aggressive U.S. action in Syria -- brought his own policy team together on a conference call."We need to get the White House our theory of the case," he told them.
The team worked throughout the weekend on what emerged as an eight-page strategy document outlining progress on Iraqi government formation and five mutually reinforcing "lines of effort" that spanned the Iraq-Syria border: a military plan including airstrikes against the Islamic State in both countries; training and equipment for Iraqi security forces and Syrian rebels; humanitarian assistance to those displaced in both countries; coordinated international action against foreign fighters and militant funding sources; and countermessaging against Islamic State propaganda.
My head is spinning again!
The gulf monarchies had listened with cynicism to Obama's news conference and to his promise that his plan, once it was ready, would include partner nations.
No one had discussed a plan with them, and there had been no request for participation. "We've already been consulting for three years," one senior Arab official said at the time. �"Our point to them is, if you're serious, come and tell us what you're going to do and we'll do it with you."
In an address that night from the White House, he told the American public that "we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists." In military action and the other elements of the plan, he said, "America will be joined by a broad coalition of partners."
"This is where Kerry wanted to be, over the last year and a half, during all the hours of meetings and relationship building" in the region, a senior State Department official said. "It was the turning point."
So Kerry now rises above the previous foreign-policy wizard, Ms. Clinton. Kerry in 2016! Again!
"We would have been happy to have one flying with us," the official said of the partners. Instead, they had five -- the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar. "Qatar didn't want to fly strikes," he said, but contributed air defense with fighter jets protecting the others.
Less than 24 hours later, after a quick collating of available resources, the U.S. air command center at Qatar's al Udeid base was ready to launch.
Time just flies when you're having fun! And the 'legal grounds' issue was not addressed.