Posted on 05/19/2015 9:43:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The seizure of Ramadi on Sunday leaves President Obama’s strategy against the Islamic State in ruins not only in Iraq but also throughout the Muslim world. It means that the Iraqi security forces will almost certainly not be able to recapture Mosul this year and, therefore, that the Islamic State will retain its largest city in Iraq. Worse, it gives the group momentum again in Iraq even as it gains ground in Syria and expands in the Sinai, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere. This defeat was avoidable.
Neither the Islamic State nor any other al-Qaeda offshoot has ever taken a major urban area actively defended by the United States in partnership with local forces. This is what happens when a policy of half-measures, restrictions and posturing meets a skillful and determined enemy on the battlefield. If the president does not change course soon, he will find that his legacy is not peace with Iran and ending wars, but rather the establishment of a terrorist state with the resources to conduct devastating attacks against the United States and a region-engulfing sectarian war.
Obama reacted slowly and reluctantly to the initial Islamic State surge last June from Syria into Mosul and then down the Tigris toward Baghdad. He authorized U.S. air support to assist the defense of the Kurdish capital of Irbil in August and eventually deployed first a few hundred and then a few thousand U.S. advisers.
He did not allow those advisers to fight alongside the Iraqi units they were assisting. U.S. airstrikes have destroyed many fixed Islamic State targets and killed its fighters by the thousands since then, mainly in Iraq, but have allowed the group to retain a haven in Syria and even to maneuver freely within Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
0 could have prevented it.
The fall of Iraq was unavoidable because the west put in zero effort into stamping out sharia law. It was never going to not return immediately to full blown Islam because no effort of any sort was mounted to create a counter to Islam.
The effort as carried out has been stupid, and the supporters of the wasted effort (without exception) even more stupid.
It’s more than thirty-five years since the Iranian hostage crisis, and most sheep still have no working knowledge of Islam or how it functions.
Yes it was. But the Washington comPost and the rest of the American media refused to give a proper, balanced coverage to Valerie’s man child.
Obama’s strategy is to put on a good show of acting, effecting an airstrike every now and then, or some other ostentatious-but-useless display of force, but otherwise allowing ISIS to prevail on the ground. He’s one hundred percent on their side. Anyone with half a brain knows this. It’s those with less than half a brain that he’s pandering to, and he’s not concerned that the rest of us are on to what he’s doing.
Gees the Iraqi’s just left with out a fight! Krap! And we want to train them again? Send in a few Marines and wipe them out!
Check out my opinion about Iraq.
The fact that there are still "we won the war" people here is very, very disappointing.
This is reminiscent of battles in Viet Nam, where huge amounts of soldiers’ blood and war material were used up to take a certain objective, then the next day, after the objective had been achieved, the force that had been so bloodied so severely is ordered to withdraw.
Longer time span, but we withdrew, and you see the consequences.
The election of Barak Obama was preventable.
All of this was avoidable. O blew it.
“the establishment of a terrorist state with the resources to conduct devastating attacks against the United States and a region-engulfing sectarian war” ... which is what 0 apparently wants. After all, nobody could be this incompetent intentionally...
Au Contraire, as song as we are not being killed nor spending billions to nation build, Obama is doing great. This is a religious war between Shiites and Sunnis. Let them have at it. Why take sides?
Yep. King Zero’s method is clear: Allow ISIS to take Iraqi cities then Iran Quds force comes in and retakes cities from ISIS. Rinse and Repeat. Iran has their agents in our White House, namely VALERIE JARRETT.
G.W. Bush blew it and Obama made it worse.
You’re welcome.
Those were the result of the strategy of the US’s worst general, William Westmoreland. His idea was to engage the enemy in a war of attrition out beyond where the Vietnamese population lived. Thus allowing the enemies guerilla forces to have sway over a good chunk of the population. Westmoreland was replaced by Gen. Abrams who reversed the strategy. Abrams used his resources to secure the population from enemy control and did not play into the enemies hand by engaging in large unit battles out in the hinterlands, on the enemies terms. By the end of the US’s ground war, Jan 1973, 85% of South Vietnam’s population was under firm control.
We are engaging in the same semantics today. When the Pentagon says that ISIS is losing territory, they are referring to empty desert, not large population centers.
Islam without Sharis Law? And these Freeoers think W was stupid!
“President Obama’s strategy”? really?
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