Walt knows full well that Barack Hussesin Obama did not order the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He inherited those messes from the Bushes, not forgetting the 8-year Clinton interregnum. Blame them! But Mr. Obama did promise to end those wars and bring American troops home. Which he did, more or less.
But now, the President is asking Congress for authority to start a new, boots-on-the ground invasion of "Iraq and the Levant", as the folks at Foggy Bottom keep calling it, to avoid having to mention, errr, Syria, so that the infamous Obama Red Line will not be remembered. Yes, a new war of his very own!
But why??!! Walt will explain. First of all, it's about Mr. Obama's legacy. Being the first and only person ever to have been given the Nobel Peace Prize in advance, the Prez now has to do something to justify the award. Bringing peace to the Middle East by force of arms must seem to him a worthy achievement. If only it could be done!
Then there's the oil. See "The war against ISIS explained... again... seriously, this time". The jihadis are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in oil money from the wells and refineries in the areas they control. This is money which (as they will tell you) rightfully "belongs" to Big Oil -- Exxon and BP and other multinationals. If you don't know why this is a concern to the Prez, check out "The REAL reason Obama opposes Keystone" to learn who funds the Democratic election campaigns.
The official reason for the New Obama War, though, is to degrade "ISIL" and stop the spread of Islamic terror and barbarity "before it reaches our shores". And... oh yeah... to teach the IS terrorists that they'll pay a heavy price for killing Murkins. Walt notes that the Prez wasn't too keen on getting involved as long as the jihadis were only killing Kurds, Yezedis and a few thousand other Muslims. But when they started beheading Westerners, well of course Something Had To Be Done. It all reminds me of the South Park movie, in which the USA attacks Canada in retaliation for the Canadian bombing of one (1) American family.
But OK, let's give him that one. Let's buy into the argument that if we don't fight the jihadis there, we'll have to fight them here. (That ignores the counter-argument that if we'd just leave them alone, they'd leave us alone! But never mind...) Walt's question is, why would we escalate the "war against terror", by sending in the Marines, when the air strikes are already working?!
You don't believe? Walt is referring to The war against Islamic State: It will be a long haul, in this week's Economist. Here's the key part of their analysis.
The coalition can claim to be making slow progress. It is six months since Barack Obama gathered 60-odd countries into a coalition to "degrade and ultimately destroy" IS. Since the first air strike in Iraq on August 8th, the campaign has extended into Syria and widened to include arming and training allies such as Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, and Iraqi government forces.
America’s Central Command claims that about 6,000 IS fighters have been killed, including up to half the group’s "top commanders". Some reckon it has 30,000 fighters in fray. At the end of January Kurdish fighters in Kobane, a Syrian town on the border with Turkey, said that they had expelled IS after four months of grim fighting with help from coalition bombers.
More than 1,000 IS fighters are thought to have been killed in that battle. Syrian Kurds have also extended their control into surrounding villages previously held by IS. Rebels in provinces to the west of Kobane say their front lines with IS have been quiet, suggesting that the jihadists are struggling to fight on multiple fronts.
The biggest setback appears to have been to the aura of invincibility that IS acquired last year when its advance through Iraq and Syria seemed unstoppable. Although IS still controls an area of Syria and Iraq about the size and population of Jordan, it has been unable to expand into areas of Iraq where Shias or Kurds are a majority. Threatening Baghdad or Erbil now appears beyond IS’s capacity.
Got it? The measures undertaken (however half-heartedly) by Mr. Obama (and friends like the Canadians -- the only country to actually have ground troops in combat) are working! Why on earth is it suddenly necessary to put 1000s of American (and coalition) soldiers in harm's way?
The Economist makes another telling point in conclusion. As IS gets squeezed in Iraq, the magazine says, the main action will shift westward, into Syria. If America finally admits that the fight must be taken into Syria (goodbye "Levant"!), it will then have to make common cause with, errr, Basher Assad and... wait for it... Iran. Some coalition that will be!
Strong note from Ed.: I just rewrote the title of this post to quote Ron Paul. Don't miss "Obama's Force Authorization is a Blank Check for War Worldwide"!!!
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