Monday, June 16, 2014

President Indecisive

Is it just me or does it seem like Obama is incredibly indecisive?  For one his dithering on Syria, for two his unwillingness to do much to combat the ISIS threat in Iraq and thirdly to really win in Afghanistan.   What is up with these containment policies?  The goal in Afghanistan seems to be more about containing the Taliban and Al-Qaeda than it is about defeating them.  Does that really work?  Isn't the purpose of war to defeat your enemy rather than to allow them to regroup and keep attacking you?  I don't know.  Of course, it would help if we would take the war to Waziristan, because the Pakistani government has proved to be less than trustworthy in dealing with that region or in stemming the flow of insurgents from that area.  The President doesn't seem to have much of a stomach for long term warfare.  Yet do we really have much choice?  I would argue that there is merit to the argument that we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here.  Wasn't that the lesson of September 11th? 

With Obama having dithered around on Syria for so long, that has resulted in a largely stalemated situation there.  He didn't want to go around the UN on it because he didn't want to be another Bush, but while I'm not quite sure the original decision to go into Iraq was the best one, I do agree with W in that sometimes you can't wait around on the UN.  The delay in action in Syria also largely contributed to the rise of extremist Islamic groups in Syria and likely contributed to the rise of ISIS which now threatens Iraq.

So the other day, I read that Obama has said there will be no ground troops in Iraq.  Yeah, good job telling the enemy what our limits are.  On top of that, the next day I read about a group of American contractors being surrounded by ISIS.  Hmm.  I would think that would at least call for some limited use of ground forces to rescue them.

I gave Obama kudos for giving the green light on the mission that killed bin Laden and I agreed with his decision to assist in Libya.  However, since then his foreign policy has been inept at best.

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