The President’s Speech

The president’s speech last night was given at 2:00am local time so I was in troubled slumber. How did it go? My work schedule won’t provide me the time to listen to it streaming or even read the transcription.

My guess is that he said he was going to do something but we’re not sure what or why but, gosh darn it, it will take care of ISIL. Does that about cover it?

Update

Col. Pat Lang, a man with substantial area expertise, writes this about the president’s plan:

In the end, if a decisive outcome is desired, there will be no alternative to substantial US ground forces. That will mean reconstruction of the US logistical and command and control base in Iraq as well as the use of several air bases. Is Obama going to demand legal extra-territoriality for our forces as a precondition? He should, but, will he?

He also offers important insights on the Turks, Kurds, Saudis, Qataris, and Iranians. His conclusion: too many moving parts.

51 comments… add one
  • Pretty much, Dave.

    We’re ramping up the air strikes—probably to also include against ISIL in Syria—and sending in another 475 military advisors ”to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces with training, intelligence and equipment.” And we’re hoping that somehow “Iraqi and Kurdish” ground troops will do the rest.

    I don’t see how that “ultimately defeats” ISIL, his declared end state.

  • CStanley Link

    No, no….you have it all wrong. The President told us we now have a strategy!

    The confidence in Iraqi and Kurdish troops is misplaced, and also
    the idea that there is now an Iraqi government that we can work with. Maliki has been demoted to VP and this government has been in place for two days, but we can be sure it’s all being sorted out!

  • Daddy…he’s not acting right. Can we go kick the sh*t out of him?

  • PD Shaw Link

    I thought the speech was fine. The policy appears to be “Taliban preemption,” the U.S. will not allow terrorist state havens to develop from which attacks on the U.S. can be unleashed.

  • TastyBits Link

    I hate to be the turd in the punch bowl, but you cannot defeat a non-nation-state organization. You must exterminate them. Each and every member must be eliminated by being captured or killed, and the US is trying to eliminate the best exterminators.

    If ISIS is a serious threat to the US, it requires a serious response, and you do not outsource your security to cowards. The same people trying to convince me that this is serious could not bring themselves to establish permanent bases in Iraq.

    It is time to stop the half-assed measures. Either commit or get the hell out. I am tired of you delusional hawks trying to do everything as cheap as possible. You tried to break Egypt I & II. You have totally broken Libya, and you are trying to break Syria. Now I am supposed to be worked up because two reporters in a dangerous place have something bad happen to them.

    Newsflash: Libya caused Syria which caused ISIS, and ISIS needed weapons. ISIS did not wait around for government handouts. They took personal responsibility, and they lifted themselves up by the bootstraps. They are go-getters. Frankly, they are the kind of terrorists you should want as partners.

    Here is an idea: Rather than training the nice terrorists, why not ask Assad where to drop the bombs. He can use his ground forces to exterminate ISIS, and he has always protected minorities.

    Libya is a serious problem, but it is a political liability. Hence, we will hear little about it before the November elections. When the Egyptians are trying to clean up your mess, it is a serious problem.

  • Is arming the moderate rebels part of the president’s new proposal? Does he have a way of identifying which of the rebels are moderate and will remain so?

    If not, the plan is to bomb ISIS and arm them.

  • jan Link

    “Is arming the moderate rebels part of the president’s new proposal? Does he have a way of identifying which of the rebels are moderate and will remain so?”

    Yes, he’s finally on board with arming the Syrian rebels…now that it’s far more difficult to tell the good guys from the not-so-good ones. However, after much deliberation and with his back against the wall because of all the dropping poll numbers, Obama has made a big televised commitment to do something that was recommended years ago to do.

    Syria has also been put on the table of options to bomb, even though Assad has told us not to invade his air space. What happens if our planes are shot out of the sky by Assad forces as we fly across Syria to bomb ISIS (which will unintentionally help Assad)?

    Up to 500 more “advisers” will be put into place, with much emphasis placed on the fact they will not be ‘boots on the ground’ sort of help. Humanitarian aid will be continued, more intelligence will be supplied by the U.S., and we will now respond to the Kurds requests to give them additional weapons — mainly so we can annoint them as our boots on the ground.

    I think more than the substance of Obama’s speech it was the authoritarian tone in which it was rendered that impressed and was lauded by his followers. They wanted him to sound “presidential,” and he certainly upped his game in order to please them.

  • Andy Link

    “In the end, if a decisive outcome is desired, there will be no alternative to substantial US ground forces.”

    Of course there won’t be substantial ground forces and Lang knows that as well as anyone. He also knows that US ground forces would not be “decisive” except at the tactical and operation level even if they could be employed.

    I mostly agree with George Friedman:

    “In the Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain the balance of power. It is crucial to understand the balance of power in detail, and to understand what might undermine it, so that any force can be applied effectively. This is the tactical part, and it is the tactical part that can go wrong. The strategy has a logic of its own. Understanding what that strategy demands is the hard part. Some nations have lost their sovereignty by not understanding what strategy demands. France in 1940 comes to mind. For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary.

    The ground where we are talking about applying this model is Syria and Iraq. Both of these central governments have lost control of the country as a whole, but each remains a force. Both countries are divided by religion, and the religions are divided internally as well. In a sense the nations have ceased to exist, and the fragments they consisted of are now smaller but more complex entities.

    The issue is whether the United States can live with this situation or whether it must reshape it. The immediate question is whether the United States has the power to reshape it and to what extent. The American interest turns on its ability to balance local forces. If that exists, the question is whether there is any other shape that can be achieved through American power that would be superior. From my point of view, there are many different shapes that can be imagined, but few that can be achieved. The American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.”

    http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/virtue-subtlety-us-strategy-against-islamic-state

    The whole thing is pretty good, but it rests on the questionable assumption that neighboring powers would be forced into a “regional competition” that the US could manage. I have little doubt there would be regional competition – I question whether the US could “manage” it as some kind of puppetmaster. We have not proven very adept at that.

  • ... Link

    Dave, he proposes to arm the ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels that he was openly scoffing at and laughing at long ago. (Two weeks back.)

    On the other hand, he laughed at ISIS too, and they turned out to be pretty tough, so maybe it’ll work this time.

  • ... Link

    Obama’s foreign policy should be known as the Shitty Wall Doctrine – just keep hurling tyres at the wall until something sticks.

  • Andy:

    I guess we’ll need to give the president a chance at building his coalition. I think it has no prospect whatever of working out for reasons that include those that Pat Lang suggest but add to it my conviction that the Arab politics of the Saudi position render them very averse to fighting other Arabs directly.

    Things may look different from the Oval Office.

  • ... Link

    Turds, not tyres. Autocorrect does some weird kittens.

  • jan Link

    So much of what is happening today — how the problems in Iraq, Syria have only become more complex, devious, and difficult to find solutions for — goes back to the decision executed by the WH, taking all the troops out of Iraq in 2011. The previous POTUS gave a prescient warning about what might happen if a military presence was removed too fast. This admonition was then augmented by people like Gen. Petraeus and others who recommended certain numbers were needed to keep the peace there. But, our leader listened to no one. And, the disruption currently happening in Iraq and Syria only mirrors the next chapter in Afghanistan, as Obama, during last night’s speech, continued to reference getting out of that country as well by the deadline that was set earlier.

    “For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty….””

    While we might have two sides of oceans inoculating us from invasion, we still have casually guarded southern and northern borders that now seem more and more vulnerable because of the over-heated,unproductive political wrangling going on over immigration policy. Sadly, it appears the safety and well being of American citizens, from terrorists, disease, schools being overrun, local municipalities being financially tapped out, all seem less concerning than the quality and quantity of gamesmanship between the left and right dealing with winning future elections.

  • ... Link

    Fundamentally, this is part of a larger culture war. But given that the elites running the country hate our culture and want to destroy while importing every other crazy-assed foreign culture available in the world, we’re pretty much doomed to lose sooner or later.

    Well, the important thing is that we’re going to get that bastard Goodell for punishing that bastard Rice more than the government did. Yeah, that’s the fucking ticket….

  • TastyBits Link

    @jan

    I realize that you and the others do not like history except when it is convenient, but at the beginning of Syria, there were only one group of rebels you all wanted to arm. You have forgotten that you did not know there would be good terrorists and bad terrorists.

    ISIS and the current mess is the result of the bad terrorists pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Instead of waiting for government handouts, they took the initiative. I would think that you would be proud of these terrorists.

    Instead, you want to be partners with the terrorists looking for government goodies. Do they get EBT cards? Can they buy marijuana with their welfare benefits? Will there be a Obamacare website for them, and will they get subsidies?

  • TastyBits Link

    @Dave Schuler

    I guess we’ll need to give the president a chance at building his coalition. …

    Or, at totally f*cking it up. I think the Col. Pat Lang link is the most realist assessment I have seen, but this is a domestic political issue.

    The Republicans are using the ISIS issue for campaign contributions and to turn out the voters. After the November elections, ISIS will be dropped, and Libya will suddenly become the problem nobody could have seen coming.

    By that time, the idiot president will still get blamed for the total mess he created in Syria/Iraq plus the new one in Libya.

  • PD Shaw Link

    How come it sounds like Pat Lang and George Friedman have created a complex plan out of whole cloth to deride it as being too complicated. There are only a couple of moving parts discussed last night. One is counter-terrorism campaigns against ISIS, wherever it exists and two is U.S. support for counterinsurgency efforts by the Iraq government.

    Note that Lang’s assessment of Saudia Arabia is pretty much the opposite of Burgess’

  • PD Shaw Link

    Oops, just noticed that Friedman’s piece was from earlier this week and isn’t really a commentary on last night’s announcements. Friedman thinks we’re wasting our time in the Middle East until we adopt a grand strategy of balancing powers. We haven’t had a grand strategy in the region since 1979, when one of the tentpoles was yanked out, and there is nothing to suggest the U.S. is adopting one now.

  • TastyBits Link

    @PD Shaw

    Who is going to conduct the counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq?

  • PD Shaw Link

    @Tastybits, the Iraqis.

  • TastyBits Link

    @PD Shaw

    The same ones that turned tail and ran the last time, or new ones that will turn tail and run the next time? I suspect the non-cowardly Iraqis are with ISIS. They seem to be the go-getters.

    Would you trust the guy next to you if he broke and ran the last time? Would you trust these units?

  • jan Link

    “but at the beginning of Syria, there were only one group of rebels you all wanted to arm. You have forgotten that you did not know there would be good terrorists and bad terrorists.”

    Tasty,

    At the beginning of Assad’s brutality there was a greater differentiation between those supporting Assad and those who were anti-Assad. If weapons were to have been given over to anti Assad forces, that would have been the best time to have done it. And, Obama’s rhetoric promised such help was coming — promises that ended up never being fulfilled. In some ways such empty encouragement probably added fuel to people’s willingness to join ISIS type militia coming into Syria, in lieu of no other assistance materializing on the horizon.

    Nonetheless, IMO, there was but a brief window of opportunity open, early on, that may have legitimately helped Syrian rebels, for the right reasons rather than falling into the wrong hands. That window closed years ago, and arming them now seems kind of foolhardy to me, as Syria has become the command and control center for ISIS. I think we have painted ourselves into an impotent corner, where there is little we can do but hover around, superficially help, and tighten up our own security on our own borders.

  • TastyBits Link

    @jan

    Luckily, we do not need to debate in fantasyland. We can turn to reality – Libya. In Libya, there were only good rebels. Not only were the rebels good, but they were 21st century social media rebels. They were the purest of the pure. I realize that you all do not like history, but tough. Life sucks.

    You got what you wanted. Only the purest rebels were armed. US bombs were precisely dropped, and the horrible Gaddafi was murdered. Now Libya is a paradise. Oh wait, it turns out that you were wrong about the wonderful rebels. They are terrorists, and Libya is a shithole. Soon to be a terrorist paradise.

    As soon as there is money to be made or political advantage, we will hear all about Libya, but until then, nothing.

  • ... Link

    Oh, no one here mentioned my favorite part of the speech. That would be the dismissive and imperial “I welcome congressional support…” line. Good stuff.

  • steve Link

    Note that Lang agrees to agree with the commenter who noted that another massive troops deployment would significantly damage our troops. I think that is true so I agree with him. Yet, he also seems to think that we need our boots on the ground to resolve this. I think we to accept that there are limits as to what we can do or should even try.

    It is doubtful that we can achieve anything lasting if we send another large scale troop deployment. It is likely to be harmful to our troops. Therefore, we don’t send in our troops. Neither the Saudis nor the Turks want to be seen fighting other Muslims. So, we do what we can. If ISIS intends to exist as a functional state, they will be very vulnerable to air attack. Seems like it should be containable.

    Steve

  • jan Link

    Tasty,

    I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore. Apparently you label people and then address your posts according to that label. It’s difficult to even respond to some of the off-the-mark assessments created by such self-made opinions. But, carry on with what you think if it fits into the pattern of human behavior you’ve constructed around people.

  • TastyBits Link

    @jan

    Of course you do not. I provided you with a recent real world example of arming rebels, but it conflicts with the fantasy you have created.

    “Silly”, “childish”, and “in over his head” never seem to confuse you, but then, I am referring to somebody you dislike.

    You get offended when you are grouped with people with similar views. Interesting. I get tossed in with the non-interventionists, but I am in no way a non-interventionist. I am a warmonger at heart, but I do share a lot of their concerns. Whatever. At least that crowd is not breaking things.

    There were those who wanted to get rid of Gaddafi, and there were those who did not. I am a results guy, and I do not care about nuance. Those who wanted him gone got what they wanted, and the current mess in Libya is the result. You work out whether you are to blame or not.

    At the beginning of Libya and Syria there were no bad rebels. In Libya, the bad rebels emerged after Gaddafi was gone. Had those who wanted Assad gone got their way, Syria would now look like Libya, and ISIS would now be in control of large portions of it.

  • Jan, you’re a textbook example of a person absorbed by the “conservative news” borg.

    You’re so brainwashed you don’t know which end is up anymore.

  • PD Shaw Link

    @steve, I apologize for my recent lapse into sophomoric potty-mouthing on one of the threads; it wasn’t directed at you , but at one of the President’s diplomats. I would have been annoyed at me, though.

    I largely agree with your take here.

  • jan Link

    Tasty,

    I’m not offended.

    Obama in over his head is something I’ve agreed with. But, I don’t like calling people silly or childest, especially when they are president. Inept, incompetent, maybe, but that is observing the content of their leadership.

    I have not seen you as a non interventionist, as you speak in very blunt, military terms, with no holds barred.

  • Jan, you can say such cogent things, then you go go completely flaky. Could be California, I suppose, though. Bad medicine, California.

  • One loses the CULTURAL landscape there, of which I am a pretty damned good curator. Been working at it all my life.

  • Quick, who popularized “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”?

  • This is not trivia. Sam Cooke was a seminal soul singer.

  • TastyBits Link

    @jan

    The foreign policy philosophy of the Left and President Obama is silly and childish. It is a fantasy, and the premises are collapsing. When they leave things alone, they do not make them worse, and this is there advantage.

    The foreign policy philosophy of the Right has become delusional. It is not into fantasyland, but reality and history are being tossed aside when inconvenient. It has become driven by politics instead of national security.

    I expect the Left to get all worked up over a brutal dictator and to get all excited about a social media revolution.

    I expect the Right to understand that when a dictator turns over his nuclear weapons program and becomes an intelligence asset, he becomes part of the national security strategy. I expect the Right to understand that governments are not overthrown by Facebook and Twitter users. Coups are engineered by serious people with serious goals. I would expect the Right to understand that Russia is a world power like it or not, and they cannot be treated like a third world country.

    At one time, this was understood by the Right and even some on the Left.

    Now that President Obama has shifted into gear on the ISIS situation, do you really think it is going to improve?

  • Who is YOUR soul singer, TB? Not necessarily black.

    Mine might be Woody Guthrie.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Janis Gore

    Billie Holliday would be my first choice, but she is listed as jazz. Ray Charles would be second.

  • Ms. Holliday is just fine.

  • A selection? Maybe “God Bless the Child”?

  • Friday night music at Dave’s. Bring wine.

  • What have you got jan? Something sweet from the Beach Boys?

  • Ice, it can be Megadeath.

  • TastyBits Link

    “Strange Fruit”, “Carelessly”, “Moanin’ Low”, “Mean To Me”, “Easy Living”, “You Go To My Head”, “You Let Me Down”, “Summertime”

  • ... Link

    Lady Miss Kier. Duh.

  • jan Link

    “Now that President Obama has shifted into gear on the ISIS situation, do you really think it is going to improve?”

    Tasty,

    I have to admit to being really at odds in myself with what is going on.

    There are times I think we should brutally take ISIS out, which goes along with your straight line thinking…I think.

    Then there are other times I look at all the mayham, confusion, lack of support from other ME countries, and I throw up my hands and think we should just walk away and let others sort out the confusion over there.

    I don’t own a gun (but also don’t rail against those who do), and detest violence myself. But, I’m also stubbornly loyal and not one to walk away from someone needing my help. So, when I apply my own instincts to foreign affairs they sometimes take on different hues at different times — not ones that are politically driven but more in tune with “if I were walking in the other person’s shoes” kind of thoughts.

    For instance, tonight I listened to an interview with James Foley’s parents and my heart went out to them. Maybe I was thinking of my own son, and how I would react to his head being severed. But, the world seems harsh these days, and the government calculatingly robotic in their ways of watching over the backs of ordinary citizens. It all seems more about the R and D behind various politician’s names, or what kind of election advantage might be gained from an action, rather than respectfully and honestly looking out for the people.

  • TastyBits Link

    @jan

    The people who are pushing for “doing something, anything” do not know their ass from a hole in the ground. Reread the Col. Pat Lang link, and take note of the part about Turkey. The conventional wisdom is that Turkey is as concerned about ISIS as the US. If they are, it is not for the same reasons.

    In Egypt, Libya, and Syria, the Christians and minorities were somewhat protected. This was not because the regimes are multi-cultural. It was for survival. They need as many non-enemies as possible.

    I am sorry, but the US tried to help Iraq for 13 years. It did not work, and breaking more countries is not going to work either. I cannot understand why that is too difficult to comprehend.

    There is a shit storm brewing, and there is nothing anybody can do to stop it. When a storm is coming, you prepare. If somebody tells you they can stop it, you laugh, and then, you continue preparing.

    Personally, I think you are letting this get way overblown. You have a lot more to worry about from the nice white teenage boy living on your block. One day he is going to decide to rig up a suicide vest to top off his shooting spree. It is only a matter of time.

    And while I am at it. If President Bush was so concerned about terrorists infiltrating the US, why did he allow the borders to remain wide open? It was as if he was more concerned about people making money than he was about national security.

    To my knowledge, nobody has infiltrated, and this may be due to some secret program. If so, great, but if the Right cannot have it both ways.

  • ... Link

    I see that Pelosi is calling Republicans s threat to civilization now. That’s stronger language than the President has ever used against terrorists from the religion of peace, whom he has vowed to eradicate. I wonder what the Dems plan for Republicans?

  • steve Link

    PD- No problem. Not sure you have it in you to stoop to the levels exhibited by most of the OTB commenters.

    Steve

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