In an interview conducted by New Yorker Editor David Remick, back in January of this year, the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, said the following about a Muslim Terrorist Group, which he would later refer to as ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), and everyone else (except for the UN and some of Obama’s Minions in the Main Streat Media) would call ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham):

The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant. I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.

As the Terrorist Organization grew in power and aggression, invading Iraq, Obama was pressed to recognize the threat, and proceeded to drop bombs on the Muslim Barbarians and spy on their activities using unmanned drones,resulting in retaliation, involving the beheading of two American Journalists, while they captured a strategic dam on the Euphrates River, threatening to blow it up and flood the region around Baghdad, killing tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

Unfortunately, on August 29th, our skittish Commander-in-Chief reluctantly admitted that he did not have a clue as to what he was doing.

Fox News.com reported at the time, that,

President Obama is facing intense criticism for admitting Thursday “we don’t have a strategy yet” for dealing with Islamic State militants in Syria, despite warnings from top military advisers and others that the group must be confronted on that side of the border. 

The president made the comment during a briefing with reporters in which he overtly played down the prospect of any imminent military action in Syria. He tried to temper speculation that he was about to roll out a “full scale” strategy, one that might expand the current, limited airstrike campaign in northern Iraq. 

“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet,” Obama said. 

As the White House later clarified, he was talking specifically about a military strategy for Syria. But Republican critics pointed out that the ISIS presence in Syria has been festering for a long time, and is only growing in strength. 

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the toughest critics in Congress of the administration’s Middle East policies, tweeted the president’s quote with a reminder: “#ISIS is largest, richest terrorist group in history & 192,000 dead in #Syria.” 

Karl Rove, Fox News analyst and former George W. Bush administration adviser, said he was “appalled” by the president’s comment. 

“He was warned about the role that ISIS was playing inside Syria, and he has had all that time to develop a strategy about what to do about ISIS in Syria and he still doesn’t,” Rove told Fox News. 

Finally, with public outcry and concern turned up to “11”, like Spinal Tap’s Guitar Amp (look them up, children), and his popularity at 38% and dropping, Obama suddenly came up with a strategy, which he would present to a worried nation last Tuesday evening.

Here are some excerpts from whitehouse.gov…

…In a region that has known so much bloodshed, these terrorists are unique in their brutality.  They execute captured prisoners.  They kill children.  They enslave, rape, and force women into marriage.  They threatened a religious minority with genocide.  And in acts of barbarism, they took the lives of two American journalists — Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff.

So ISIL poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East — including American citizens, personnel and facilities.  If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States.  While we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland, ISIL leaders have threatened America and our allies.  Our Intelligence Community believes that thousands of foreigners -– including Europeans and some Americans –- have joined them in Syria and Iraq.  Trained and battle-hardened, these fighters could try to return to their home countries and carry out deadly attacks.

…Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.

The, he got vaguely specific, in describing his strategy:

Working with the Iraqi government, we will expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions, so that we’re hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on offense.  Moreover, I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are.  That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq.  This is a core principle of my presidency:  If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.

Uh huh.

The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy! – Robert Burns, To a Mouse (Poem, November, 1785)

Independent.co.uk reports that

America’s plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group’s fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.
The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.

Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town’s remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani.

In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis’s toughest opponents in Syria. “Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively.”

Unfortunately for the US, Kobani isn’t the only place air strikes are failing to stop Isis. In an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for. Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past, even when backed by US air strikes.

Today, only the city of Haditha and two bases, Al-Assad military base near Hit, and Camp Mazrah outside Fallujah, are still in Iraqi government hands. Joel Wing, in his study –”Iraq’s Security Forces Collapse as The Islamic State Takes Control of Most of Anbar Province” – concludes: “This was a huge victory as it gives the insurgents virtual control over Anbar and poses a serious threat to western Baghdad”.

The battle for Anbar, which was at the heart of the Sunni rebellion against the US occupation after 2003, is almost over and has ended with a decisive victory for Isis. It took large parts of Anbar in January and government counter-attacks failed dismally with some 5,000 casualties in the first six months of the year. About half the province’s 1.5 million population has fled and become refugees. The next Isis target may be the Sunni enclaves in western Baghdad, starting with Abu Ghraib on the outskirts but leading right to the centre of the capital.

For President Barack Hussein Obama to attempt to prosecute this war by remote control, with apparently no military strategy in place at all, is one the silliest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

As has been noted by several military analysts, eventually, Obama is going to have to put troops on the ground. That is, additional troops to the troops which he already has on the ground in the role of  “military advisors”.

Meanwhile, Obama’s bombing runs are doing minimal damage, at best.

The fact of the matter is, you cannot bomb buildings and expect to kill your enemy, when the enemy is a guerrilla force, which  does not stay in any building for any period of time. Just like their Nomadic Barbaric Ancestors, these guerrillas keep moving, regrouping, and attacking.

Obama truly believed that he could count on “our Muslim Allies” in the Region to be our “boots on the ground”.

President Pantywaist chose to ignore the fact that they hate “The Great Satan” (us) more than they do their fellow Muslims from ISIS.

As I wrote, back when all of this started,

Welcome to Iraqi-Nam.

Until He Comes,

KJ