RE: Obama
September 11, 2014 at 1:47 am
(This post was last modified: September 11, 2014 at 1:58 am by Anomalocaris.)
The key to success is to understand a non-western mentality, interests and outlooks of the Arabs and Iranians, and be able to assemble a coalition of Arabs and Iranians to deny ISIS the conditions they need to have appeal, and to bleed them dry, starve them out, and cause them to dissolve.
The west must not appear to lead this effort.
Look at Obama's coalition. All western nations. No Arabs. No Iranians.
He is doomed. He may lack bush's idiotic bluster, he might yet avoid all of bush's clumsiness and encouragement of nepotism and profiteering as part of conduct of war.
But he is repeating essentially the same fundamental grand strategic mistake. He is setting up a war of the West vs Islam against a force that could only gain strength an durability through any perception that it is the champion, however flawed, of Islam.
What is more, he is starting a war with 2 years to go in his administration. American politics is such that the z2nd administration of the war would have to be elected on the premise of ending the war, which translate to losing the war in a face saving way.
So Obama has essentially given the US two year to win conclusively, or lose it.
Now he might have intelligence to which others are not privy, that gives him assurance that ISIS is either weaker or more fragile than it appears, so it may not matter that he wrong footed himself at the beginning with the premise of the war, and left himself with but 2 years to win it. We'll see.
The west must not appear to lead this effort.
Look at Obama's coalition. All western nations. No Arabs. No Iranians.
He is doomed. He may lack bush's idiotic bluster, he might yet avoid all of bush's clumsiness and encouragement of nepotism and profiteering as part of conduct of war.
But he is repeating essentially the same fundamental grand strategic mistake. He is setting up a war of the West vs Islam against a force that could only gain strength an durability through any perception that it is the champion, however flawed, of Islam.
What is more, he is starting a war with 2 years to go in his administration. American politics is such that the z2nd administration of the war would have to be elected on the premise of ending the war, which translate to losing the war in a face saving way.
So Obama has essentially given the US two year to win conclusively, or lose it.
Now he might have intelligence to which others are not privy, that gives him assurance that ISIS is either weaker or more fragile than it appears, so it may not matter that he wrong footed himself at the beginning with the premise of the war, and left himself with but 2 years to win it. We'll see.
