Obama, sounding like his critics, admits no ‘complete strategy’ for Iraq
President Barack Obama still doesn’t have a strategy to combat the Islamic State. Back in September, Obama created a political problem for himself by saying “we don’t have a strategy yet” to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL. On Monday, speaking at the end of a G-7 summit in Germany that included […]Edward-Isaac Dovere writes for Politico :
President Barack Obama still doesn’t have a strategy to combat the Islamic State. Back in September, Obama created a political problem for himself by saying “we don’t have a strategy yet” to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL. On Monday, speaking at the end of a G-7 summit in Germany that included a meeting with new Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, he rearranged the words and added an adjective, but said the same thing about training Iraqi troops to fight ISIL: “We don’t yet have a complete strategy,” Obama said.
The nuances of military planning don’t make for good sound bites. To critics, this kind of statement is Obama admitting exactly what they accuse him of: that he’s a president neither prepared for what he’s facing in the Middle East nor willing to do what now needs to be done.
