{"id":60082,"date":"2015-05-29T11:47:20","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T15:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=60082"},"modified":"2015-05-29T11:47:20","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T15:47:20","slug":"washington-post-the-u-s-must-do-more-to-help-iraq-fight-the-islamic-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=60082","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post; The U.S. must do more to help Iraq fight the Islamic State"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hate to say this out loud and in public, but the Washington Post’s editorial staff<\/a> and I agree on something finally. In today’s edition, they take the Obama Administration to task on their handling of the war against ISIS. <\/p>\n

The Administration merely reacts to ISIS gains in Iraq and Syria, like their latest shipment of arms to Iraq in response to the recent loss of Ramadi, instead of being proactive. The administration knew for a month before the fall of the Iraqi city that it was in danger, but they did little to nothing to prevent it.<\/p>\n

The Administration has been unable to influence the al-Abadi government to ship weapons to the Kurds, probably one of the most effective fighting forces on the ground there, if properly armed.<\/p>\n

While the Iraqi Army and their inability to actually face an enemy is largely at fault for the losses of Fallujah, Mosul and Ramadi, they aren’t getting the support that they need from US forces there, mostly because the politicians are largely in control of each action there;<\/p>\n

The administration boasts of 3,000 strikes carried out by U.S. planes since last summer. But as the New York Times recently reported, the pace of air operations is far below that of the 2001 Afghan campaign, when there were nearly six times as many daily strikes on average, or even the more recent NATO air operation in Libya, which recorded more than three times as many daily attacks. Military analysts say Islamic State military convoys have been able to move unimpeded across the desert from Syria to Iraq, while Iraqi officers say U.S. planes failed to hit key targets in Ramadi.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems that the administration’s sole strategy in Iraq is to limit the participation of US force, much like the sole strategy in Afghanistan last year was withdrawal of US troops there. The administration is fond of telling us that the war against ISIS will take time, but at this point, it seems that it’s only taking more time than necessary to run out the clock on this presidency and pass the hard decisions on to the next President and preserve this President’s legacy as a Nobel Peace Prize winner.<\/p>\n

The Post concludes; <\/p>\n

Rather than blame Iraqi troops, Mr. Obama should bolster them with more U.S. advisers, including forward air controllers, and more air support. He should insist that Mr. Abadi open a weapons pipeline to Sunni and Kurdish units. Perhaps most important, Mr. Obama should make his priority eliminating the Islamic State \u2014 as opposed to limiting U.S. engagement in Iraq. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I disagree with the “more US advisers” aspect of their conclusion, but only because that would provide more targets in an unconventional war. I fully support the administration’s decision to allow the Iranians and Iraqis to bleed in the war rather than US troops. But the planning for the war against ISIS should reside completely with the US commanders in Iraq and taken from the White House and State Department acting generals and their lawyers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate to say this out loud and in public, but the Washington Post’s editorial staff … Washington Post; The U.S. must do more to help Iraq fight the Islamic State<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}