Only Fools Believe Obama Extricated the American Military from Iraq

The world knows by now that the United States and five Arab countries - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan - launched airstrikes Monday night on ISIS targets in Syria. The vast majority of the bombs and missiles fired came from US aircraft, according to US military sources. The Syria airstrike mission expanded the Obama "strategy" - a no-US-ground-troops military campaign against ISIS - from Iraq into a country whose three-year civil war has given the brutal ISIS group a safe haven to use as their headquarters and command center. Using a mix of manned aircraft - fighter jets and bombers - plus Tomahawk cruise missiles, the strikes were part of the military campaign that President Obama authorized two weeks ago in order to "disrupt and destroy" the ISIS militants, who have slaughtered thousands of people, beheaded Westerners - including two American journalists and one British aid worker - and captured large parts of northern Syria and northern and western Iraq. US Department of Defense (DOD) officials said the airstrikes began around 8:30 pm Washington DC time. The first sorties finished about 90 minutes later, but the operation continued for several more hours, according to one DOD official. Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the military made the decision to strike early Monday, adding that initial indications are that the Syria airstrikes were “very successful.” A White House official said Obama was updated during the mission. The strikes were carried out by manned Air Force and Navy aircraft and Tomahawk missiles launched from US ships in the northern Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, including the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, which is in the Gulf. It is unclear whether drones were used in Monday's airstrikes. The Syrian airstrikes were against ISIS headquarters in Raqqa in eastern Syria, including what the DOD labeled as the militants' command and control centers, re-supply facilities, training camps, financial center and other key logistical sites. Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Senators last week : "We will be prepared to strike ISIL targets in Syria that degrade ISIL's capabilities. This won't look like a shock-and-awe campaign, because that's simply not how ISIL is organized, but it will be a persistent and sustainable campaign." General Dempsey said today in an interview with reporters as he flew to Washington after a trip to Europe, that one goal of Monday's strike was to prove to ISIS that they will find no safe haven. The DOD said the US also took separate unilateral action Monday night to disrupt an "imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests conducted by a network of seasoned al-Qaida veterans - referred to as the Khorasan Group - that has used an area near Aleppo in Syria as a safe-haven from which to train and launch terrorist attacks against European and American targets. The US has also increased its surveillance flights over Syria, getting better intelligence on potential targets and militant movements. Lieutenant General William Mayville Jr, the director of Operations for the Joint Staff, said today that last night's strikes are the beginning of a credible and sustainable persistent campaign to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS. Mayville also predicted that ISIS will adapt to the new airstrike campaign and maintain a lower profile. He also described ISIS as a “learning organization...and they will adapt to what we’ve done and seek to address their shortfalls and gaps in our air campaign in the coming weeks." Military leaders have said about two-thirds of the estimated 31,000 ISIS militants are in Syria. Some officials have expressed concern that going after ISIS in Syria could inadvertently help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, since the militants are fighting in part to overthrow al-Assad. But in his September 10 speech, Obama vowed to go after ISIS militants wherever they may be. The US military started launching targeted airstrikes in Iraq in August, focusing specifically on protecting US interests and personnel, assisting Iraqi refugees and securing critical infrastructure. But recently, as part of the newly expanded campaign, the US began striking militant targets across Iraq, including enemy fighters, outposts, equipment and weapons. To date US fighter aircraft, bombers and drones have launched about 190 airstrikes within Iraq. Last night's attack included 14 airstrikes and 47 Tomahawk launches, according to DOD. Congress passed legislation late last week authorizing the military to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels. Obama signed the bill into law Friday, providing $500 million for the US to train about 5,000 rebels over the next year. Obama administration officials have also been crisscrossing the globe trying to build a broad international coalition of nations, including Arab countries, to go after ISIS and help train and equip Iraqi security forces and moderate Syrian rebels. ISIS, meanwhile, has threatened retribution. Its spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, said in a 42-minute audio statement released Sunday that the fighters were ready to battle the US-led military coalition and called for attacks at home and abroad. ~~~~~ Dear readers, it is hard to know what to make of the Syria airstrikes. Admiral Kirby told CNN's Christiane Amanpour today that the airstrikes may go on for a year while moderate Syrian rebels are being trained and armed. This strongly suggests that the ISIS "war" drag on for years. The Bahrain foreign minister confirmed to Amanpour that Bahrain would be part of the coalition for "as long as it takes." He also called on Islam's religious leaders to make clear that ISIS is not part of Islam. And Obama's statement at the White House early today was in a way his effort to pull both the world and American voters to his side. If we might paraphrase, the President was saying : "I have shown you my Arab coalition so it's your turn to prove you're my friend and my ally by supporting and joining me." And in America, it will temporarily drive up his ratings and make the GOP look bad if it continues to point out the very real insufficiencies in the Obama strategy. The President informed Congress last night about the Syria airstrike and we may well ask how the GOP can refuse or quibble over the budget Obama is asking for, especially after clamoring for him to act -- a dilemma for the GOP. But finally, Obama has done very little except drive ISIS underground, and unless the Free Syrian Army and the Iraqi army can help the Kurd peshmergas, in a month the bomb sites will be nothing more than desert ruins of another Obama failure. In the year it will take to get the renewed Syrian Free Army on the ground, Raqqa will need to be re-bombed and re-bombed. So why did the President choose to act now, knowing that no ground follow-up is available? Maybe it would be more useful to take the advice of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who says recent calls for lone-wolf terror attacks in the West are a larger concern than organized efforts by established terrorist groups. "The lone wolves worry me more, because they're harder to follow, they're harder to track. It's harder to get intelligence," Giuliani said Monday on CNN's "The Situation Room." ISIS on Sunday called for lone-wolf attacks against civilians in the United States and any country planning to aid the US in air or ground attacks against it. "When you have things like...this ISIS leader saying, 'Go off and do your own thing,' nobody has to communicate with anybody," said Giuliani, mayor of New York during the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the security challenge is the most difficult. Giuliani said that ISIS may be less dangerous than the hype about the group, and he also said ISIS has done itself no favors by alienating more of the world than al-Qaida has. It has committed atrocities condemned in some cases even by al-Qaida, including beheadings, crucifixions, mass shootings, rapes, and kidnappings. Dear readers, we may well ask, what is the right mix in the fight to hold the Middle East together and give it the dynamic cooperation needed to move forward? I still believe that a Special Operations-led combined ground and air blitz against ISIS would be better and more efficient than the drip-drip of a prolonged airstrike campaign while Obama tries to create a proxy army simply so he can continue to say that he has extricated America from Iraq. Only fools believe that.