As more and more have come out to raise the alarm on ISIS, news has come that the Obama Administration wants new ISIS war plans, which may include operations in Syria, as soon as possible. According to the Daily Beast, “President Obama wants to decide by the end of the week whether or not his war in Iraq against the Islamic State will expand to the group’s haven in eastern Syria.”
This new sense of urgency around ISIS from the media and the Obama Administration is encouraging to see. The Islamic State isn’t going to go away and the atrocities it will commit under the banner of a twisted political and religious philosophy will only increase in frequency and horror if ISIS is allowed to continue its course without the intervention of U.S. Forces.
This is a reality that President Obama has been reluctant to fully recognize. President Obama is the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Military. Along with that title comes a real responsibility to assess the global threats to the nation and the people who reside here. Unfortunately, President Obama has been disinterested in the real responsibilities that come with being the President and the Commander in Chief, instead only donning the title when he can credit and use it for political gain. Osama is dead, and GM is alive, don’t you know.
Conservatives and libertarians who are war weary have good reason to be skeptical of any plans to go after ISIS while President Obama “leads” the nation. Even the Daily Beast, who you might have noticed called the ISIS war in Iraq “his [Obama’s] war”, asks whether President Obama will actually follow through.
One huge unanswered question is whether the president will order the attacks, or whether he will ultimately balk, as he did this time last year after preparing for limited strikes against the Bashar al-Assad regime. One administration official working on Syria policy said the purpose of the meetings Tuesday was “to convince one man, Barack Obama,” to follow through on the rhetoric and widen the aims of the war to include destroying ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. While Obama and his top officials have said they will need to address the threat of ISIS on both sides of the Iraq/Syria border, Obama has not said specifically what that means.
It amazes me that after executions of Christians, other infidels, and an American Journalist, not to mention the disintegration of the Iraq/Syria border and mass unrest in the middle east, that this President actually still needs to be convinced that action is needed. Considering the President’s own rhetoric between tee times, it is no wonder that the American people are confused, uneasy, and unwilling to commit to any military action at this time.
President Obama needs to come out not only with moral clarity but also clarity as it applies to the ideological struggle we are in, the strategic vision he and his administration have to address the threat of ISIS, and the long term nature of this fight.
But he won’t. Instead President Obama will continue to give stirring speeches filled with soaring and patriotic rhetoric that do nothing to address the security concerns of the nation.
We have seen what ISIS is capable of, we’ve seen dire warnings and predictions of what ISIS hopes to attempt in the United States, and just this morning there were reports of two ISIS fighters who were Americans being killed in Syria.
We’ve also seen Obama golf.
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