Speaking at the Pentagon, the President noted that Islamic State had been hit by more than 5,000 air strikes, “lost more than a quarter of the populated areas that it had seized in Iraq,” failed in key battles at Kobani, Mosul Dam and Tikrit, “alienated those under its rule” and united the world against it. He also promised an intensified air campaign against its leadership in Syria and its oil facilities in Iraq, along with an intensified effort to train and equip friendly local forces.
These promises are encouraging if belated, but his strategic summary is not the whole truth. While the President delicately referred to the Islamic State’s conquest of Ramadi along with swaths of central and southern Syria, he made no mention of its offensive against Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, or its seizure of Palmyra, which in addition to its archeological sites is a center of oil production. Five thousand air strikes (over a year) sound impressive, but that’s a fraction of the 30,000 sorties that President Clinton ordered, over 78 days, to dislodge Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo in 1999.
More broadly, Islamic State continues to attract foreign recruits and expand its global franchise at an accelerating rate. Joiners don’t like losers, and the new jihadis must not think ISIS is losing.
The President spoke about the need to discredit ISIS’s “twisted thinking,” adding that “ideologies are not defeated with guns; they’re defeated by better ideas.” Yet ISIS’s ideological attraction has everything to do with its battlefield successes, which it can advertise as evidence of Allah’s favor. In other words, the President has it backwards: ISIS cannot be defeated ideologically unless it is humiliated and defeated militarily.
Mr. Obama also mused on his larger strategic vision in the Middle East, such as it is. You’ll be pleased to know that the U.S. is working with the United Nations to improve services and governance in Iraq, and that Mr. Obama is talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin on arranging “an inclusive political transition” in Syria. Mr. Obama also said he plans to “do more to train and equip the moderate opposition in Syria”—a promise he’s repeatedly made, and failed to fulfill, for nearly four years.
The President is not one to concede his own mistakes in the region. He noted that ISIS had “filled a void” without admitting that his own ill-advised retreat from Iraq, and his decision to let Syria’s civil war fester, created that void. His nuclear diplomacy with Iran promises to make matters worse, as another deadline passed Tuesday thanks to fresh Iranian demands that the United Nations lift its arms embargo when it lifts other sanctions. Iran will use the money it gains from sanctions relief to arm and fund its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Yemen and Iraq, tempting Sunni states to respond in kind.
Mr. Obama concluded by observing that the U.S. has faced “more formidable challenges” in the past, including fascism and communism. Yes it has, especially when emerging threats were left to fester by Presidents who lacked the political will to confront them. By continuing to underrate the threat of Islamic radicalism, Mr. Obama risks repeating that history.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-state-on-the-run-1436308784?tesla=y