WORLD_ Obama stays the course despite Islamic State advances in Iraq and Syria

The Japan Times

Obama stays the course despite Islamic State advances in Iraq and Syria

AFP-JIJI
May 23, 2015
Article history

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama’s war strategy failed to stop Islamic State jihadis from overrunning Ramadi but he appears reluctant to change course.

The disastrous fall of the Iraqi city exposed the limits of Obama’s policy, experts say, highlighting the sectarian divisions in Iraqi society exploited by the extremist group and the president’s determination to avoid another protracted military occupation.

After the Iraqi Army’s embarrassing rout last Sunday, Obama struggled to defend his approach and insisted the collapse in Ramadi was merely a “tactical setback.”

“I don’t think we’re losing,” Obama said in an interview with The Atlantic.

Obama said the question was not whether or not to send in U.S. ground troops but “how do we find effective partners” that can defeat the Sunni extremists in Iraq and Syria.

But, even inside his administration, the result in Ramadi was seen as damaging for both the Iraqi government and the U.S.-led coalition backing it with airstrikes since late last year.

Only days after Ramadi was overrun, the jihadis also seized the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria as well as a key border crossing, undercutting weeks of optimistic talk from the Pentagon that the extremists were “on the defensive.”

With IS still on the move after more than 4,000 U.S.-led airstrikes in nine months in Iraq and Syria, the administration is taking a “hard look” at its strategy, a top U.S. official told reporters.

In the wake of Ramadi’s capture, U.S. officials announced that 2,000 AT4 anti-tank weapons were on the way to Iraq to help Iraqi troops counter massive car bombs.

The move was part of an effort to ramp up the arming of Iraqi troops and Sunni tribesmen.

But both at home and abroad, Obama’s stance has been slammed as overly cautious.

The president faces growing calls for a dramatic overhaul of a campaign that has relied on American-led air power backing up U.S.-equipped local forces.

Some lawmakers urged a major increase in U.S. troops, at least several thousand or more, while former senior officials called for a bolder diplomatic calculus.

Sen. John McCain and other voices on the right said Obama should deploy more special forces and stage more raids similar to an operation a week ago in which U.S. commandos killed an Islamic State financier in eastern Syria.

The elite special forces could be “forward deployed” across the battlefront to help call in airstrikes, assist Iraqi troops and hunt down jihadi commanders, McCain argued.

“What we desperately need is a comprehensive strategy, the decisive application of an increased but still limited amount of U.S. military power, and a concerted effort by the Iraqi government to recruit, train and equip Sunni forces,” McCain said.

Critics also urged Washington to take a more forceful diplomatic stance to prevent the jihadis from taking advantage of divisions inside the international coalition and of the alienation of Sunnis in Iraq.

The U.S. can no longer ignore the civil war in Syria and will have to take bolder action to help “moderate” rebels there, which might persuade Sunni governments to get more involved in the fight against the extremists, analysts said.

“The bottom line remains, the strategy isn’t working and it can’t work,” said Richard Haas, a former senior diplomat.

It is unrealistic to treat Iraq as a single country, as it is irrevocably splintering into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite parts, said Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

As a result, Washington will have to channel military aid directly to local forces without working through the dysfunctional central government in Baghdad, he said.

“The time has come to accept that you can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The old multiethnic Iraq is over,” Haas told Bloomberg television.

The first step in salvaging Washington’s strategy is to be honest about the course of the war, said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

There were signs this past week of some long-overdue candor from an administration that has tended “to spin events, downplay risk and problems to the point of lying by omission,” Cordesman wrote in a commentary.

For Obama, an outspoken opponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the occupation that followed, an overarching goal has been to steer clear of another major ground war in the Middle East.

But, Cordesman argued, “it is time the president’s White House team learned that losing wars by default and inaction is scarcely a better historical record.”

***


Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc . 
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị . 



conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
23052015
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là ĐỒNG LÕA với TỘI ÁC