Josh Rogin:
By striking ISIS in Iraq only a little bit, President Obama has again put American credibility on the line but with no plan to see the mission through, the hawkish senator says…
President Obama’s limited strikes on ISIS in northern Iraq are “pinpricks” that are “meaningless” and “worse than nothing,” according to one of his fiercest foreign policy critics, Sen. John McCain.
By committing U.S. military forces to fight again in Iraq while explicitly limiting the mission to protection of American personnel and Iraqi minorities, Obama has failed to come up with a plan that has any hope of stopping the ISIS advances across Iraq and Syria, said McCain. It’s a position that puts him somewhat at odds with other Republicans, who are offering cautious support for the airstrikes in Iraq – and concern that the president doesn’t have a comprehensive strategy to combat the growing threat of ISIS..
McCain, a consistent advocate for the application of American military power around the world, has long pushed for greater U.S. involvement in Iraq. But these strikes Friday were not what McCain had in mind.
“This is a pinprick,” McCain told The Daily Beast in an interview Friday, about the two 500-pound smart bombs U.S. airplanes dropped on ISIS convoys Friday. The vehicles were approaching Erbil, the capital city of Iraqi Kurdistan, were many U.S. diplomatic and military personnel reside.
“It’s almost worse than nothing because I fear the president is threatening and then he won’t follow through,” said McCain. “It’s the weakest possible response and we cannot allow them to take Erbil. What [the administration has] done so far is almost meaningless.”
ISIS forces had come so close to Erbil that the city was in range of the Howitzer artillery cannons that ISIS possesses. McCain said those were U.S. weapons that ISIS stole during its plundering of Mosul. ISIS is also driving around in U.S. tanks, Humvees, and even aadvanced armored vehicles known as MRAPs. Meanwhile the Kurdish Peshmura fighting them have only older, less-sophisticated Russian made weapons, McCain said.
“[Obama] had to do [strike] because of the proximity of the ISIS Howitzers to our defensive areas and our own people,” he said.
McCain praised the administration for dropping urgent humanitarian aid on Mount Sinjar to feed thousands of starving Yazidi minorities who are surrounded by ISIS on all sides, but there’s no telling how long that mission might need to continue because there’s no prospect ISIS’s advances will halt without even more U.S. action, he said.
He is calling for more U.S. air strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, as well as the urgent arming and training of the Kurdish Peshmerga. Until that happens, ISIS will continue to succeed militarily, McCain said.
“You’ve got to take the offensive against ISIS,” he said. “We are allowing them to freely move back and forth. The targets are easily identifiable. You are not going to begin to address the ISIS problem until you take out their enclaves in Syria.”
After 9/11 and with the pre-emptive attack on Iraq based on the WMD intel and Iraqi threats against the US, it should be US policy to take seriously any threat, either intel-gathered or one which is the stated goal of a fully-equipped army rolling through various countries, made in earnest. On the basis of the actions and stated goals of ISIS, we should be hammering them into powder. If pinpoint strikes by carrier aircraft do not do the trick, then B52’s can carpet bomb ISIS strong-holds. The civilians are dead anyway (one of the problems with holding out no hope to the conquered population).
This only happens in the face of a weak non-leader that has abrogated every responsibility assigned to him as the POTUS. While it will take decades to rebuild the kind of authority once wielded by the United States, it will have to be done, at great cost, to ensure any hope of lasting peace. All the upcoming lives and cost are squarely on the shoulders (rounded and stooped) of Barack Obama. For some people who pretend to hate war, liberals sure go out of their way to make sure the last one wasn’t the LAST one.