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.”