Greg Jaffe and Missy Ryan, Washington Post: Obama’s new plan against ISIS signals that U.S. still in for a long war in Iraq
President Obama’s announcement Wednesday that he is sending 450 more military advisers to Iraq highlights the central dilemma of his faltering strategy there: how to shore up the country’s fragile government without being pulled more deeply into a war he never wanted.
With few good options, Obama’s plan amounts to a decision to stay the course.
Administration officials say the troop increase — the second since U.S. troops returned to Iraq last year — isn’t intended to produce quick battlefield victories.
Rather, the additional troops are being sent to aid Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s outreach to disaffected Sunnis and bolster the Iraqi army, whose feckless performance has left the Iraqi leader vulnerable to challenges from Shiite hard-liners more closely aligned with Iran. A weakened Abadi, U.S. officials fear, would strengthen the position of Shiite Iran, which has cast itself as Iraq’s only effective partner in a largely sectarian war with the Sunni-dominated Islamic State.
WNU Editor: The sectarian wars in the Middle East are conflicts that can potentially go on for generations. Sending in a few hundred US advisers to an Iraqi province will .... in the long run .... make very little (in any) difference. But if I was to sum up the current White House strategy, I would have to say that it is to .... (1) establish a status quo in Syria so that nothing changes (i.e. Assad's regime does not collapse to be replaced by radical Sunnis), (2) make sure that the Iraqi government does not collapse, (3) minimize the Iranian influence in both Syria and Iraq (which is impossible in my opinion), and (4) to keep the Islamic State from expanding. And while pursuing this policy .... minimize the U.S. involvement .... and more importantly .... hand it to the next administration before the entire thing collapses so that you do not get blame for it politically. My prediction .... this strategy is going to collapse .... and it will happen before the 2016 Presidential election.