OBAMA'S NO BOOTS ON THE GROUND IS NEW POLICY

The cry from the military is that to win in Iraq, we must, to use the tired old trope, “put boots on the ground”. A certain amount of this criticism is just Right  wing hate for Obama and anything he does is wrong, which is easy to sort out because these statements are made without ever putting forward a suggestion. When we look at the facts, something becomes clear; Obama is carrying out a plan. He does not want war, the American people do not want war, and the world does not want war. ISIS is a small groups of religious driven nuts in the Middle East, who like any dictator, wants war and are willing to use the technique of a dictator to achieve that end. Killing women and children, slaughtering captured enemies, and  cutting off heads of people in front of cameras is done to cower the masses; Hitler did it, Moa did it, Stalin did it, in our hemisphere Castor did it, and the more recent past Saddam Hussein did it, and now ISIS is doing it; terror is dictator dogma.

There is only one solution, which is for the masses to fight back, which is precisely what is not happening in Iraq and Syria. Human nature seems to be that people tolerate a lot of abuse as long as it is someone else that the want-to-be dictator is killing, even a neighbor. Perhaps the cowering masses lack leadership but leaders need willing followers. Literally millions of Iraqis and Syrian refugees lost their homes and families members to these terrorists, which makes it confounding. This number of people under attack could easily overcome the twenty or thirty thousand ISIS fighters who are ravaging their country yet these people seem to cower. They leave their homes, farms, and way of life rather than fight. We have learned over time that it is folly to supply them with arms if they do not want to use them. We have done that in the past, as the military wants us to do again; they want us to put our soldiers on the ground and spend million to fight for what we call “their” freedom. Apparently, they really do not want what we want for them that they are willing to fight for it.

The problem that arises for us is that ISIS, like al-Queda and more than a dozen splinter groups harbored among them, creates a terrorist threat for us—a nest of vermin making bombs, plotting against us, and creating other dangers, which compels us to do something. However, when we do respond it creates situations they use against us. They do this by creating hatred for us among the very people we intend to help. Our military advisors shrug their collective shoulders and say “bad stuff happens in war—everyone knows that”; we call it collateral damage but they see our bombing and drone strikes as making us as bad as the terrorist are; this told to us in interview after interview our correspondents have with villagers across the area.

The Obama strategy of “no boot on the ground”  sounds simple but is extremely complex.  When he says we will use “air strikes only” and no troops on the ground, he is saying something very fundamental about his policy. We will help the Syrian and Iraqi people to degrade and destroy ISIS because it is in our interest to do so but the people have to want to defend themselves from ISIS. If they do, they will be compelled to pick up guns and learn how to shoot them. If they do not fight for themselves, then the terrorists groups exist because of the Syrians and Iranians will do nothing about them. Therefore, the Syrian-Iraqi people will be responsible for the consequences of our defending ourselves, which we must do.

We will help train them to help themselves but only under certain circumstances. To start with, they will have to fight without training. No one trained ISIS or al-Queda fighters so why do we think they can only fight against them if we train them; terrorist are driven by what they believed, even if what they believed is terrible wrong; why are not those who fight against them motivated as well. Those who are fighting ISIS are the ones we will train to add to their effectiveness. If they are already fighting ISIS, we will have answered one of the biggest questions we have, which is, “Who to train”; we will know with absolute certainty that we are training the right people. In addition, we will write-off as nonsense the idea that it will take us over a year to train them to fight. Even superficially, we know that it takes only about six to eight weeks to train a U.S. soldier for the infantry. If should take even less time to train them if the soldier is compelled by the immediate need to defend his home and his loved ones.

Obama’s pronouncement; “No boots on the ground” is far reaching and is putting the war in the Middle East on an entirely new footing. It will take a long time for the people to understand it but I am afraid the “charge up the hill and die” military will never understand it; they are a breed onto themselves. 

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