Obama Gets His Progressive "War"

So Obama finally got himself a war, er, uh, a Prolonged Counter-Hatred Operation (PCHO), just in time for the mid-term elections.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the man who vowed to end "Bush's endless war"; who would heal the planet; who apologized to the Muslim world for the United States being the United States; who has tried to gut our military and destroy our network of global alliances, yes, that very man, now has the USAF and the USN turning small groups of Muslims people who claim to be Muslim but aren't really because "Islam is a religion of peace" into desert stew.

Taking a page from several past progressive war leaders such as Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ and Bill Clinton, he has launched into a sort of war with no clear exit strategy, no plan to win, no definition of "win," and no intention of trying to "win." He just needs to get through the mid-term elections without a major disaster while looking "Presidential."

The whole thing is repulsive beyond words.

In principle, I have no problem with spending our tax money to kill jihadis. The questions, however, immediately arise: Which jihadis? How many? When will we know that the last jihadi who needs killing has been killed? Well, the last question is probably answerable: the day after the mid-terms.

This whole mess is Obama's doing. He built it. He made clear that we will not stand in the way of Iran's adquiring a nuke capability. He threw out the victory in Iraq; made a hash of Libya, Yemen, and Egypt; drew erasable "red lines" in Syria; and ensured we would not even defend our own borders.  He can try to blame the intel community and his advisers, but we all know the truth. He has no stomach for confronting the enemies of the United States, because he, himself, is an enemy of the United States. He will "act" only when it becomes politically impossible not to do "something."

So, now, he does "something."

That "something" consists of conducting a very limited bombing campaign that will do little to nothing to dismantle ISIS. He, in other words, is doing the wrong thing. If you're going to bomb, then bomb; annihilate the jihadis. Blowing up a HUMVEE here, or an old dilapidated building there, does nothing except set the stage for the jihadis claiming victory over the West. We will eventually tire of the campaign, even without the mid-terms. The jihadis will still be there; we won't.

At this point in time, when we have thrown away what we won in Iraq, and are doing the same in Afghanistan, I can't help but wonder if the better course would be to do nothing. Well, that is, nothing except support the Israelis and the Kurds, and tell the rulers of Iran and Syria that they now have a serious problem bearing down on their turf: crazed Sunni jihadis! Let the Shias and the Sunnis kill each other by the thousands. Meanwhile, as I said, we support the Israelis and the Kurds, and frack, frack, frack.