It couldn’t be more clear that Obama’s heart just isn’t in this fight against ISIS. He’d much rather be on the golf course:
ARUTZ SHEVA – The United States said it is considering accelerating the training and equipping of Iraqi tribal forces to fight the Islamic State group (ISIS) after the fall of the city of Ramadi.
The jihadists’ capture of city was their most significant victory since mid-2014 when they conquered swathes of land, sparking a US-led air campaign to support Baghdad.
Besides the more than 3,000 air strikes carried out so far, Washington has supported a deep reform of Iraq’s army and offered training to Sunni tribal fighters to retake their own provinces.
But that approach failed to prevent the fall of Ramadi, where Shia Islamist militias backed by US arch-foe Iran will now take the lead in any counter-attack and reinforce their influence in Iraq.
US President Barack Obama huddled Tuesday with his national security team at the White House but signaled no change of tack, despite mounting calls for a more decisive approach.
“There is no formal strategy review,” National Security Council spokesman Alistair Baskey told AFP after the meeting, which included the CIA and Pentagon chiefs.
“We are looking at how best to support local ground forces in Anbar,” he said, “including accelerating the training and equipping of local tribes and supporting an Iraqi-led operation to retake Ramadi.”
There was no suggestion, however, that weapons would be sent directly to tribal fighters opposed to ISIS in Anbar province, of which Ramadi is the capital, instead of via the central government in Baghdad.
“This defeat was avoidable. Neither the Islamic State nor any other Al Qaeda offshoot has ever taken a major urban area actively defended by the United States in partnership with local forces,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Post.
“This is what happens when a policy of half-measures, restrictions and posturing meets a skillful and determined enemy on the battlefield,” it said.
The United States has sent thousands of military advisers to train Sunni tribal fighters and help reform Iraq’s shambolic army, but the pace of change has failed to match IS’s aggressive military tactics.
So we’re down to training Iraqi tribesmen to fight ISIS? Ugh. Obama has never been serious about defeating ISIS and this just proves he is still not serious.