Obama's Strategy in Iraq: Operation No Boots on the Ground

Obama's Strategy in Iraq: Operation No Boots on the Ground

08/11/14

Daniel R. DePetris

ISIS, Iraq

Bombing ISIL targets in Sinjar won’t do much to loosen the group’s hold on other parts of Syria or Iraq.

Listening to President Barack Obama speak about Iraq over the past several days, you can’t help but feel sorry for the guy.  This is, after all, a man who catapulted to the top of the list of Democratic presidential candidates in 2008 by largely being the anti-Iraq, anti-war candidate.  The invasion and occupation of Iraq, Obama memorably put it, was “a dumb war,” a war of choice, and perhaps one of the most disastrous foreign policy decisions a U.S. president has made since Vietnam.  This message, and a fresh face running a campaign of hope, was enough for the freshman Illinois senator to not only best the heavyweight Hillary Clinton in the primaries, but also defeat Senator John McCain in the general election.

For an administration that has consistently touted the full withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq as its greatest foreign policy achievement (the White House could use one right about now), it’s a bitter pill for the president and his national security team to have to re-engage militarily in a country that most Americans would rather forget about.  

Fortunately, Americans don’t have to worry about seeing their sons and daughters, mothers, and fathers back on Iraqi soil defending an increasingly polarizing, ineffective, and abysmal Iraqi government in Baghdad.  In fact, Obama’s use of military force in northern Iraq to date has been anything but large-scale or dramatic; four days after the president gave the order, the Pentagon has executed several rounds of airstrikes on a select group of fixed ISIL targets.  CNN and Fox News may like to hype this up with the continuous, red and white flashing “breaking news” icons, but in the full spectrum of military operations, these operations are in the category of “pinprick.”

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