ISIS: Obama hasn't a clue

First of all, I would like to apologize to Jimmy Carter, whom I once accused of being the most incompetent president this country has had thus far. That was B.O. (Before Obama).

Let me see if I have this straight; Obama wants to “decimate and destroy” ISIS, but won’t actually say we’re at war. According to Secretary of State John Kerry, this is an “anti-terrorism” operation. We have a “broad-based coalition” of European and Middle Eastern countries supporting us, yet no one in the administration will (or can) say who these countries are. The plan is to train and equip 5,000 members of the free Syrian army in Saudi Arabia to battle ISIS, but this will take at least a year, possibly longer. These are the same people who are at war with the Assad regime, so one can assume their priority will be to continue to battle Assad with the arms and equipment we are going to provide them (incidentally, the free Syrian army rebels are the ones who initially captured Steven Sotloff, and sold him to ISIS, who beheaded him).

We are going to rely on the Iraqi army to fight ISIS in Iraq, but we have to train them, too. We already trained them once, at a cost of thousands of American servicemen and women who gave their lives to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein, and trillions of dollars. The Iraqi army disappeared when ISIS invaded Iraq, and because of this, ISIS is now equipped with American arms and equipment.

We have the most advanced air superiority in the world, yet we have conducted fewer than 200 air strikes in Iraq and zero in Syria, where ISIS command and control is located. Dropping the occasional bomb on a pickup load of ISIS soldiers hardly constitutes an air campaign.

What could possibly go wrong when you have a “strategy” like this? Obama is only kicking the can down the road until he leaves office and the next president has to deal with this mess. He’s as lost as a ball in the tall weeds.

COLLIN GALLOWAY

Hayden

Editor’s note: This letter was received before Syria was bombed. The writer was correct at the time he submitted this.