'We don't have a strategy yet': What everyone gets wrong about the quote that will haunt Obama [View all]

[babylonsister]

Posting this to preempt the trash talk that is bound to come in about a minute.


'We don't have a strategy yet': What everyone gets wrong about the quote that will haunt Obama

Updated by Zack Beauchamp on August 28, 2014, 5:30 p.m. ET


When President Obama gave a press conference Thursday afternoon on Iraq and Ukraine, he mostly reiterated things he or his aides had already said. But there was one line that'll be quoted again and again, particularly by critics.

When asked about whether his future plans for combating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) required congressional authorization, Obama ducked. "I don't want to put the cart before the horse," he said, before uttering the line that'll likely haunt him for the rest of his presidency.

"We don't have a strategy yet."

On one level, it's an absolutely devastating indictment of the administration's approach to Iraq and Syria. The president took pains to emphasize the fact that his administration had been warning the Iraqi government, for at least a year, about the threat from ISIS. If his administration was so concerned about ISIS, why didn't it have a plan for dealing with its advance in place? Why do they seemingly have no plan for kicking ISIS, perhaps the most dangerous extremist group in the world, out of the Maryland-sized territory it controls?

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There's also a more sympathetic interpretation.

Viewed in context with the rest of his remarks, Obama's point might be that there is no good strategy available for fully defeating ISIS in both Iraq and Syria — which is both consistent with his approach the crisis in those countries, in which he has primarily avoided risky escalation, and perhaps true.

Throughout Obama's addresses on ISIS, including this press conference, he's emphasized the need for a political strategy to defeat ISIS, one that focuses not on Washington but on Baghdad and, in an ideal world, Damascus. Barring political reform in the Iraqi government, and the development of some sort of peace in Syria, it'll be really hard to fully defeat ISIS. In a changing, complicated situation, Obama's thinking has long seemed to be, it's better not to prematurely commit to a specific problem that might not fit the changing situation.

You can't have a strategy for what can't be done, in other words.

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http://www.vox.com/2014/8/28/6080031/obama-isis-no-strategy?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=ezraklein&utm_content=thursday