http://donsurber.blogspot.com/2014/09/obama-realizes-he-was-all-wrong.htmlMonday, September 29, 2014
Obama realizes he was all wrong
President Obama's umpteenth softball interview on "60 Minutes" had a revelation. He will not admit this aloud and maybe he is still in denial, but the fact is everything he said as a senator about Iraq was wrong.
Here is how he handled Steve Kroft's question about the obvious: President Obama underestimated ISIS (also known as ISIL). Back in January, President Obama told New Yorker in January: “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”
His flippancy cost lives. By not taking the cutthroats seriously, the world suffered a bloodbath.
Obama -- with the aid of Steve Kroft -- put the blame on Director of National Intelligence James Clapper ("Jim Clappper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria") but that's political appointees fall on swords for presidents. No, what was important in this interview was this statement:
"Essentially what happened with ISIL was that you had al Qaeda in Iraq, which was a vicious group, but our Marines were able to quash with the help of Sunni tribes. They went back underground, but over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you had huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos."
Our Marines were able to quash al Qaeda in Iraq?
He opposed the Surge!
That is not what President Obama said as a senator on September 13, 2007, as the Surge well, surged: “Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was.”
Mitt Romney shot back (when asked by the Associated Press): "If we had followed his plan, Al Qaeda would have a safe haven in Iraq and Osama bin Laden would be celebrating."
It was not just Benghazi and Syria in 2012 that Romney got right.
But Obama's admission on "60 Minutes" was delightful. From the Man Who Said "There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was” came this: "That's why it's so important for us to recognize part of the solution here is gonna be military. We just have to push them back, and shrink their space, and go after their command and control, and their capacity, and their weapons, and their fueling, and cut off their financing, and work to eliminate the flow of foreign fighters."
In other words, do exactly what George Walker Bush did.
Posted by Don Surber at 9/29/2014 09:00:00 AM
