ISIS: Obama’s ‘Al-Qaeda on the Run’

President Obama Makes Statement On The SequestrationObama often boasted that Al Qaeda was on the run. However it was Obama who had been running away from Al Qaeda ever since he took the job.

The botched surge in Afghanistan, where his own intelligence people had told him there were barely a 100 Al Qaeda fighters left, had been an attempt to escape Al Qaeda.

Not the terrorists themselves, but the issues they raised.

September 11 had disrupted the multicultural consensus by raising serious questions about immigration and Islam. It had also thrown away the consensus that the collapse of the USSR had made American military power obsolete. Obama had come to revive these consensuses and as recently as the last election dismissed Romney as a reactionary warmonger who didn’t understand the new world order.

Obama had declared victory over an undefeated enemy. He had passed off a strategic withdrawal as a victory. His wars, victories and withdrawals were a series of blatant lies that are catching up with him.

His administration tried to blame the takeover of Libya by Islamist militias after his disastrous regime change intervention on a YouTube video. But there isn’t a YouTube video big enough to blame ISIS on.

Obama was determined to go on pretending that ISIS didn’t exist. Even while drones were hitting Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen and Pakistan, Al Qaeda in Iraq’s Caliph got a free pass from our drones and our custody. When ISIS took Fallujah, he dismissed it as a JV team. Now he’s trying to build a coalition, but his air strikes are a belated response to a threat that he should have been on top of all along.

Even without boots on the ground, the United States could have continued suppression operations against Al Qaeda in Iraq after the withdrawal. Drones would have ruled out the problem of Americans being tried in Iraq, the supposed reason for the total withdrawal.

A responsible administration wouldn’t have had to scramble for a strategy at the last minute because it would have been on top of the problem all along. But Obama cared more about being able to check the Iraq box and the Al Qaeda box in the election than about stopping the rise of Al Qaeda.

Despite claims of bad intelligence, Obama did know what was happening. Last year Iraq had already been preparing for WMD attacks by ISIS by buying some expensive gear from us. Meanwhile Obama was acting as if the real issue was how much aid to provide to ISIS’ Free Syrian Army allies.

In 2006, John Kerry told students that if they weren’t smart, they would “get stuck in Iraq”. Now he and his boss, two veteran anti-war activists, are stuck in a war in Iraq that they desperately tried to avoid. They are stuck cobbling together a coalition of the willing for a war and trying to stabilize Iraq. History is repeating itself a second time as farce as the two politicians who were Bush’s biggest critics are stuck doing his job.

Their only comfort is blaming Bush, but this isn’t Bush’s war. It’s their war.

George W. Bush left behind a far more stable Iraq in which Al Qaeda had been pushed to the side. Bush had made his mistakes, but unlike Obama, he had not been a prisoner of a rigid ideology.

In the Senate, Obama had insisted that the surge in Iraq couldn’t possibly work. He went on denying it past the point of absurdity. In Iraq and everywhere else, Obama had put his ideology ahead of reality. Senator Obama had believed firmly that Sunnis and Shiites were only quarreling because of the American “occupation”. Once the United States left, they would stop fighting among themselves.

Out of its opposition to the Iraq War, the Democratic Party evolved the claim that Al Qaeda had never existed in Iraq until we invaded it. As an implicit corollary, it would stop existing if we left Iraq.

Problem solved.

Like Carter, Obama didn’t just have a different strategy, he had a different worldview. On the surface, Obama continued many of Bush’s existing War on Terror policies. The real gap was in his worldview.

The maligned Axis of Evil line had localized the problem of Islamic terrorism in state sponsorship by enemy states. It was a flawed and incomplete explanation, but far preferable to the liberal foreign policy assessment which viewed such terrorism as a reaction to American foreign policy in the Middle East.

To Bush, Al Qaeda was an active force that had to be confronted or it would attack us. To Obama, Al Qaeda was a reactive force that was responding to something that we did, whether it was supporting Mubarak or making YouTube videos.

The fault was not in the Jihadists; it was in ourselves.

The Arab Spring was Obama’s equivalent of regime change in Iraq. It was a big grandiose program for changing the Middle East by changing its governments, but where Bush had sought regime change for enemy terror states, Obama wanted regime change for American allies.

In 2002, Obama had delivered a speech in which he called on Bush to stay out of Iraq and instead “Fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people and suppressing dissent.”

Once in office, Obama pursued that program. Regimes fell and chaos spread. Terrorist groups became armies taking over entire countries. The Middle East began to burn.

Al Qaeda in Iraq had been a murderous band of suicide bombers before the Arab Spring. Like the Jihadist forces in Libya that now hold Benghazi and Tripoli, the Arab Spring made it an army.

Al Qaeda in Iraq was a vicious sociopathic JV team before the Arab Spring. Now it’s an Islamic State.

The media which was complicit in the celebration of the Arab Spring won’t tell the truth about what went wrong. Obama certainly won’t.

Until a few months ago, he was pretending that there wasn’t a problem in Iraq. It’s anyone’s guess how long he’ll go on pretending that there isn’t a problem in Libya. The Yazidis forced him to turn to air strikes and he’ll keep them up long enough for everyone to forget about Iraq. At least that’s the plan.

The problem with the plan is that ISIS has no intention of letting him forget.

What the left has persistently refused to understand is that it only takes one side to make a war. And that side isn’t the United States. Chris Hedges’ facile “War is a force that gives us meaning” isn’t true of America, but it is true of ISIS. It’s true of all the Jihadists.

The Islamic world is seeking to reclaim its identity through a Jihad against the West. This Jihad is the force that gives it meaning. Ignoring it is not an option. Blaming American foreign policy is as foolish as the dog that tries to bite its own tail.

Obama has been running away from Al Qaeda and now it has caught him. He imagines that he can escape with a few air strikes, a few speeches and a pivot to something else, but it won’t be that simple. This is a war that cannot be escaped or avoided, speechified or shrugged off.

Saturday Night Live routines won’t deter the Jihad. It can be killed, but it can’t be ignored.

As Churchill famously said of Munich, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

Obama chose appeasement. He chose denial. He chose the Arab Spring. He chose the golf course. He chose to ignore the problem.

Now he has a war on his hands.

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  • http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/ Edward Cline

    As Hamas declared victory in Gaza after getting its butt whopped by Israel, Obama is declaring victory over ISIS because of a few strikes against a few pickup trucks carrying jihadists. One smart thing to do would, aside from unleashing our aerial military (including drones) against ISIS wherever it can be found, is to incinerate all the captured jetliners at Tripoli airport. The jihadists there will find some way to gas them up and find pilots who can fly them into more buildings in the West.

    • Pete

      Hamas is winning. They are undefeated and are keeping the pressure up. So long a bigger boy comes along, that is all they need to do.

      Read an infantryman’s account of the Battle of the Bulge in one of those ubiquitous WW2 magazines. They halted every attack the Germans threw at them. It was a slaughter. Then he said the Germans knew their stuff. Although the attacks failed, they kept the pressure up. His unit was not able to send reserves to assist other units at the break though points.

      Hamas is keeping the pressure up. They almost folded. They were really worried about losing power. Then the ceasefire came and they can reset/rebuild. Qatar and Iran will give them more stuff.

      If the U.S. is focused on Ukraine or someplace else and there is a general war, Hamas will not last long.

      • Gee

        Hamas is still in hiding. They got their rear ends so throughly kicked that even Abbas is laughing at them.

        Egypt is no friend, so that means there won’t be much rebuilding done.

        • Pete

          Egypt is going to turn away a flotilla form turkey?

          Who is going to block the electronic transfer of funds from Qatar.

          I am not saying that rebuilding attack tunnels and other military infrastructure won’t be harder, but they probably already started.

          Lots of police and military have been killed in Egypt by various Salafist groups about 200 so far this year (or shorter time period).

          a mere 2 years ago it looked like Egypt was going to lose control of the Sinai. If Egypt did lose control then Hamas could get supplied. The loss of control may have had to due with Morsi’s benign neglect than weakness of the Egyptian military.

          I expect the next round of hostilities to be anew in a longer time period than the one between Cast lead (or whatever ) and this last op.

          But we’ll see. I only have OSI.

          • kasandra

            According to today’s Debkafile Hamas has, indeed, begun rebuilding the tunnels

          • JayWye

            Egypt and Turkey aren’t such good friends these days. Turkey is mad that the Egyptian military deposed the Muslim Brotherhood that was friends with Turkey’s Erdogan. (radical brothers-in-arms)

            ISTR that Egypt has stopped several smuggling attempts by sea into Gaza. But Israel would be first to encounter (and intercept) any ships from Turkey going to Gaza. Egypt is on the other side of Gaza.

          • Pete

            My opinion is that it would be hard for Egypt as a Muslim country to block ships from another Muslim country (Turkey) providing ‘relief’ for a 3rd Muslims country/people.

            I could be very, very wrong. You bring up many good points and support them with facts, history of recent Egyptian actions.

            I do not know how strong the whole Ummah thing is currently.

      • Sara

        Hamas is already rearming and there are even reports that say they’re rebuilding tunnels. They’re like cockroaches, you can kill all the visible ones, new ones will come out from hiding.

  • camp7

    “Now he has war on his hands.”

    Now we have war on our hands. The commander-in-chief runs to the golf course while America’s sons and daughters cover his sorry behind. A nation led by a traitor, a nation at war within. Life of a king, a game of thrones. What a legacy.

    He runs from the past, he runs from the present, he runs by the seat of his pants. The apron strings of UN counsel, will defend his cowardly stance.
    He fired the best of generals, he hired the enemies of state,
    Our friends are now wounded, our foes are now great.

  • Pete

    Al Qaeda on the run

    1) cagle.com/2013/08/al-qaeda-on-the-run/
    2) cagle.com/2013/08/al-qaeda-on-the-run/
    3) patriotupdate.com/cartoons/al-qaeda-on-the-run/

  • Pete

    To all the trolls out there that think you can disparage or shutdown FrontPage magazine and you won’t have as much trouble lying, check your 6, your 9. your 3, …

    Is Al Qaeda On the Run? Or Are We?

    http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/al-qaeda-run-or-are-we_742542.html

    • Virgil Hilts

      Great comment. The trolls are surely, even now…wondering just what ARE their 6,their 9, their 3! LOL!!

  • Gee

    This is what happens when a “Community Activist” that has never done a single thing in his entire life gets elected President

    • pfbonney

      I can’t wait until our candidates finally learn how to run against the modern-day Democrats.

      Until they/we do, a Democrat water boy will be able to win the White House, even after all of the Obama debacles.

      David Horowitz’s new outstanding book, “Take No Prisoners”, which I just finished reading last night, lets the “scales” fall off your eyes to allow you to see what is REALLY going on in US politics.

      With the cold war now over, and the loss of the Republicans’ defining issue, national security, and the party’s unwillingness to see Islamism as the new threat of the same magnitude, Republicans will continue to win elections only when Democrats screw up.

      WE see the Damage Democrat policies have done to minorities, but until we start drumming that beat, and showing the electorate that in sound-byte sentences as the Democrats do while villifying Republicans, a Democrat only needs to be a Community Organizer to get into the White House. If they need even that little bit of experience.

  • http://www.hubpages.com/profiles/maven101 LarryConners

    The only thing on the run is Obama’s mouth…What you allow is what you teach, and ISIS is being taught that America is weak, indecisive, slow to react, and only then with a UN consensus…Taking 30 days to reach a decision to free Foley allowed the time-sensitive intelligence to become useless resulting in a failed mission and a beheaded American…Leading from behind is not leadership. it is the manifestation of a president’s naivety and feckless foreign policy, a foreign policy that lacks structure, commitment, and strategic goals…A foreign policy that is crippled by political correctness, refusing to identify Islam as the genesis of world-wide terrorism, instead using obfuscating phrases like ” workplace violence “. ” man-made disasters “, and the all-encompassing ” terrorist organizations ” as if each is unique in its pursuit of terrorism when in fact all are Muslim and all want to destroy Israel, the US, and any infidels that do not convert to Islam…

  • IngeC

    Great analogy!
    Obama is reaping what he has sown; to the detriment of americans.

  • http://libertyandculture.blogspot.com/ Jason P

    Good points in every paragraph!

    Until we can say there is something wrong with their culture and religion, we’ll continue to blame ourselves. I point out that jihadists are slaughtering people in Bali, Thailand, the Philippines, Chechnya, Bombay, Nigeria, and China. How can that be our fault or the fault of our foreign policy? That usually ends the conversation.

  • Mark K.

    Obama is an anti-American President. That we have a VOLUNTARILY state-run media who will not report the truth is beyond sickening. At least in the Soviet Union, Pravda reported pro-government propaganda at the point of a gun. Here in the United States – we have a media which largely refuses to report anything that might hurt the Obama administration or the Democrat Party – willingly – no coercion required. Unfortunately it isn’t only the useful idiots in this nation who are about to reap the whirlwind of these treasonous actions. We all will.

    An aside to Daniel Greenfield – can we please do away with the rather obnoxious buzz-phrase “boots on the ground?” No member of the U.S. Armed Forces I know – and I know quite a few – uses that absurd terminology. “Ground forces” is the proper term.

  • MrUniteUs1

    Hmm no mention of Osama bin Laden, and the head of the Somalian terroist group killed.

    • Elem187

      Because he was a figure head, his death is meaningless. ISIS is far stronger than Osama Bin Laden’s group could ever be.
      When ISIS starts attacking us on our own soil, it will be 100% Obama’s fault…. which they are already here.

      • MrUniteUs1

        Do you want that to happen?
        Anything bad that happens is already Obama’s fault.
        Bin laden was important, until he was killed.
        The stock market until it went up, Obamacare until people saw it working for them, the budget deficit until it came down, unemployment until it came down. Captain Phillips until he was rescued.

    • JayWye

      for Comrade Obama’s six years in office,that’s pretty small pickin’s.

      Plus Comrade Obama would never have gotten OBL without the policies and actions that GWB instituted. He’d have never gotten the intel to find OBL,nor had any assets in place to act upon the intel.
      You should note that Comrade Obama hasn’t gotten ANY new intel from captured terrorists,ZERO…because he hasn’t captured any,he just drone-bombs a few who are quickly replaced.

  • MrUniteUs1

    How much would you be willing to pay in taxes to fight ISIL.
    I ask because we never paid for the war in IRAQ.

  • hatsylady

    So true. It proves Bush was prophetic and Obama is just pathetic.

  • DontMessWithAmerica

    He was arming ISIS for crying out loud! He hoped they would conquer Syria so that his Muslim Brotherhood could take it over. They had their own ideas. In a Hollywood drama with an ironic justice ending, ISIS would decapitate him.

  • Jon Dougery

    Something I’ve known since 2008- obama SUCKS!!!