President Barack Obama speaks Monday in the White House Briefing Room about ISIS. (/MANDEL NGANMANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
ARTICLE EXTRAS
Updated: August 31, 2014 2:30AM
President Barack Obama’s statement that “we don’t have a strategy yet” against the Islamist army rampaging across Syria will hearten Americans opposed to escalating the U.S. role in the Middle East chaos. But it’s hard to see how the fanatics of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria won’t interpret it as Obama backing away from another American “red line.”
That’s because Obama only a week ago called ISIS a “cancer” while his military and foreign policy advisers said it was an “imminent threat” (Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel) that “will eventually have to be defeated” and attacked in Syria (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey) and that “the United States of America will never back down in the face of such evil” (Secretary of State John Kerry).
In his latest statement, Obama also said, “I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggests that folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at than we currently are.” Was he referring to his advisers, or to calls to go to Congress to seek authorization for a stepped-up military campaign against ISIS? Could be it was both.
I was one who didn’t think Kerry, Hagel and Dempsey would speak out of school. It’s starting to look like they did, or perhaps Obama is having second thoughts about a tough stance now that Kurdish and Iraqi forces backed by U.S. airstrikes seemed to have foiled the threat of ISIS to overrun northern Iraq and the memory of the beheading of journalist James Foley is receding.
As he showed in his retreat from the “red line” on Syria’s use of chemical weapons a year ago, Obama won’t hesitate to back down from a hard line no matter how it appears to friend or foe. Then his defenders said he was reversing the threat to use military force against Syria because it wouldn’t have support in Congress. That might have been true, but his critics were correct that the about-face undermined U.S. credibility with our allies and adversaries.
This time the White House immediately realized the “we don’t have a strategy” remark was a gaffe. A presidential spokesman followed up to say what Obama meant was that he was awaiting military options from the Pentagon.
Maybe Obama will eventually order a robust military campaign against ISIS, but the narrative of a feckless, weak U.S. role in world affairs already has taken hold. The United States was left mostly on the sidelines throughout the Israeli-Hamas war. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates conducted airstrikes against Islamist forces in Libya without consulting Washington.
Russia has launched a new invasion of eastern Ukraine in an apparent attempt to secure a land bridge to the Crimea peninsula Moscow annexed only a few months ago. President Vladimir Putin appears secure that the West won’t do anything significant to foil his expansionist plans. Indeed, Obama again ruled out shipping arms to Ukraine, though its military has proved to be tough, effective and resilient in combatting the Russian-backed separatists.
Obama’s defenders will argue that many world events are beyond Washington’s control and afford no good options. Furthermore, they will claim that Obama did not this time draw a red line, that he put the brakes on before doing that.
Still, plenty of tough talk has come from Obama’s closest advisers in recent days. Now he is saying something different. When the U.S. government doesn’t speak in one voice, the world sees an indecisive, divided, irresolute and even weak administration. That’s not good for America nor for global stability.
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