Obama not trying to defeat ISIL

Max Boot:
To Die in an Unserious War
Last week, Delta Force staged a raid inside Syria along with Kurdish Peshmerga to free prisoners held by the Islamic State. The operation reportedly freed 70 hostages, but resulted in the death of Master Sargent Joshua Wheeler, one of Delta’s storied “operators.”
...
There are many things that Obama would do if he were serious about defeating ISIS, but among them would be unleashing JSOC as President George W. Bush did. JSOC squadrons based in the Kurdish region of Iraq, in Jordan, and possibly Turkey could mount regular operations against ISIS strongholds. As far as we can tell from open source reporting (which is admittedly an imperfect source of information on such highly classified matters), that’s not happening. Apparently JSOC is going out only occasionally — just often enough to run the risk of casualties such as Master Sargent Wheeler, but not enough to actually have a strategic impact. That raises the troubling question of why JSOC’s elite operators are risking – and, in the case of Master Sergeant Wheeler, losing — their lives if their commander-in-chief is not serious about winning.
There is much more.

Boot talks about the success of the special ops warriors in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq and others.  As I have noted previously, Obama is fighting a low grade war of attrition against ISIL that is incapable of defeating them in the near term because it is using inadequate force and a minimal operational tempo.  It si easy to conclude from that that he is, indeed, not serious about defeating the enemy.

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