Perhaps Mr. Obama believes he has to engage in this rhetorical evasion because he’s the President who campaigned to end the Iraq war in 2008; told Americans in 2012 that the “tide of war is receding” because he had withdrawn all U.S. forces from Iraq; and who refused to aid the moderate Muslims fighting the Assad regime in Syria. But the reality is that the tide of war is now rising precisely because his abdications allowed the Islamic State to became the main opposition to Assad and then to move east into the Sunni areas of Iraq.
It’s good that Mr. Obama is finally recognizing the threat to the region and the U.S. from Islamic State, but it’s important that he tell the truth about what he’s asking Americans to support. His intervention may not be on the scale of the initial Iraq invasion, and fewer American troops may be needed.
But air power alone won’t defeat the jihadist army, and so some U.S. forces will have to be deployed “on the ground.” One lesson of the 2007 Iraq surge is that while the help of local Sunni sheikhs is crucial, U.S. special forces are essential to targeting insurgency leaders and enclaves. American soldiers will be putting their lives on the line.
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