Obama blasé about the Islamic State, sneers at the Supreme Court

Obama blasé about the Islamic State, sneers at the Supreme Court

June 9 at 9:00 AM

President Obama was on quite a roll on Monday. From Germany he proclaimed what we all knew — since the last bad news cycle regarding our lack of strategy to defeat the Islamic State, we have made little progress either on the battlefield or in devising a feasible strategy. If you did not know better, you would think he was more interested in his 2008 promise to get out of Iraq than in “degrading and destroying” a threat to the homeland.

Even the mainstream press seemed taken aback. The National Journal patiently explained, “It’s about ISIS, a lethal, strategically smart, and tactically effective adversary whose intentions are not contained by Iraq’s borders. The United States — under Barack Obama or the next president — can choose to sit this out, to let Sunni fight Shia and then Wahhabi fight Sunni until some resolution is found. The risk associated with this option is that what remains standing could be the slave-holding, woman-raping, Christian- and Jew-killing territory known as the Islamic State, which will not pause to relish victory but instead set sights on Europe and the United States.”

Conservative critics were less genteel. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who risked his life to defeat jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq, is entitled to be outraged. “President Obama has long been in denial about ISIS, but his comments today indicate an alarming attitude toward this threat to our national security. Over the last year ISIS has expanded its reach and killed innocent Americans,” he said in a written statement. “After months of inaction, President Obama finally committed troops — including putting our pilots and planes into harm’s way — yet never had a complete strategy in place to win the fight? A soldier learns one must always have a plan for battle, it’s troubling that our Commander-in-Chief doesn’t follow that same logic.”

Likewise, Wisconsin Gov. and presidential hopeful Scott Walker followed former Texas governor Rick Perry in blasting the president:

Today, nearly nine months after vowing to ‘destroy’ ISIS, President Obama admitted that ‘we don’t yet have a complete strategy’ to train Iraqi forces to defeat ISIS. America deserves more from its commander-in-chief and we must do more to defeat this enemy. In particular, as Secretary Gates recently argued, we need to change the rules of engagement for our troops, allowing them to provide enhanced support such as serving as spotters for airstrikes. For political reasons, President Obama isn’t willing to expand the role of American troops. Politics should never dictate what needs to be done to ensure our safety and ensure victory when we deploy military power. We must also do more to support allies on the ground who can clear and hold territory, especially the Kurds and Sunni tribes. And what the president previously admitted in August 2014 is still true: he also has no strategy for defeating ISIS in Syria. As long as ISIS has a safe haven in Syria, it will continue to destabilize Iraq and attract historic levels of radical Islamic terrorists to the region. This is a clear threat to American safety and confronting radical Islamic terrorism demands real American leadership.

No doubt the White House will “clarify” what the president meant as he committed the ultimate Kinsey gaffe — getting caught unintentionally telling the truth.

The president has little interest in winning the war but is greatly perturbed when Congress (on Corker-Menendez, or immigration law) or the Supreme Court dares to exert its constitutional authority. The Harvard Law grad and Chicago Law School lecturer discredits his alma maters when he whines about the Affordable Care Act case before the justices, “[T]his should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up.”

Really — because the president proclaimed the actual words of the statute not to mean what they say? Frankly, his record at the Supreme Court hasn’t been that great, so perhaps we shouldn’t take his word for it. Anticipating a potential decision that might say the Affordable Care Act’s language plainly says only state exchanges can provide subsidies, Obama decrees, “If, in fact, you have a contorted reading of the statute that says federal-run exchanges don’t provide subsidies for folks who are participating in those exchanges, then that throws off how that exchange operates. It means that millions of people who are obtaining insurance currently with subsidies suddenly aren’t getting those subsidies; many of them can’t afford it; they pull out; and the assumptions that the insurance companies made when they priced their insurance suddenly gets thrown out the window. And it would be disruptive — not just, by the way, for folks in the exchanges, but for those insurance markets in those states, generally.” He may be right, but his utter contempt for the opposing position is striking.

The president’s petulance is to be expected. Both his big domestic items — Obamacare and unilateral alteration of immigration law — may be wiped out. His foreign policy is in shambles as the Islamic State runs rampant, Iran grows bolder by the day, a preventable bloodbath in Syria drags on and Russia occupies a chunk of Ukraine. At this rate he might go down as the least successful president in our lifetime.

washingtonpost.com