The New York Times’ Josh Barro said Wednesday that President Obama is not really committed to defeating the Islamic State, an undertaking that would require U.S. troops in combat roles.
"I feel like the White House is figuring out, ‘What is the least we can do in terms of putting American boots on the ground while looking like we are doing something about this,’" Barro said on MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner.
Last week, the Obama administration announced that it would send 450 more U.S. troops to Iraq to train and advise the Iraqi Security Force, but not to fight. This announcement will increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to 3,500, a far cry from the 160,000 troops in the country during the surge, a policy shift that pacified the country before U.S. withdrawal in 2011.
A chorus of media figures have dismissed the Obama administration’s slow-walk into Iraq as insufficient to "degrade and destroy" IS.
While Barro was critical of Obama’s rhetoric, he said he favored the president’s policy of containment.
"This is not a plan to defeat ISIS probably because there is no good plan for the United State to go in and defeat ISIS," Barro said. "They don’t want to admit there isn’t a lot we can do about this problem."
In fact, several good plans have been proposed to defeat Islamic State, an objective that experts believe can be achieved with far fewer troops in the country than during the Iraq War.