My must read of the day is "President Barack Obama’s Full Interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd," in NBC News:
CHUCK TODD:
You've ruled out boots on the ground. And I'm curious, have you only ruled them out simply for domestic political reasons? Or is there another reason you've ruled out American boots on the ground? Because your own—your own guys have said, "You can't defeat ISIS with air strikes alone."
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
Well, they're absolutely right about that. But you also cannot, over the long term or even the medium term, deal with this problem by having the United States serially occupy various countries all around the Middle East. We don't have the resources. It puts enormous strains on our military. And at some point, we leave. And then things blow up again. So we— [...]
—so—so we've got to have a more sustainable strategy, which means the boots on the ground have to be Iraqi … and in Syria, the boots on the ground have to be Syrian. […]
And so the— the strategy both for Iraq and for Syria is that we will hunt down ISIL members and assets wherever they are. I will reserve the right to always protect the American people and go after folks who are trying to hurt us wherever they are.
But in terms of controlling territory, we're going to have to develop a moderate Sunni opposition that can control territory and that we can work with. The notion that the United States should be putting boots on the ground, I think would be a profound mistake. And I want to be very clear and very explicit about that.
It is undoubtedly important to work with troops in both Iraq and Syria. The people who advocated going into Syria three years ago argued a similar thing: arm and work with the moderates so we have a proxy and don’t have to send all of our guys in down the road, if (and now clearly when) the problem metastasizes. But now we’re going to solve the ISIL problem and there will be no U.S. ground troops? There’s just no way.
That's not to pass judgment on whether it's a good idea to send them in, but it's disingenuous to continuously peddle this notion that there will be no combat troops.
If the goal is to destroy ISIL and the task will, by the administration’s account, take years—it only takes a little common sense to realize something like that will require some forces on the ground.
When the president first started to step into Iraq he unequivocally promised there would be no boots on the ground. Then it switched to, "well, we meant no combat troops and these are humanitarian troops; they’re only carrying out the humanitarian mission."
Currently there are at least 1,100 troops in Iraq, but the administration maintains that they're not engaging in combat.
Obama is so determined to avoid being the fourth consecutive president in Iraq, and not revisit "Bush’s War" that he refuses to accept reality. We will not be "putting boots on the ground" is a political statement that may make the administration feel better about what they’re doing, but it is not rooted in reality.
In this same interview, Obama said when he addresses the nation on Wednesday it will be in an effort to level with the American people.
"More than anything," he said, "I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we're going to deal with it and to have confidence we'll be able to deal with it."
That’s a noble aim, but it is immediately undermined by futile promises and absolutes like "no ground troops." The American people deserve to hear a general plan, and they deserve to hear one that’s honest. There are boots on the ground, there will be boots on the ground, and it’s unlikely ISIL can be destroyed without them.