"If a lawmaker or a candidate or any American wants to understand the problems with President Obama’s approach to the Islamic State, he or she should look no further than the remarks delivered by Rep. Buck McKeon at the American Enterprise Institute"
The Washington Post's "Right Turn" Blogger Jennifer Rubin praised Chairman McKeon's recent speech at the American Enterprise Institute in which he presented his strategy to defeat ISIL.
You can read her full piece here
Key excerpts below
"If a lawmaker or a candidate or any American wants to understand the problems with President Obama’s approach to the Islamic State, he or she should look no further than the remarks delivered by Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) at the American Enterprise Institute.
To be blunt, there is too much magical thinking going on. We can do it all from the air. The Islamic State is not a current threat. The locals can take care of things. We can go slow and steady. Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.
As is apparent to those following the growth of the Islamic State, which the CIA now says numbers 35,000-strong, not 10,000, and the territory the group commands, time is not on our side. That is true in two respects, as McKeon spells out:
'A go-slow strategy gives them space to thrive and grow and blend with the population. Every month, 500 more foreign fighters join their ranks. Every month, they raise nearly $85 million in revenue just from oil. Every day, ISIL identifies and brutally executes the Sunni moderates who might be convinced to work with us again. Soon all that will be left is a cowering population unable to resist the Caliphate. ISIL is a Sunni movement. Getting the Sunnis to reject them is key. While we wait to see what the newly formed government will do, we are missing the chance to get the Iraqi Sunni leaders on board, who can truly speak for their people. And the job will be harder this time.'
....
As McKeon notes, we are NOT talking about “large occupying forces in a hostile land,” which he dubs a “red herring.” But we do need to be there, and we need to lead the coalition Obama describes.
“[A]rming surrogates and conducting sporadic airstrikes is not a formula for success against ISIL. It is not timely enough or decisive enough. We have learned that in Yemen and the Horn of Africa after many years. Coalition operations, on the ground and in the air, backed by the enabling capabilities of the United States, will be required.”
"The Kurds, the Iraqis, the Turks, the Emiratis, and the Jordanians all have military capability. They all want to knock ISIL on its back. They need our help, they want our help, and we owe them our help. Ignoring their pleas is a quick way to end up friendless with little, if any, U.S. influence left in the region. Let’s not forget that our allies around the world are watching and wondering if they can ever trust the U.S. again. American leadership isn’t an option here. It is a necessity. We are the missing piece in the puzzle. There are certain capabilities that we have invested in for decades — the ability to control air and sea space, the ability to put troops in difficult terrain and hostile territories, the ability to supply forces and communicate on the battlefield. That’s how we pull these nations together. . . . '
Don’t take McKeon’s word for it. This is what military commanders recommended to the president. He rejected the advice for political reasons (it “would have been highly controversial, and most likely would have been opposed by a substantial majority of Americans”) — just as he did in whittling down the Afghanistan surge and arriving at the zero-troop option in Afghanistan and adhering to his campaign promise to bring all troops home from Iraq. The question is not what the best strategy is — it is whether we have the fortitude to use it."