President Obama is being widely criticized for his remark at a press conference yesterday that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for how to deal with the rise of the Islamic State. But even if it was an accidental slip, it was perhaps the most candid statement of his second term.
Americans might be inclined to roll their eyes at this admission from their president given that he spent weeks on vacation while a terrorist group swept away eleven years of work to stabilize Iraq.
As I wrote in this newsletter last week, however, the problem has never been the rounds of golf President Obama is playing. It is what has been happening--or rather, what has not been happening--between them.
If a month’s vacation in Martha’s Vineyard was the price of our Commander-in-Chief realizing at last that we do not have a strategy for fighting radical Islamism, it was well worth the cost. Certainly it would have been better if he’d recognized that fact six years ago, but the first step is admitting you have a problem--or in this case, that you don’t have a strategy.
President Obama is right to say he “doesn't want to put the cart before the horse.” We need a complete rethinking of our strategy for dealing with radical Islamism. We have needed one for several decades.
The Islamic State--with its brutal killings of innocent men, women and children, its horrific beheadings, its forced conversions, and its stunning seizure of much of Syria and Iraq--has made this fact impossible to ignore. It would be hard to imagine a more dramatic repudiation of the President’s withdrawal of American leadership in the world.
Instead of criticizing the politics of his “we don’t have a strategy” comment, however, Republicans should embrace the substance of it and invite him to examine with them the key facts that must underlie any serious rethinking.
The President’s fellow world leader, British Prime Minister David Cameron, did an admirable job of outlining these facts in his own press conference today. It is clear he is plagued by none of the self-delusion that has characterized the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
"This is not some foreign conflict thousands of miles away that we can hope to ignore," he said. "The ambition to create an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and Syria is a threat to our own security...And that is in addition to the many other Al Qaeda-inspired terrorist groups that exist in that region. The first ISIL terrorist attacks on the continent of Europe have already taken place."
Of our struggle with “Islamist extremism,” the Prime Minister said that “we are in the middle of a generational struggle between a poisonous and extremist ideology that I believe that we'll be fighting for years, and probably decades.”
"We cannot appease this ideology,” he continued. “We have to confront it at home and abroad. To do this we need a tough, intelligent, patient, comprehensive approach to defeat the terrorist threat at its source.”
In other words, while Obama speaks of curtailing the Islamic State’s gains in Iraq, Cameron speaks of fighting the worldwide threat of an ideology.
And it certainly is worldwide: More than 12,000 foreign fighters have traveled to the Middle East to join the Islamic State. A thousand or more are from Great Britain. Hundreds of American passport holders have gone too.
There are undoubtedly tens of thousands more sympathizers in Western countries. If you don’t believe me, listen to the words a London-based Muslim cleric spoke on Sean Hannity’s show yesterday. He is a religious leader living in Britain’s largest city and pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. At the end of the segment he promises Sean that Sharia law is “coming to a place near you.”
The President may want to contain his thinking to Iraq and Syria, but the threat will not be contained there. This fact is fundamental to formulating a strategy and should be at the heart of President Obama’s analysis.
Let’s hope that President Obama understood how right he was when he said that we “don’t have a strategy,” and that he was listening to Prime Minister Cameron’s remarks today. Perhaps then his next press conference will sound a little less academic and a little more like a Commander-in-Chief.
Your Friend,
Newt
Americans might be inclined to roll their eyes at this admission from their president given that he spent weeks on vacation while a terrorist group swept away eleven years of work to stabilize Iraq.
As I wrote in this newsletter last week, however, the problem has never been the rounds of golf President Obama is playing. It is what has been happening--or rather, what has not been happening--between them.
If a month’s vacation in Martha’s Vineyard was the price of our Commander-in-Chief realizing at last that we do not have a strategy for fighting radical Islamism, it was well worth the cost. Certainly it would have been better if he’d recognized that fact six years ago, but the first step is admitting you have a problem--or in this case, that you don’t have a strategy.
President Obama is right to say he “doesn't want to put the cart before the horse.” We need a complete rethinking of our strategy for dealing with radical Islamism. We have needed one for several decades.
The Islamic State--with its brutal killings of innocent men, women and children, its horrific beheadings, its forced conversions, and its stunning seizure of much of Syria and Iraq--has made this fact impossible to ignore. It would be hard to imagine a more dramatic repudiation of the President’s withdrawal of American leadership in the world.
Instead of criticizing the politics of his “we don’t have a strategy” comment, however, Republicans should embrace the substance of it and invite him to examine with them the key facts that must underlie any serious rethinking.
The President’s fellow world leader, British Prime Minister David Cameron, did an admirable job of outlining these facts in his own press conference today. It is clear he is plagued by none of the self-delusion that has characterized the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
"This is not some foreign conflict thousands of miles away that we can hope to ignore," he said. "The ambition to create an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and Syria is a threat to our own security...And that is in addition to the many other Al Qaeda-inspired terrorist groups that exist in that region. The first ISIL terrorist attacks on the continent of Europe have already taken place."
Of our struggle with “Islamist extremism,” the Prime Minister said that “we are in the middle of a generational struggle between a poisonous and extremist ideology that I believe that we'll be fighting for years, and probably decades.”
"We cannot appease this ideology,” he continued. “We have to confront it at home and abroad. To do this we need a tough, intelligent, patient, comprehensive approach to defeat the terrorist threat at its source.”
In other words, while Obama speaks of curtailing the Islamic State’s gains in Iraq, Cameron speaks of fighting the worldwide threat of an ideology.
And it certainly is worldwide: More than 12,000 foreign fighters have traveled to the Middle East to join the Islamic State. A thousand or more are from Great Britain. Hundreds of American passport holders have gone too.
There are undoubtedly tens of thousands more sympathizers in Western countries. If you don’t believe me, listen to the words a London-based Muslim cleric spoke on Sean Hannity’s show yesterday. He is a religious leader living in Britain’s largest city and pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. At the end of the segment he promises Sean that Sharia law is “coming to a place near you.”
The President may want to contain his thinking to Iraq and Syria, but the threat will not be contained there. This fact is fundamental to formulating a strategy and should be at the heart of President Obama’s analysis.
Let’s hope that President Obama understood how right he was when he said that we “don’t have a strategy,” and that he was listening to Prime Minister Cameron’s remarks today. Perhaps then his next press conference will sound a little less academic and a little more like a Commander-in-Chief.
Your Friend,
Newt
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