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International News Title: War College expert: Obama strategy to degrade and defeat ISIS is the right course With criticism mounting, President Obama this week held his ground amid calls to intensify U.S. military response against the terrorist Islamic State. At a news conference in Turkey on Monday, the president reiterated a policy that has not changed since he first outlined it to the nation last year: to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the terrorist group while making the security of the American people the highest priority. The United States, Obama reaffirmed, would not send additional ground troops into Syria to combat IS - also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). One of the country's leading experts on the Middle East says Obama's approach is the right one. Larry P. Goodson, professor of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, this week outlined a slew of factors – both global and domestic – that he said frames the president's policy in the right perspective. "I think his strategy was meant to be a long, slow strategy that would keep us out of deep engagement, so no sending of Pennsylvania National Guard troops, for example, but to keep us out of that long, deep engagement that would be politically impossible to sustain in this country after the long war in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Goodson, who briefs some of the country's highest-ranking officials on these matters. "That strategy would allow us to undermine the ideology and shrink the group that is currently the standard bearer for this extremist violence ideology. I think that is right strategy." Indeed, the weakness to such an approach is magnified in the wake of attacks such as the one seen in Paris on Nov. 13, Goodson admitted. Such brazen attacks generally generate calls for a quick and definitive response, but a knee-jerk military reaction would be the wrong one, Goodson said during an interview earlier this week. "This is not something that we can easily win in a fast and definitive way," said Goodson, who holds the General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security. "It's going to be a long, slow thing that the next president – whoever he or she may be – will have to continue to go in the same direction of this strategy. It will have lot of diplomacy, economic and information pieces, not just military or covert strategy." In the wake of last week's terrorist attack in Paris, Obama has come under fierce attack from GOP detractors, hawkish military analysts and even Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, who is calling for an intensification and broadening of U.S. effort to fight the terrorist group. ISIS has claimed responsibility for an orchestrated attack on the iconic French city, which has claimed 130 lives, a figure that keeps mounting. The Obama administration's strategy against ISIS has largely been framed against the idea that the U.S. must help the Middle East region move away from extremism and assist its economic development. The latter would further help the region's predominantly – and underemployed – young population move away from radicalism. Obama last year authorized the development of a large coalition of countries from the Middle East and Europe – known as Operation Inherent Resolve – to combat ISIS. The coalition has been conducting targeted airstrikes in Iraq and Syria as part of a comprehensive strategy to degrade and defeat the terrorist group. Increasingly though, GOP lawmakers and presidential candidates are calling for an increased military strategy that would include so-called boots on the ground. Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, John Kasich and Lindsey Graham have all advocated for a U.S. ground operation in Syria. Most polls show that a majority of Americans oppose sending ground troops to Iraq or Syria. The front-runner in the polls, Donald Trump, advocates deploying ground troops and this week further excoriated Obama for losing the war on terrorism. Says Trump in a campaign ad: "I will...quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS, will rebuild our military and make it so strong no one — and I mean, no one — will mess with us." With the exception of several dozen special forces and air control personnel, Obama has been adamant about keeping ground forces out of Syria. As the polls illustrate, Goodson explaindc that policy is based on a significant amount of war weariness on the part of the American public after the long and polarizing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I think the White House is very mindful that public support, while it might spike from time to time when something horrible happens – a beheading or Paris and people say we need to do something - the truth is that when you send Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers to fight in Syria and Iraq, and you've been there for while, there's going to be casualties and the public may not really support that for long period of time," Goodson said. "I think that was a factor in viewing this as not something we want to have troops engaged in." Goodson pointed out that a policy to degrade and defeat ISIS – as opposed to an all-out military response – is apropos given that the extremist and violent organization and its offshoots do not in any way represent mainstream Islam. Obama's patient and plotted strategy - versus deploying tens of thousands of American troops to Syria - is bound to have broader support from the American public, Goodson said. "The bigger issue is to undermine and defeat this ideology, this world view," he said. "That's something that we know after 9/11 the country wasn't comfortable with nor was it very successful at doing – nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq." ISIS, Goodson explains, has been clear about its intentions, which it has published in English in its online magazine, Dabiq. The terrorist group intends to start a war of civilizations between the Christian world – the West – and Islam with the goal to reorganize and restructure the world. Goodson, who lectures to the world's rising military leaders at the War College, raises a tenet of military strategy: Never let the enemy strategy drive your strategy. "You want to defeat their strategy," he said. "The reason they use acts of terrorism like the bombing of the jet liner, the attacks in Paris and Charlie Hebdo, beheadings, burnings, the reason they have done all these horrific things is to terrorize, sure, but mostly, to provoke us into responding and buying into their strategy." "President Obama, in my mind, although not politically popular, I think his strategy is the right strategy," Goodson said. "It's wise in that it's trying not to get drawn into what ISIL is trying to provoke us into doing. It's slow. It's not a very sexy strategy in the sense of whiz bang, high technology, boots on the ground, we are hammering them because we are the big U.S. It doesn't have all those things. "If we follow it and keep our eye on the ball, then it has more of a chance of working than a lot of these other alternatives that various people are talking about right now." 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#1. To: Willie Green (#0)
How do you know its the right strategy? If Obama tells you it is, it is the wrong strategy,
#2. To: Don (#1)
True, always do the complete opposite of what he says. It's been working for that lying POS for years.
When you see positive results.
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