Strategy? What Strategy?

President Obama gave a press conference today, in which the prime topic was ISIL. Obama’s constant theme was that we don’t have a strategy to deal with the terrorist organization that has been rampaging across Syria and Iraq for months. A transcript of the press conference is here:

I’ll be meeting with my National Security Council again this evening as we continue to develop that strategy. And I’ve been consulting with members of Congress, and I’ll continue to do so in the days ahead. …

And in order for us to degrade ISIL over the long term, we’re going to have to build a regional strategy. Now, we’re not going to do that alone. …

As our strategy develops, we will continue to consult with Congress, and I do think that it’ll be important for Congress to weigh in and we’re — that our consultations with Congress continue to develop so that the American people are part of the debate. …

But I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet.

In case you think your eyes might be deceiving you, here he is: Barack Obama saying that he doesn’t have a strategy to deal with ISIL:

ISIL has claimed responsibility for bombing attacks in Iraq going back to 2010. The group has played a major role in the Syrian civil war since April 2013. In early June 2014, ISIL captured Mosul, Fallujah and Tikrit in northern Iraq, and threatened Baghdad. In this campaign, ISIL obtained large quantities of American weaponry and a great deal of money, making it the richest terrorist group in history. It also murdered hundreds of Christians and rendered many more refugees. In late June, ISIL announced the founding of a new caliphate. In July, ISIL carried out a series of mass executions. In early August, ISIL slaughtered large numbers of Yazidis and kidnapped 400 Yazidi women to sell as sex slaves. On August 8, the U.S. government labeled ISIL’s massacre of the Yazidi as genocide. On August 16, ISIL murdered 80 more Yazidis. On August 19, ISIL beheaded American journalist James Foley on video. The following day, President Obama took a brief break from golfing to denounce Foley’s murder. On August 21, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that ISIL represents an “imminent” threat to American security.

And yet, by Obama’s own account, he has barely begun the process of developing a strategy to combat ISIL. How can this be? Well, from August 9 until August 25, he was on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard–apparently not the traditional presidential “working vacation.” Before that, who knows? Was there something that Obama had to do between June and the present that was more important than developing a strategy to stop the terrorist organization that was marauding across Iraq and Syria? Apparently so. Fundraising, most likely–the one thing Obama is good at.

The fact that we have arrived at this late date, and our president says “We don’t have a strategy yet,” testifies to the utter fecklessness and incompetence of the Obama administration.

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