Obama's Myth of a Coalition of Allies to Face Off Against ISIS with Ground Forces - Commentary

By Rob Janicki

We hear both President Obama and his flunky Secretary of State, Gigolo John Kerry, refer to a growing coalition of nations lined up to fight the ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq.  The problem is that the list of supposed nations willing to oppose ISIS has never been published.

Those nations that have acknowledged their participation, have clearly indicated that they would only provide minor support and no "boots on the ground" to fight the forces of ISIS.

This brings us back to square one.  Who will fight the forces of ISIS on the ground, since no war has ever been won wholly using air craft to engage and destroy an enemy?

That leads us to question Obama's strategy, which patently has no chance of success without those "boots on the ground".  It's being reported that Saudi Arabia has agreed to train 5000 Syrian rebels to fight ISIS.  There are several problems with this situation.  First, ISIS is reported to have an armed ground force of 35,000, thus 5000 trained Syrian rebels would be no match for the ISIS ground forces.  Second, there is no guarantee that these Saudi trained Syrian rebels would actually fight against ISIS once they were trained.  The chances are probably about equal that these rebels would go over to ISIS.

The Iraqi army is a joke.  We have seen what happened to Iraqi army units in the face of ISIS fighters.  They dropped their weapons and uniforms and ran away.  There is no way to reconstitute these forces. They simply do not have the stomach to fight for Iraq against ISIS and even if there were an interest, it would take years to train Iraqi troops and develop a satisfactory officer corps to lead these forces.  It just won't happen, by the accounts of all knowledgeable high ranking American military officers.

The Kurds of Kurdistan do have an effective fighting force..  The problem is that their interest is in defending everything within the borders of Kurdistan and not necessarily beyond their border.  Expect to see Kurdistan at some time in the future to seek independence from Iraq.  The Kurds have a completely different history than that of Iraq.  Their culture and religious practices do not coincide with those of Iraq.

So, without the Kurds venturing outside their borders to fight ISIS and the Iraqi army being incapable of being resurrected and trained as an effective fighting force against ISIS, who does Obama think will provide the "boots on the ground" to fight ISIS.

The answer is simple.  Obama doesn't expect or even particularly want any nation or group to provide ground forces to fight ISIS.  It's all a political ploy to get through this November's congressional midterm election cycle at the very minimum.  Obama will hold off any serious attempts to deter, let alone destroy, ISIS through the 2016 presidential election.  Once again, Obama's agenda, and all its attendant decisions, is solely based upon political considerations and not what needs to be done to destroy ISIS.  Obama has never made a decision on foreign policy or the economy that hasn't been completely grounded in political considerations, most of which were closely aligned to his presidential legacy after leaving office.