Iraq Syria Locator (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
According to this excellent editorial from the NYT, the United States is being drawn ever more deeply into a war that lacks legal authorization and an attainable end goal.
Source: The Military Escalation in Iraq and Syria – The New York Times
This important article raises some critical questions about Obama’s policies, both in terms of legality and objectives.
I fear that Obama has been caught on the back foot by Putin. Obama’s sudden change of policy, recognizing his previous failures, is deeply worrying. The critical word in the NYT headline is ‘escalation’.
So far the military and political endgame, along with their associated risks of contagion is far from clear.
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
“Advise and assist” are new words to describe what in Vietnam was called a “police action”.
The New York Times, in this telling article, brought to us by Dr Alf, are of course talking about the escalation in an illegal war.
Assad, odious though he is, is the legitimate leader of Syria and most Syrians want him to remain in power.
He poses no threat to us and is entitled to defend himself against rebels, including those funded by us and indeed the Gulf States, most of whom fund ISIS.
This policy, if carried out, risks World War III and Europe being overwhelmed by refugees which people will not stand for.
Russia is already putting ISIS to the sword, so what will America actually do other than try and topple Assad and go to war with Russia and Iran?
We have been here before, Saddam Hussein had “Weapons of mass destruction”, Gaddafi was “about to kill 8000 of his own people”,”The threat from Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction was credible, growing and was capable of reaching us in 45 minutes”.
For those with longer memories, there is the “Gulf of Tonkin incident”, which was the precursor to Vietnam, a war which claimed more than a million lives, saw more bombs dropped than in the whole of WorldWar II on all countries involved combined, created 58,000 dead American soldiers, 2,200 missing in action and 225,000 North Vietnamese missing in action.
Years later, we learnt from a more contrite Robert Macnamara that the Gulf of Tonkin incident “never happened” and that the war was started on completely bogus premises under the old “Domino theory”.
We seem to learn nothing from each of these experiences and Obama, and whoever is telling him what to do, has learnt even less–We truly do live in dangerous times and in the West we seem to be “led” by a “Leader of the Free World” who has taken leave of his senses and has the strategic abilities of a lobotomised Armadillo.