A ‘Major’ Shift in Iraq or a Useless Gesture?

The New York Times eagerly reports a “major” shift in U.S. strategy in Iraq. But wait: It’s 450 troops on a new training base in Anbar Province? There must be some mistake. For that would be a useless, token gesture meant to assuage the media and critics, yet another lame effort to win a news cycle rather than win the war. Precisely.

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Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies remarks, “The plural of tactics is not strategy,” he says. “A few hundred additional advisers are not likely to lead to the defeat of the Islamic State.” More to the point, we have no strategy for Syria, for Yemen or Libya or for anywhere else where jihadists are running amok. “The U.S. needs — it’s years overdue — a strategy to defeat jihadism in all its forms (e.g. the Islamic State, the Islamic Republic of Iran, al Qaeda, the Taliban). This ain’t it,” May says of the announcement.

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