A Surprise Years in the Making

The New York Times reports what the Administration either knew or denied or allowed themselves to be blindsided by:

With just a few thousand fighters, the group’s lightning sweep into Mosul and farther south appeared to catch many Iraqi and American officials by surprise. But the gains were actually the realization of a yearslong strategy of state-building that the group itself promoted publicly.

“What we see in Iraq today is in many ways a culmination of what the I.S.I. has been trying to accomplish since its founding in 2006,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation, referring to the Islamic State in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS.

Read the whole damning thing.

The end of 2006 of course is when the Bush Administration, humiliated by a massive election defeat, finally decided to get serious about the situation in Iraq. With a combination of big bribes and hard fighting, the situation was contained, then rolled back. So the idea that the Obama Administration was in any way blindsided by ISIS/ISIL is impossible to believe. The President knew what must eventually come, but frankly wasn’t interested in maintaining even a token tripwire force. Instead, we’re “surging” one aircraft carrier while leaving “all options on the table,” except for the ones which might actually accomplish something.

Instead, Professor Ditherton Wiggleroom will do just enough to cost our country prestige and influence and power — which judging by its track record was the goal all along.