As usual, there criticism as been of the markedly not constructive kind.
Senator Richard Burr was on Face the Nation and criticized the President's ISIS policy as not working but when Dickerson asked him what he specifically he'd like to change he said he's not a strategist. Right-so as you're not s strategist why is he criticizing the President's strategy? He's sort of admitting he's not qualified.
President Obama made this point today:
“When you listen to what they actually have to say, what they’re proposing, most of the time when pressed they describe things that we’re already doing. Maybe they’re not aware that we’re already doing them. Some of them seem to think that if I were just more bellicose in expressing what we’re doing, that that would make a difference, because that seems to be the only thing that they’re doing, is talking as if they’re tough. But I haven’t seen particular strategies that they would suggest that would make a real difference.
“Now there are a few exceptions, and as I said, the primary exception is those who would deploy U.S. troops on a large scale to retake territory either in Iraq or now in Syria. And at least they have the honesty to go ahead and say that’s what they’d do.”
“What I do not do is to take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow in the abstract make America look tough or make me look tough. … Folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do? Present a specific plan. If they think that somehow their advisers are better than the chairman of my Joint Chiefs of Staff and the folks who are on the ground, I want to meet ’em. And we can have that debate. But what I’m not interested in doing is posing, or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American and to protect people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies like France. I’m too busy for that.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/11/16/obama-is-frustrated-with-critics-of-his-policies-on-the-islamic-state-hes-right/
This seems to be their only addition to the debate-let's just have a bellicose tone about it and say radical Islam not radical Jihad and play gotcha that ISIS is not contained-Obama meant this in a geographical sense and that is accurate.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/why-are-there-so-few-homegrown-us.html
What the real problem is are the homegrown terrorists-which as the piece above notes have been less prevalent here in the US partly because Muslims in the US are better integrated into society despite the ravings of Dr. Ben and friends.
“Now there are a few exceptions, and as I said, the primary exception is those who would deploy U.S. troops on a large scale to retake territory either in Iraq or now in Syria. And at least they have the honesty to go ahead and say that’s what they’d do.”
“What I do not do is to take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow in the abstract make America look tough or make me look tough. … Folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do? Present a specific plan. If they think that somehow their advisers are better than the chairman of my Joint Chiefs of Staff and the folks who are on the ground, I want to meet ’em. And we can have that debate. But what I’m not interested in doing is posing, or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American and to protect people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies like France. I’m too busy for that.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/11/16/obama-is-frustrated-with-critics-of-his-policies-on-the-islamic-state-hes-right/
This seems to be their only addition to the debate-let's just have a bellicose tone about it and say radical Islam not radical Jihad and play gotcha that ISIS is not contained-Obama meant this in a geographical sense and that is accurate.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/why-are-there-so-few-homegrown-us.html
What the real problem is are the homegrown terrorists-which as the piece above notes have been less prevalent here in the US partly because Muslims in the US are better integrated into society despite the ravings of Dr. Ben and friends.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/paris-attacks-will-solidify-gop-as.html
But as far as advancing a strategy that can work, the GOPers main contribution is subtraction by addition of their silly gotcha games.
For some idea of what maybe we should focus on in the fight with ISIS, Josh Marshall has an interesting piece.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-to-do-about-isis
He argues that the US has hurt itself in Syria with a divided self-cancelling strategy-of trying to wipe out ISIS while also trying to bring down Assad-which is reminiscent of the shortsighted way we went into Iraq in 2002; as bad as that decision was, however, the worst possible policy after was Rumsfeld's de-Baathification.
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