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Like it or not, US boots must again touch the ground in Middle East

WASHINGTON – Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s report to the House Armed Services Committee that 200 U.S. Special Operations Forces will be dispatched to spearhead the fight against the Islamic State further erodes President Obama’s assurance that no more “boots on the ground” would be committed to the Middle East battlefield.

Carter used the customary euphemisms to introduce new combat-ready troops to launch and supervise military engagements against the terrorists, also known as ISIL or ISIS.

But from what he said, it was clear that elaborate plans are in the works to sharpen American fighting and intelligence-gathering efforts under whatever name.

He told the committee: “We’re good at intelligence; we’re good at mobility; we’re good at surprise. We have the long reach that no one else has. … It puts everybody on notice in Syria that you don’t know at night who is coming in the window. And that’s the sensation that we want all of ISIL’s leadership and followers to have.”

Two of Congress’s leading Republican hawks, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a longshot presidential candidate, immediately endorsed the move. “It’s this simple,” McCain told CNN. “We’re going to fight them there or we’re going to fight them here.” But McCain told MSNBC that the move “also indicates we don’t have a strategy. We are reacting to (the attacks on) Paris. We have to articulate, lay down a strategy.”

Although the president on numerous occasions had said publicly that no more American “boots on the ground” or some similar variation would be deployed to Iraq or Syria, there is no longer any way to get around the fact that military circumstances now require them.

It’s another example of Obama’s overly optimistic or perhaps careless rhetoric, seeking to fulfill his 2008 presidential campaign to end the wars he inherited from his Republican predecessor.

Obama’s immense self-confidence has often led him to extravagant observations on foreign policy intentions from which he has had to retreat. His premature drawing of a red line on use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad obliged him erase it at a cost to his credibility, although the dictator eventually surrendered the weapons.

Obama’s early dismissal of the Islamic State as a second-string terrorist army was an embarrassment. And his subsequent insistence that it had been “contained” was mocked by reality, requiring him to focus rhetorically on “destroying” this new and perilous enemy.

Since then, he has accentuated the positive with his cautious and controlled approach to building a regional and even international coalition against the emerging new threat to peace and civilized conduct in the Middle East.

He acknowledges having an important role without assuming leadership for himself, inviting laments that he seems satisfied to “lead from behind.”

Regarding the response to the Paris terrorist attacks, Obama has seemed content to be a helpmate to French President Francois Hollande in holding the Islamic State agents to account for the slaughter of 130 victims in Paris.

Obama’s reluctance to send more American “boots on the ground” into Iraq and Syria seems to be in keeping with the national sentiment at home after more than a decade of such commitment in Afghanistan and Iraq. Polls, however, indicate substantial support for a more muscular military strategy in the face of the Islamic State’s brutality and the refugee crisis it has triggered throughout Europe.

Most of the Republican presidential candidates have jumped aboard, although Democrat Hillary Clinton has expressed reservations, warning that more U.S. forces gives the Islamic State “a new recruitment tool.” She obviously wants to adhere to her own foreign policy rather than simply embrace that of her old boss when she was his secretary of state.

Barack Obama in his waning presidency must persevere the best he can to limit further loss of American life in the Middle East. He continues to be a reluctant a wartime president and a leader obliged to help cobble together the improbable band of strange bedfellows now rousing to confront this latest barbaric threat.

Editor’s note: Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.)

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