Headlines are blaring from Politico (
Obama still doesn't have a strategy for ISIL) to
The Hill (
Obama: 'We don't yet have a complete strategy' against ISIS to CBS (
Obama: U.S. does not have "complete strategy" to halt ISIS) blowing up—and just blowing—remarks that President Obama made at a briefing following the Group of Seven (G7) summit Monday. Here's Politico, representative of most of this reporting:
Back in September, Obama created a political problem for himself by saying “we don’t have a strategy yet” to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.
On Monday, speaking at the end of a G-7 summit in Germany that included a meeting with the new Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, he rearranged the words and added an adjective, but said the same thing about training Iraqi troops to fight ISIL: “We don’t yet have a complete strategy,” Obama said.
Here's the actual transcript of what Obama
actually said.
So one of the areas where we’re going to have to improve is the speed at which we’re training Iraqi forces. Where we’ve trained Iraqi forces directly and equipped them, and we have a train-and-assist posture, they operate effectively. Where we haven’t, morale, lack of equipment, et cetera, may undermine the effectiveness of Iraqi security forces. So we want to get more Iraqi security forces trained, fresh, well-equipped and focused. And President Abadi wants the same thing.
So we’re reviewing a range of plans for how we might do that, essentially accelerating the number of Iraqi forces that are properly trained and equipped and have a focused strategy and good leadership. And when a finalized plan is presented to me by the Pentagon, then I will share it with the American people. We don’t yet have a complete strategy because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis, as well, about how recruitment takes place, how that training takes place. And so the details of that are not yet worked out.
Yes, that's a complex answer, and yes, there isn't a complete strategy. That's because it is a complex problem that involves getting the Iraqis on board. This is a strategy in development, and it would be premature for the president to claim that it's anything but. Sure, it's easier to run with the easy soundbite, but it's also incorrect and profoundly irresponsible.