{"id":158822,"date":"2015-06-12T06:38:31","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T06:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=158822"},"modified":"2015-06-12T06:38:31","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T06:38:31","slug":"obama-strategy-iraq-escalation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/obama-strategy-iraq-escalation\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Does Have a Strategy in Iraq: Escalation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Almost nine months after President Obama admitted that \u201cwe \u00a0don\u2019t have a strategy yet\u201d to challenge the Islamic State \u2014 and just days after he said he still has \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/06\/08\/politics\/obama-abadi-iraq-germany-g7\/\">no complete Iraq strategy<\/a>\u201d \u2014 the non-strategy suddenly has \u00a0a name: escalation.<\/p>\n<p>According to reports in the <em>New York Times<\/em> and the <em>Wall \u00a0Street Journal<\/em>, the Obama administration is poised to send <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-33076238\">400 to 500 additional troops<\/a> to Iraq immediately, and to build a new U.S. military base in restive Anbar province to house them \u2014 and potentially many more.<\/p>\n<p>These troops would not be limited to the officially narrow training<br \/>\nmission of the 3,100 U.S. troops already on the ground in Iraq. They<br \/>\nwould still be considered trainers and advisers, but their mission,<br \/>\naccording to the <em>Times<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/glogin?URI=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2015%2F06%2F10%2Fworld%2Fmiddleeast%2Fus-adding-military-advisers-to-reclaim-iraqi-city-officials-say.html%3F_r%3D0\">would<br \/>\nbe<\/a> \u201cto help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi and repel<br \/>\nthe Islamic State.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The escalation isn\u2019t exactly the massive deployment of ground<br \/>\ntroops called for by some hawks in Congress and by neo-conservative<br \/>\ncommentators, who continue to blame the rise of the Islamic State<br \/>\non Obama\u2019s earlier withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq \u2014 rather than<br \/>\non George W. Bush\u2019s initial invasion and occupation of the country,<br \/>\nwhich actually led to the creation of the group in 2004.<\/p>\n<p>But the <em>Journal<\/em> still <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/u-s-prepares-plan-to-send-hundreds-more-troops-to-iraq-1433886530\">recognized<\/a><br \/>\nthat \u201cthe new plan is a marked if modest expansion of the U.S.<br \/>\nmilitary role in Iraq. It would expose American forces to greater<br \/>\nrisk of being drawn into direct combat with Islamic State forces that<br \/>\nalready control territory around likely sites for a planned U.S. training<br \/>\nbase.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Series of Setbacks<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The official reason is linked to the Islamic State\u2019s recent<br \/>\nseizure of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and a key city only<br \/>\n70 or so miles from Baghdad. (As <em>Business Insider<\/em> so nicely<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/distance-from-ramadi-to-baghdad-2015-5\">put<br \/>\nit<\/a>, Ramadi is closer to Baghdad than New York is to East Hampton.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/phyllis-bennis\/2015\/06\/11\/obama-does-have-a-strategy-in-iraq-escalation\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Almost nine months after President Obama admitted that \u201cwe \u00a0don\u2019t have a strategy yet\u201d to challenge the Islamic State \u2014 and just days after he said he still has \u201cno complete Iraq strategy\u201d \u2014 the non-strategy suddenly has \u00a0a name: escalation. According to reports in the New York Times and the Wall \u00a0Street Journal, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-158822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news","9":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}