On Monday’s “Special Report,” Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume elaborated on his argument he made a day earlier on “Fox News Sunday,” which questioned the sincerity of President Barack Obama’s effort to combat ISIS in the Middle East.
According to Hume, Obama was forced to act as a result of public opinion, which was not out of conviction and destined not to succeed.
“There is an internationally respected case to be made that the United States should do nothing or next to nothing to destroy the terrorist force known as ISIS,” Hume said. “It goes something like this — despite its beheadings and its threats, ISIS should be seen more as a regional force more intent on capturing territory in the Middle East than trying to attack a super power an ocean away. Any strategy to defeat ISIS that relies solely on airpower can certainly make things harder for ISIS fighters, but it takes ground troops to dislodge occupiers from conquered territory. U.S ground troops might be the only force capable of truly defeating ISIS. But their introduction, especially in Syria, would be a throw of the dice against utterly unpredictable odds. The Mideast, as the arguments goes, is in the midst of a historic upheaval that should be permitted to run its course — not because things will turn out well but it’s unlikely that American military force can make things turn out better. I don’t buy this argument, but I sense that President Obama does and would have preferred to take no action against ISIS beyond some airstrikes in Iraq. But he felt his hand was forced to by the public’s outrage and alarm over those videotaped beheadings so he came up with a strategy for ISIS’s eventually defeat, which is not designed to succeed so much as to fail slowly in a mission he doubts that should even be undertaken.”
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