After a number of military vets decried the Obama administration’s
failure to name its campaign against Islamic State terrorists, the White House
finally muted that criticism by providing one of the most anodyne designations
imaginable for its martial effort, “Operation
Inherent Resolve.”
One would have thought that the head of the self-designated
party of nuance would at least have selected a title that wasn’t oxymoronic. As
pundit Tucker Carlson noted, “resolve” is an act of the will and as such shouldn’t
be confused with attributes that are inborn or “inherent.”
In any case, based on an average of seven
airstrikes-per-day, there obviously will be no “Desert Storm” under this Commander in Chief for whom “Delayed Restraint” may be an “Inherent” characteristic. One can
compare that ratio with the average of 138 sorties per-day during NATO’s
campaign against Serbia
or the 800 daily airstrikes in the 2003 war against Saddam Hussein.
Given these facts on the ground (or rather in the air),
there are several more descriptive names that could have been attached to the
campaign against Islamic State:
Operation Apparent
Resolve would point to the gap between appearance and reality in this anti-terror
exercise—a gap that also exists between Vice President Joe Biden’s bombastic “follow
them to the gates of hell” rhetoric and the administration’s “let’s not
call it a war” spin.
Operation Bootless
Venture is a title that combines an air of fecklessness with the
President’s up-front assurance to the terrorists that no U.S. “boots on the
ground” will be employed in its “resolve” to a) “limit and contain” ISIL
or b) “degrade and destroy” those same butchers.
Operation Pass the
Buck would emphasize for midterm voters that such force as the
administration eventually applies to these rapists and murderers of infidels is
only the result of President George W. Bush’s invasion policy and the
stubbornness of Iraq Prime Minister Maliki for not agreeing to a “Status of
Forces Agreement”—this despite the fact that Obama
himself claimed credit in 2012 for withdrawing all American troops from the
country and leaving behind a stable democratic government.
Operation Apologize
in Advance would reflect Mr. Obama’s view of American history as exhibited
in the “America Culpa” Tour that he made at the beginning of his presidency. This
operational title would let everyone know that the Commander in Chief’s Nobel
Peace Prize heart isn’t in this endeavor that regretfully reinforces the leftist
image of America
as a bellicose power responsible for many or even most of the world’s problems.
Operation Blame the
Video would be nice if it hadn’t already been used to shift responsibility
for Benghazi from an organized
terrorist group to a pathetic immigrant in Southern California
who spent months in a Texas
prison for his much-publicized “crime” of defaming Muhammad in an Internet
movie trailer.
Operation Leading
from Behind would accurately convey the President’s foreign policy strategy
and the expectation that someone else will provide ground troops to counter
what his own Secretary of Defense described as an “imminent
threat” to the country.
Operation Phantom
Coalition would also tout this Leading
from Behind meme while taking note of the help we can expect from our international
partners—including NATO- member Turkey .
Operation Exit
Strategy would emphasize what’s most important to the Obama Administration in
any conflict—getting out. After all, as
the President said, all wars must come to an end. And the quickest way to end any
war is to exit the battlefield—consequences be damned.
Operation Desert
Mirage employs alluring Middle Eastern imagery to summon up a vision of
something that isn’t really there. The name also suggests the fanciful hope
that the burgeoning Islamic State will disappear like a pathetic J.V. team when
confronted with a determined non-American opponent—an army composed of recently-trained
Syrian farmers and pharmacists.
Finally, there is the most provocative title for Obama’s containment
campaign against ISIL , Operation Political Expediency—a designation that would reflect the
administration’s need to do something dramatic in light of Americans’ outrage
over the beheading of one of their countrymen.
I can hear Bob Beckel’s Democrat head exploding as I compose
the preceding sentence —indignant that anyone would dare suggest his President
would put military lives on the line for purely political purposes. As if that
same President didn’t withdraw precipitously from Iraq for political reasons
and thus set the stage for the nation’s collapse—and as if Mr. Obama didn’t
announce a specific date for withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan at virtually
the same time he instituted a surge of troops in that supposedly crucial theater—and
as if the Commander in Chief and his Secretary of State didn’t promote a
palpably false “spontaneous demonstration” story about the terrorist attack in
Benghazi to preserve the President’s campaign slogan about a dead bin-Laden and
a decimated Al-Qaeda, creating for voters an Internet-video fiction that Hillary
had the audacity to repeat even at
the memorial service for Benghazi victims.
Sorry, Mr. Beckel, for office-holders of that ilk, Operation Political Expediency would
have been a perfectly accurate designation—though not, of course, politically
expedient to employ.
