President Obama gave Thomas Friedman an hour long interview before heading off on vacation to Martha’s Vineyard.    Within the interview the failure of a cohesive Obama foreign policy shines through despite the attempted cover from liberal reporters.
There’s actually two parts to this interview – the interview as reported – and the opinion piece from Friedman about the interview itself.
Within the Times Article you find the footprints of a dejected President staring boldly into the face of his own failure and shortcomings:

[…]  “We’re not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq,” the president said in an hourlong interview with Thomas L. Friedman, a New York Times columnist, as American planes and drones began dropping bombs in Iraq. “But we can only do that if we know that we have got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void.”

[…]  Mr. Obama offered his justifications for his latest use of military force in Iraq while lamenting the outcome of a similar decision he made to intervene militarily in Libya in 2011. He defended the desire to help oust the Libyan dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, with American air power, but he acknowledged that he had “underestimated” the chaos that would follow after American forces left.

“So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene militarily?’ ” Mr. Obama said. “Do we have an answer the day after?”

Oh that’s nice, as long as he readily admits his failure in Libya now.   Readers will note he’s essentially reaffirming the Bush policy in Iraq by saying the failure in Libya was a failure to stick around and nation build.

This, despite the fact Obama himself worsened the collapse in Iraq by pulling U.S. forces out ahead of structural governance in place which would insure their own security.

So failing to have a plan to stick around in Libya was a mistake, but pulling out from a plan to stick around in Iraq was, well, what exactly ? (more…)

Video from two U.S. military targeted airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets in northern Iraq.
The first attack occurred about 6:45 a.m. EDT when two F/A-18 aircraft dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery piece near Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region. ISIL was using this artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending the city, where U.S. personnel are located.

In 2011 President Obama stated -to much controversy- he did not need to notify congress, or the American people, of his military engagements in Libya (which eventually he called R2P, Responsibility To Protect).   His own White House attorneys were perplexed.

However, since then, and perhaps because the political risk (ie. polling disapproval) in year 6 is too great, he appears to have found his notification pen. (more…)

ANALYSIS – The uprising against the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad was still young when moderate rebels made their plea to Washington: Provide us with arms so we might fight the dictator — and prevent the rise of more extremist groups.
But President Barack Obama, who had come into office on the promise of drawing down American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, was reluctant. He was not getting into another Middle East mess.
Now, however, those same extremist groups feared by the moderates have gone on a murderous rampage through Iraq and Syria, slaying security forces and civilians and openly bragging about it on Twitter. After the fighters captured a strategic dam and sent tens of thousands of people on the run in northern Iraq, creating a humanitarian crisis, Washington was finally forced to respond. On Friday, U.S. forces bombed Islamic State positions near the Kurdish city of Erbil.
If the previous administration was too eager to get into Iraq; the current administration was all too hesitant.
(more…)

BAGHDAD (AP) — Hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive by Sunni militants with “vicious plans,” an Iraqi official said Friday, further underscoring the dire plight of Iraq’s minorities at the hands of the Islamic State group.

Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry, said hundreds of Yazidi women below the age of 35 are being held in schools in Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul. He said the ministry learned of the captives from their families.
“We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them,” Amin told The Associated Press. “We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values.” (more…)

Today’s forecast:  Clear Skies With A Chance For Freedom !!  

BREAKING NEWS: US launches second round of airstrikes on targets in northern Iraq, official says http://t.co/b9JgqwAznv

— Fox News Alert (@foxnewsalert) August 8, 2014

(Via NBC News )  The United States launched another round of airstrikes against an ISIS target in Iraq on Friday, U.S. officials told NBC News. According to officials, the strikes occurred on a target northwest of Erbil. The strikes came a day after they were threatened by President Barack Obama.

Earlier Friday, two 500 pound bombs were dropped by two Navy F-18 fighter jets near Erbil, the strategically important city that serves as the Kurdish capital, and where the United States has a consulate. ISIS was using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil, the Pentagon said. (more…)

More brilliance from the simultaneously firing synapses of The Harf.

(Via PJ Media) Another classic from the “promise of hashtag” crowd.
During today’s State Department press briefing, deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf addressed the unfolding crisis in Iraq.

That crisis has many sources, but its chief source is ISIL. ISIL has taken hold of a large swath of northern Iraq and is killing anyone and everyone who gets in their way, or who refuses to bow to their take on Islam. Currently ISIL has about 40,000 men, women and children holed up on top of a mountain, starving them to death.
A reporter asked if there is a “confrontation to stop” ISIL’s spread.

Harf: “It’s not just a humanitarian crisis. I mean, that’s certainly a key piece of particularly what we’ve seen over the last 48 hours, certainly. But there’s a huge security challenge – if you talk about the Mosul dam, if you talk about other places.
ISIL is a threat not just because they kill innocent civilians because of their religion, but because they’re a huge security threat to the stability of certain parts of Iraq. And that’s why throughout this conflict you have seen us continue to ramp up our support and continue to look very urgently at other things we could do to help fight this threat, because at the end of the day we can help the Iraqis, but the Iraqis also have to stand up, they have to pull themselves together, with our help, because this is a threat that certainly they but no one else in the region wants to see grow any more.”

.¶…”The wheels on the bike go harf, harf. harf”,….

It’s about friggin’ time !   President Obama says the action is to prevent “genocide” and provide relief to thousands of Iraqi religious minorities who have fled to the Northern mountains of Iraq.  [Video ADDED 9:50pm EST More updates will follow soon]

The New York Times is reporting -based on ground sources in the region- that the U.S. is bombing ISIS positions in Northern Iraq.

However, I share with an abundance of caution -and I can most certainly be wrong-  but my hunch is the ground reports, and as a consequence the New York Times, are crediting the wrong air force.
Additionally, the White House is strongly refuting the claims by the NYT.  Here’s the report from the Times:

DOHUK, Iraq — American military forces bombed at least two targets in northern Iraq on Thursday night to rout Islamist insurgents who have trapped tens of thousands of religious minorities in Kurdish areas, Kurdish officials said.

Word of the bombings, reported on Kurdish television from the city of Erbil, came as President Obama was preparing to make a statement in Washington.

Kurdish officials said the bombings targeted fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria who had seized two towns, Gwer and Mahmour. Residents who had fled those areas by car were heard honking their horns in approval.

(more…)

The current situation in Northern Iraq gives us an opportunity to once again check the litmus test of Obama’s R2P intervention.

March 2011 approximately 100,000 al-Qaeda radical Islamists were fighting in Benghazi Libya – President Gaddaffi’s military was en route to eliminate them – when Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and President Obama announced the Responsibility To Protect (R2P) Doctrine:

 …“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and -more profoundly- our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. 

Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries.  The United States of America is different.  And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”… 

~President Obama

The R2P goal was to “save the Libyan rebels”.   The “rebels” -as you are aware- were al-Qaeda affiliates, Ansar al-Sharia, or essentially, the Muslim Brotherhood. (more…)