Better in their words…

He fooled Americans with a promise of change and transparency. Is his real goal offering the US to Islam in exchange for “Supreme Islam Ruler of the World”?
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So President Obama now says he will send “up to 300” military advisers to Iraq to help reverse the advance of al Qaeda, but not to do any fighting. He may agree to air strikes, but only “if and when” the situation absolutely requires it. Though the immediate threat to Iraq comes from Sunni terrorists, he “will not pursue military actions” that support one sect at the expense of another.

And while “it’s not our job to chose Iraq’s leaders,” the Administration is making no secret of its desire to see Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cashiered in favor of a more “inclusive” leader. The supposed marionette of U.S. intervention in 2003 Ahmed Chalabi is being floated as one possibility, in what would be an irony for the ages.

Amid this exquisite policy calibration announced by Mr. Obama at Thursday’s press conference, we have to ask: What does the President intend to accomplish—other than to offer the appearance of action and strategy?

It can’t be the battlefield defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. We would support that goal if the Administration were serious about committing the resources and time to achieve it. The creation of an al-Qaedastan stretching across central Syria and Iraq and commanding sizable military and economic resources represents a direct threat to the U.S., irrespective of domestic Iraqi or regional considerations.

But a detachment of “up to” 300 military advisers won’t do the job, with or without the occasional targeted strike, especially as the President is already citing the risks of “mission creep.” At best, those advisers might be able to rally a defense of Baghdad if Iraqi security forces decide to make a stand there as they failed to do in Mosul last week. Put simply, the Administration is now acquiescing in a policy of containing ISIS in the hope that the Iraqi military, with added American intelligence and logistical support, can eventually defeat it. Fingers crossed.

The model Mr. Obama cited Thursday was Yemen, where the U.S. cooperates with the government to conduct drone strikes against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) without a large troop commitment. The comparison might inspire more hope were it not that ISIS controls vastly more terrain and fields much larger forces than AQAP, which was previously considered the deadliest al Qaeda affiliate.

Meantime, Mr. Obama is pursuing his diplomatic and political options, such as they are. The President announced that he is dispatching John Kerry to Europe and the Mideast, “where he’ll be able to consult with our allies and partners.” The aim, said the President, was to persuade them to “respect Iraq’s territorial integrity” and remind them that they each had “a vital interest” in ensuring that Iraq not collapse into civil war or become a terrorist safe haven.

In other words: Children, behave. It will be interesting to see how Mr. Obama squares his demand for Iraq’s neighbors to respect its territorial integrity with Mr. Maliki’s urgent need for the kind of boots-on-the-ground military assistance Iran is already providing through its elite Quds Force, the foreign arm of its Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Then there is the Administration’s non-clandestine effort to see Mr. Maliki leave office. Nobody doubts that the Shiite leader has a paranoid and authoritarian streak. Issuing an arrest warrant for Tariq al-Hashimi, his Sunni vice president who was later sentenced to death in absentia, was not a move likely to reconcile Iraq’s Sunnis to Shiite majority rule.

Yet the Administration also seems intent on making a fetish of Mr. Maliki’s faults in order to disavow its own responsibility for Iraq’s current failures. Mr. Maliki’s State of Law Party won the single largest bloc of votes in parliamentary elections earlier this year, and wishing he would resign does not address the question of a replacement who is popular with Shiites, acceptable to Sunnis and Kurds, reasonable toward Americans and effective in the fight against terrorists and militias.

The more likely effect of this public maneuvering against Mr. Maliki will be to draw him closer to his Shiite base—which isn’t in the mood for reconciling with Sunnis now lending their support to ISIS. It will also push Mr. Maliki into the waiting arms of Iran, while giving him good grounds to suspect the U.S. of bad faith. If the Administration really wants to sideline the Prime Minister, it would need to offer him a face-saving deal that would allow him a graceful exit from power in exchange for meaningful U.S. commitments to defeat ISIS. What the Administration can’t do is presume to dictate Iraqi politics as if we had 170,000 troops in the country.

In international politics, influence is a function of power, and commitment is a prerequisite to achievement. If Mr. Obama were serious about the threat posed by ISIS and the possible breakup of Iraq, he would not be making the token commitments he made Thursday. It may take some of our liberal friends a while to understand that what the President proposed isn’t a strategy; it is a feint. America’s enemies in Mosul and Tehran will have spotted it right away.

Obama's Iraq Feint – WSJ.