My colleague Colin Wolfgang recently wrote about Pres.
Obama’s speech last Wednesday, in which the president announced that US airstrikes would
extend from Iraq into Syria to combat the growing threat of the terrorist
group ISIS(/IS/ISIL/who-cares-what-they-call-themselves-they’re-nuts). While many,
including Mr. Wolfgang, point to the speech as a turning point in the Obama
administration away from isolationism, it in fact continues the Obama White
House foreign policy that has been in place since he took office: namely, Pres.
Obama’s policy of small- to medium-scale military intervention by another name.
Whether you call it “police action,” “counterterrorism,”
“targeted airstrikes,” or any of the other Obama administration euphemisms,
this White House has pursued interventionist tactics in almost every global
hotspot where it has encountered national security threats. The supposed difference from
the George W. Bush administration has been the absence of “boots on
the ground,” despite the fact that there will now be nearly 2,000 American
“advisors” and who-knows-how-many special operations and CIA agents in Iraq.
While large-scale military operations such as the Bush-era wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
have been wound down, the United States is far from an
isolationist nation.
