Obama: Still failing to take ISIS seriously ?

“The split-screen told the story,” said Charles Krauthammer in the New York Daily News. As Belgian authorities were “picking body parts off the floor of the Brussels airport” last week, our TVs also showed us the president of the United States, looking cool in a pair of $485 Oliver Peoples sunglasses, “yukking it up” with Cuban dictator Raúl Castro at a baseball game in Havana, even joining the crowd in doing the Wave. Obama didn’t entirely ignore the bombings. He addressed them for all of 51 seconds before making a flowery, self-consciously “historic” speech to the Cuban people. Then Obama flew to Argentina, where he danced the tango at a state dinner. Obama simply refuses “to act as if the war on ISIS is a big deal,” said Jonathan Tobin in CommentaryMagazine.com. After every fresh ISIS atrocity—including last year’s massacres in Paris and San Bernardino—he makes a few dispassionate, boilerplate remarks, and then returns to his scheduled activities: a round of golf, most notoriously, after ISIS beheaded James Foley in 2014. Our president seems to have no idea “what is appropriate behavior at a time of tragedy and crisis.”

Obama’s steady temperament is a blessing, said Paul Waldman in WashingtonPost.com. Let’s not forget that his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, was so rattled by the Islamic terrorism on 9/11 that he committed “the single most catastrophic mistake in American foreign policy history:” the 2003 invasion of Iraq that threw the region into chaos and gave rise to ISIS. Yet Republicans still seem to think all foreign policy is about “threats and dangers,” and showing “strength” by threatening to go to war. While his critics were mocking Obama’s eyewear and dance moves, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times, U.S. military leaders quietly announced they had killed two of ISIS’s most senior leaders, using a raid strategy by special operations forces that Obama has pushed. However chilled out Obama may look, he always has “his eye on the ball.”

No, he doesn’t, said William Bradley in HuffingtonPost .com. Obama may be right to be wary of military adventurism, but he “got ISIS wrong from the beginning,” famously dismissing the terrorist group as al Qaida’s “JV team.” By responding with too little, too late, the president let ISIS swell into an unprecedented terrorist army that conquered large regions in Iraq and Syria. And when ISIS began exporting its barbarity to Europe with the Paris attacks, Obama was content to stay with his policy of halfhearted, incremental warfare. If there are “more terrorist spectaculars” in coming months “while Obama tangos,” he might see Americans turn in desperation to Donald Trump.

Actually, Obama’s strategy on ISIS seems to be working, said Kevin Drum in MotherJones.com. ISIS-held territory has shrunk by 40 percent since 2014, thanks to sustained bombing and the underreported special operations forces campaign. Frontline commanders are reporting that ISIS fighters have become ragged and demoralized, and retreat whenever they meet strong resistance. By November, wouldn’t it be awful for Republicans if the same “weak-kneed appeaser” who killed Osama bin Laden had ISIS on the ropes? That may be a little optimistic, said Ted Piccone in Time.com. ISIS will likely be with us long after Obama leaves office. But if we ever hope to see peace in the Middle East, we will need more of what Obama has made the priority of his presidency: diplomacy, outreach, and the promotion of American values. In the long run, winning “hearts and minds” will advance our country’s interests far more effectively than “tough talk and bluster.”