ALL DOWNHILL – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  We continue to monitor reaction to Field Marshal Obama's speech about the Islamic State.  At best, reaction is lukewarm.  No one is enthusiastic.  No one has collapsed in awe of how brilliant the plan is.   The trend is downward, with many experts warning that the plan is inadequate and cannot possibly succeed without ground troops.  From Rowan Scarborough at the Washington Times: 

Trying to uproot and destroy the Islamic State’s army of terrorists in Iraq without American ground troops, as President Obama promoted Wednesday night, is doomed to failure, national security experts say.

At the least, the president needs to get ground troops closer to the fight, say some politicians and analysts. He should introduce special operations units to advise and join the Iraqis on hunt-and-kill missions against Islamic State leaders, as well as insert controllers to point out targets for warplanes.

“What a waste of time,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State Department. “We have not learned a thing in 80 years. [The Islamic State] is an army. The air power is not going to get the job done. Until you put troops in and kill these guys, they’re going to continue. They adjust to tactics. They meld into [the] civilian population.”

Militants in the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, are so embedded in Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi and other Iraqi towns that it will take skilled land combatants to evict them, block by block, analysts say. Relying on the Iraqi security forces, even with front-line U.S. air power, is iffy at best, because Iraqi troops have conducted mass retreats rather than standing and fighting in major battlefield offensives.

Said an Army officer in the Pentagon: “Air power alone cannot win wars. [The president’s] stated strategy ignores this widely accepted truth. But with troops on the ground, in very small numbers, we can team with Kurds and Shia to support those ground forces in rapidly defeating ISIS.”

Retired Army Gen. John Keane, an architect of the 2007 troop surge carried out by Gen. David H. Petraeus, said that, at the least, the campaign needs American advisers closer to battle

“If the U.S.-led coalition conducts a very aggressive air campaign that hits ISIS hard, sustained and simultaneous[ly] in Iraq and Syria, then ISIS will lose freedom of movement [and] initiative, and will become defensive,” Mr. Keane said. “However, defeat requires a ground counteroffensive to retake lost territory, led by the Iraqi army and the Free Syrian Army [and] supported by close air support.”

COMMENT:  Civilian leaders are routinely sold air campaigns as a kind of "clean" warfare, with glamorous jets flying overhead.  Air power, of course, is critical, but the experts are right.  To win a war, ground must be taken.  And it can only be taken by ground troops.  We love to use the phrase, "no American boots on the ground."  It's like a love song that is sung by a teenage boy  Not much substance. 

September 12, 2014