The article is too solicitous of the President's feelings and gives him too much credit. That said, it makes certain points I haven't seen elsewhere, points that ring true. For example Kuttner quotes the following from the President's interview with NYT foreign policy wonk Tom Friedman, the portions in quotes are Obama speaking:
"[W]e did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because that would have taken the pressure off of [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki." That only would have encouraged, he said, Maliki and other Shiites to think: 'We don't actually have to make compromises. We don't have to make any decisions. We don't have to go through the difficult process of figuring out what we've done wrong in the past. All we have to do is let the Americans bail us out again. And we can go about business as usual.'"Kuttner reacts:
In effect, Obama is saying, we will let ISIL do the dirty work that America is unwilling to do in forcing out Maliki, while keeping enough military pressure on ISIL to prevent them from overrunning Iraq altogether. That tactic might work, but it is risky as hell, and it hardly adds up a policy of "no victors/no vanquished" (a policy Obama earlier said he required - explanation added).Kuttner concludes:
No president ever wins points for being Hamlet. In today's foreign policy crises, there are few good choices. Somehow, this president needs to hold on to his prudence while finding more decisiveness.
