Clinton linked thnk tank wants US ground conflict with ISIS

Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times - A think tank with ties to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton issued strong criticisms Thursday of the Obama administration’s strategy to combat the Islamic State, with analysts writing that the U.S. is “failing” and needs to change course.

Two former Obama national security aides broke with the president by urging the deployment of American ground troops to directly help the disheveled Iraqi army. One used the word “failing” to describe how the administration is arming the Baghdad military.

Mrs. Clinton helped launched the Center for a New American Security with a keynote speech in 2007. The center is directed by Michele Flournoy, the former undersecretary of defense for policy for President Obama, and who is viewed as a candidate for defense secretary in a Clinton administration.

CNAS issued seven papers on defeating the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, with proposals far different from the current Obama strategy of relying on limited airstrikes and training Iraq’s unproven army to do the ground combat against a growing and vicious terrorist force.

The analyses could be viewed as a preview of how a potential President Clinton would change course in confronting the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and globally.

CNAS analyst Philip Carter, who deployed to Iraq as an Army officer advising the police, and who later became Mr. Obama’s chief of detainee policy, calls for a significant deployment of American ground forces, an option Mr. Obama has avoided.

“To defeat ISIS in Iraq, the United States must deploy special operations forces to directly advise and assist Iraqi forces in combat and embed those SOF advisors at the tactical echelons where they can make a difference,” Mr. Carter writes.

Noting the May 18 rout of Ramadi and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s lament that Iraq’s army lacks the “will to fight,” Philip Carter says: “Unfortunately, the current U.S. effort in Iraq provides them neither the right materiel nor the will to fight. The United States has committed just enough to Iraq to signal our support for the Iraqi government but not enough to achieve our objective: the defeat of ISIS. Without a more robust deployment, and a decision to commit embedded combat advisors to bolster Iraqi forces, we will not succeed in Iraq.”

Shawn Brimley, who was on the White House national security staff until 2012, and before that was an adviser to Ms. Flournoy, used the word “failing” to describe how the administration currently is arming Baghdad. Iraq’s leadership seems incapable of distributing resources to Iraqis willing to fight.

“If this is true, then reinforcing a failing strategy that depends on Baghdad doing the right thing might not only be misguided but counterproductive,” he writes. “A better approach might be to surge resources to those actors in Iraq who we judge would actually take on ISIS on the battlefield.”