On Iraq, Obama Vows To Restore American Weakness

“By the time we’re finished, what will remain of American influence in the Middle East will resemble this invisible basketball.”

Washington, DC, August 16 – President Obama took the case for a limited strike against ISIS targets to Congress this week, arguing that a contentious, politically fraught process an and uncertain outcome were the only way to ensure that no matter what the result, the US would emerge with a diminished standing.

In an address to reporters and fellow Democrats, the President gave the rationale for delaying a strike, if any, until after Congress takes up the question instead of summarily deciding against military action. As Obama sees it, simply letting the Islamic State off the hook for its brutality would not have the same deleterious effect on American global influence as a protracted display of cowardice, backpedaling, partisan divisiveness, and lack of political will.

“Iranian ascendancy remains only one possible outcome of many if the US launches strikes against Iraq,” Obama told those in attendance. “But to simultaneously guarantee decades of profound Ayatollah influence in the Middle East and a retrenchment of American power not seen since the withdrawal from Vietnam, we have to approach the very idea of military action with a manifest absence of confidence; with an unwillingness to deploy the power in which we’ve invested trillions of dollars; and with an ironic obliviousness to the effect this compromising of principles has on both our allies and enemies.”

In fact, said Secretary of State John Kerry, the ultimate foreign policy goal is not merely withdrawing from leadership on the world stage and slowly fading into history. The Obama administration aims to set in motion an accelerated American decline so irreversible that no matter who succeeds Obama in the Oval Office, by 2030 the US will wield roughly the same level of international clout as it did in 1799.

“My address last week on the urgency of American-led military intervention in Iraq was simply to raise the stakes in the event of the inevitable, agonizing reversal,” explained Kerry. “In fact, since the beginning, talk of an American strike never went beyond consideration of a limited, targeted operation with no boots on the ground, meaning that neither ISIS nor the mullahs of Tehran would have to seriously contend with American military might.”

That might, he added, is the only thing that might deter ISIS from threatening the rest of Iraq. The very fact that any on-again, off-again military operation was never even conceived as a campaign with actual deterrent value, and would only be a tactical move to allow some Yazidis and Kurds to escape, has anti-American groups the world over to claim that it was their threats of retaliation against American interests that kept the US from getting more deeply involved.

Following the meeting with reporters and supporters, Obama was to meet with representatives of the Chinese government to negotiate how and at what pace Beijing will take over as the leading industrialized nation.