Did John Kerry Forget Poland Again?

Secretary of State John Kerry took to
the op-ed pages to defend the U.S.-led war on the Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to a public “weary” of “US involvement” in
the conflict.

In the Boston Globe:

Let’s start by explaining what this fight is not. It is not a
clash of civilizations. Muslim scholars are outraged about the
Islamic State’s brutality and perversion of Islam, calling its
savagery deviant and heretical. Sunni and Shiite alike have joined
forces against this outrage. The coalition represents a unified
response, as evidenced by the remarkable and unprecedented
participation of five Arab countries in the air strikes in Syria.
And that’s just the beginning. There is a role for every nation,
from helping to dry up outside funding and stopping the flow of
foreign fighters to taking direct military action and providing
humanitarian assistance.

This is not the prelude to another US ground war in the Middle
East. President Obama has said repeatedly that US ground troops
will not engage in combat roles. He means it. I volunteered to
serve and fought in a war I came to believe was a mistake. I take
that lesson seriously. This will not be another one of those
interventions.

President Obama may have said repeatedly that US ground troops
won’t engage in combat roles, but President Obama says a lot of
things. He also repeatedly said he ended the war in Iraq until that
was blamed for the growth of ISIS, at which point he said he had

no idea where the idea he ended the war in Iraq came from.

More importantly, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the joint chiefs of staff
chairman, has indicated U.S. combat troops would be
necessary if coalition partners failed.

About that coalition: John Kerry claims “more than 60 countries”
are part of the anti-ISIS coalition. He doesn’t provide a list, and
one has never been made easily available. I searched for some time
for a list of the 40 countries who participated in the ISIS
conference in Paris earlier this month but couldn’t find one.
Although the U.S. points to Arab participation in airstrikes in
Syria, which countries participated wasn’t initially disclosed by
the U.S. but by an
anonymous source to CNN.

The appeal to a broad coalition as justification for military
intervention is just another rhetorical tool adopted by the Obama
Administration from the Bush Administration, like the
decision to stress that ISIS is evil. Back in 2004, when Kerry
was running against President Bush, he ridiculed the president for
appealing to his broad coalition as justification for the war in
Iraq.

Watch:

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