Obama phones it in

In press conferences on Aug. 28, Sept. 3 and Sept. 5, and in a Meet the Press interview on Sept. 7, Obama provided considerable detail about the way he plans to "degrade and ultimately destroy" ISIS. Key themes, cumulatively elaborated over the four sessions, were that 1) The U.S. would not act precipitously in Syria; 2) Obama would not "Americanize" struggle -- U.S. military support would be calibrated to Sunni political action; and 3) the effort would build methodically and take considerable time.

Earlier today I traced these themes through all four of these quite recent Q&As because I assumed that they would serve as prelude to tonight's speech, which would distill them and continue to bring them into sharper focus. But the speech didn't do that. It was the comic book version -- the barest outline. It did not grapple with how the U.S. can build capacity to fight ISIS and foster the beginnings of viable government in Syria, an effort that Obama previously more or less rejected as futile -- and which he did address at least partially on 9/5 and 9/7, suggesting that the difference is greater motive and pressure on nearby Sunni nations to act in concert. He didn't provide any detail as to what degree of Congressional buy-in he considers necessary or unnecessary.  He held up U.S. efforts against al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia as models, rather than his fight against core al Qaeda, seemingly to minimize the threat, though ISIS arguably has more capacity now than bin Laden's group ever did.

Gideon Rachman on Richard Milhous Obama

Gideon Rachman levels a serious (if slightly conditional) charge against Obama and his AfPak policymakers:

"When western politicians talk about “credibility” in Afghanistan, it is often their own credibility they are worrying about most."

Rachman compares the US approach to Somalia, where the "central government controls little more than a few blocks around the presidential palace in Mogadishu and the airport," and implicitly suggest that the US should

apply the Somali model to Afghanistan. That would mean accepting that outside military intervention is often counter-productive, that its human costs are too high, that state-building is unlikely to work and that the west should concentrate on bottling terrorism up, rather than trying to defeat it on the battlefield.