Readers React: If Obama can't execute his strategy against Islamic State, what good is it?

Readers React: If Obama can’t execute his strategy against Islamic State, what good is it?

May 26, 2015 5:34 PM PT

To the editor: Doyle McManus quotes former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker as saying about the fight against Islamic State, “The administration’s strategy is a good strategy — but it only gets done if you actually do it.” (“Obama has a strategy for fighting ISIS -- one that isn’t working,” op-ed, May 23)

In the real world, execution is part of a strategy; the two are not separate. Where in the world is a strategy a good one if it cannot be executed?

John Thompson, the famous Georgetown University basketball coach, deployed his normal slow and defensive strategy in the 1988 Olympics with an athletic and offensive team, and it cost the U.S. a gold medal. BlackBerry had a host of strategies, but none could be executed well enough to make its devices compete.

Developing a strategy that your company or military cannot execute, no matter how wonderful, is simply bad strategy. It’s comical to see someone try and defend arguably the worst foreign policy president in history.

It’s plain and simple: Our president has a very poor strategy against Islamic State.

Greg Lumsden, Studio City

To the editor: As the Republicans demand a strategy to better fight Islamic State, have they asked why the Iraqi army — which fought the Iranian military to a stalemate over many years — now turns and runs before the battle even begins? Is that because George W. Bush dismantled the Iraqi army?

And why are Sunni Iraqis actually supporting Islamic State? Did our former commander in chief set up an Iraqi government that did not serve the Sunni or Kurdish citizens? Are more than 4,000 Americans who fought in Iraq now dead because the Iraqis did not want U.S. troops in their country?

Have the Republicans considered that doing the same thing again may produce the same results? The strategy they should be considering is, “Don’t mess it up again this time.”

Marvin Gordon, Laguna Beach

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