Reversal or Refinement? Seeking Meaning to Obama's New Iraq Path
by JON SCHUPPE and CASSANDRA VINOGRAD
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American Troops Headed Back to Iraq to Act as Trainers 2:33
President Barack Obama's decision this week to increase America's training of Iraqi troops fighting ISIS was not what he contemplated when he completed a withdrawal of ground troops from the country in 2011.
But a lot has changed since he boasted of fulfilling that campaign promise.
Namely, ISIS.
The rise of the terror organization, aided by political strife that turned local Sunnis against the Iraqi government, has forced Obama to rethink his Iraq strategy.
In what critics see as a reversal, Obama said Wednesday he would send 450 military personnel to train Iraqi military at a base in Anbar province, where it has been losing ground to ISIS. That is in addition to the more than 3,000 Americans already on the ground in advisory and training roles.
On Thursday, the Pentagon said it was considering opening additional bases in the Anbar area to expand those training operations.
"It's just more of what we've done before, which hasn't worked," said David Phillips, director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights.
He called the moves "throwing good money after bad."
Islamic State group militants stand with a captured Iraqi army Humvee at a checkpoint outside Beiji refinery, 155 miles north of Baghdad. AP file
But others caution against viewing this week's moves as evidence that Obama is going back on his word.
Instead, they say, Obama is refining his new strategy on training the Iraqis, this time to focus on the Sunni tribes that feel displaced by the Shiite-led government and have not joined the fight against ISIS enthusiastically.
Up to now, the U.S. training has typically focused on Shiites and Kurds.
"In many ways, it's a continuation of the same thing," said Scott Stewart, a terrorism and security analyst at the global intelligence firm Stratfor. "It's an expansion of the training, and in a logical direction with Sunnis."
But it won't be enough to simply train the Sunnis, Stewart said. The Americans will also have to persuade the Sunnis to join the fight.
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