So said the brilliant Iowahawk this week as most people of the world watch in horror the spectacle of 40,000 members of this beleaguered Iraqi minority huddled without food or water on rocky Sinjar mountaintops. Below them the savages of ISIS kidnap Yazidi women, raping them and selling them into slavery. Heads of children ISIS decapitated are displayed on pikes in public parks and there are reports of distraught families tossing their beloved babies from mountaintops rather than watch them slowly starve to death.

This barbarism comes after tens of thousands of Christians were raped, murdered, driven from their ancestral homes and stripped of all their possessions by ISIS.

The president took a brief respite from his heavy fundraising, golf, and vacation schedule to order some bombs dropped on Erbil to protect Americans there and some food drops for the Yazidis, but with no real plan. His was obviously a response to the horror the crimes inspired in Americans tempered by domestic political concerns -- the obvious distaste for the exercise U.S. military power he and his base share.       

The WaPo editors deplore Obama's "half measures" in Iraq:

Obama’s authorization of Iraq airstrikes isn’t connected to a coherent strategy

And even the NY Times editors, while applauding Obama's prudence and restraint, are looking for more:

‘The United States, Turkey and other allies should move quickly to meet the Kurds’ needs for ammunition and weapons as well as advice on more effectively deploying the pesh merga and integrating Kurdish operations with Iraqi security forces. Under pressure from the United States, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq finally agreed this week to cooperate with the Kurds and to provide air support, and should continue to do so.

That will still leave Mr. Obama with the task of framing a broader strategy that involves Saudi Arabia, the Arab League and the United Nations, just to start.’

Yeah, a unified strategy. Why that is urgent now as opposed to two months ago remains a Frequently Unasked Question.[/quote]

After all it was just weeks ago that the president called on Congress to repeal the authorization for use of force that Congress passed almost unanimously when Bush was president.

White House national security adviser Susan Rice petitioned Speaker of the House John Boehner (R., Ohio) in a letter Friday to completely repeal the war authorization, officially known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq, or AUMF.

Rice’s letter was sent as Congress just hours before it approved a resolution opposing U.S. military intervention in Iraq, where the terrorist group ISIL claims to have established an Islamic caliphate.

‘We believe a more appropriate and timely action for Congress to take is the repeal of the outdated 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq,’ Rice wrote, according to a copy of her letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

‘With American combat troops having completed their withdrawal from Iraq on December 18, 2011, the Iraq AUMF is no longer used for any U.S. government activities and the administration fully supports its repeal,” Rice wrote. “Such a repeal would go much further in giving the American people confidence that ground forces will not be sent into combat in Iraq.’

And it has been just months since Obama and Biden bragged that Iraq was so stable that there was no reason why, despite concerns of our military, we couldn’t just pull almost all out troops out of there. Iraq was touted as “sovereign, stable and self-reliant” and that we were leaving it that way was lauded as one of “the great achievements of this administration”. 

(Of course, the Administration’s other notable achievements were the passage of ObamaCare, the widespread criminality of  Obama’s  officials and the harm done to the economy.)

Obama’s apparent choice of successor, the fake Indian Liz Warren, shows every sign of being as clueless as he.  

‘It’s a complicated situation right now in Iraq and the president has taken very targeted actions to provide humanitarian relief that the Iraqi government requested, and to protect American citizens,’

Warren told reporters.  ‘But like the president I believe that any solution in Iraq is going to be a negotiated solution, not a military solution. We do not want to be pulled into another war in Iraq.’

Wouldn’t you like to ask her who we should negotiate with and what our bargaining chips are? I would. Leftists in this country still do not seem to grasp what rug dealers in Casablanca and used car salesmen in Peoria know -- unless you have something to trade that people fear or want -- in this case the imposition of U.S. power on a situation -- you have nothing you can expect to achieve in any negotiation. And unless you have a willing trading partner you are just talking to yourself. Imprecations to negotiate with ISIS are as foolish as admonitions that Israel must negotiate with Hamas, which continues to call for Israel’s complete eradication.

I’d also like to ask where Iraq would be today if Obama had  been more successful in negotiating a status of forces agreement with Maliki or had we not telegraphed to the ISIS monsters and their hapless victims that we would soon be washing our hands of the place and leaving them to their own devices by a date certain.

Generally speaking, the left, which viewed everything that happened  in Iraq while Bush was president as an unspeakably shocking outrage, has been quite still on the Lord of the Flies atmosphere occasioned by our premature withdrawal from there.

Once again -- in just a few words -- Iowahawk paints the picture: “David Burge @iowahawkblog If ISIS captures the Yazidis, I hope they won't waterboard them or put underpants on their heads and stuff. That would be wrong.”

The Department of State’s official responses to ISIS’ and Hamas’ genocidal impulses and conduct underscores the administration’s cluelessness. They, too, drew Iowahawk’s contempt:

“David Burge

@iowahawkblog

Hamas is irresponsible; genocide in Iraq is deeply concerning.

#ShitMyGovernmentSays”

Hamas is fast learning the lesson Obama and Warren have yet to learn. Without anything to trade, there’s nothing to be gained in any negotiation. Hamas started this war because it had lost most of its allies and was on the rocks. It lost big time.

Of course, it played the usual media game but this time some foreign reporters from Italy, Finland and India exposed the Hamas’ deliberate targeting of its own population by firing rockets from civilian areas. Even the BBC (!) complained about Hamas’ posting phony casualty photos. Hamas’ propaganda tactics are of diminishing utility except perhaps as fodder for the already anti-Semitic forces of Europe and the UN and the bright intellects of some celebrities in the entertainment industry. Apparently, Hamas has decided that nothing succeeds like failure, for it has started firing rockets into Israel again and signaled its intention to continue fighting. Still, it seems shocked   that its demand for an airport and seaport was rejected after its aggression succeeded only in decimating its own territory, much of its weaponry and the hidden tunnels it had spent ten years, countless tons of building supplies and the lives of 160 children to create.