Bill Clinton: U.S. has proven it can't win an Iraq land war

From CNN:

Former President Bill Clinton voiced support for the U.S. strategy to defeat ISIS and said only the Iraqi people can win a land war in Iraq.

Speaking Thursday night on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Clinton said the United States has proven it can't win an Iraq war with boots on the ground, but that moderate Sunni tribal leaders working with an inclusive Iraqi government can.

"We can't win a land war in Iraq, but they can and we can help them," Clinton said.

Clinton said he thinks President Barack Obama's strategy to combat ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, "has a chance to succeed."

"The Iraqi government finally includes Sunnis who were representing those tribal leaders who are moderate and without whom ISIS cannot be defeated," he said.

"We can give them intelligence, and we can do bombing, and we have to do that to send a signal to them. That there's a price for decapitating those people," he said, referring to the recent beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and of British aid work David Haines.

"You can't let people get away with that, that's a terrible signal to the world," he said.

Opinions?

No shit.

What say you?

In this situation Iraq is the easy part, Syria is the more complex problem. So Bubba is just being a "good" American by supporting Obama's efforts.

What did he have to say about Syria?

Exactly.

Iraqis don't have the willpower to fight ISIS on their home turf, seeing how they turned tail and ran in Mosul. Yeah, let us not forget Mosul, where 30,000 well equipped trained Iraqi soldiers tucked tail and ran in the face of 800 ISIS fighters, also leaving for ISIS all the weapons, vehicles, armor, body armor, ammo, heavy weapons, not to mention territory. Who does have the initiative is Iran, and we have no will of our own to go seeking their assistance. So, on the Iraq front, I say we're screwed.

As far as Syria goes, we don't want to do anything to assist Assad, so we're giving weapons to the "moderate" Islamic radical jihadists, who will either hand over weapons to ISIS, sell them to ISIS, or have them taken by ISIS. And, who's to say that the ISIS militants won't try hiding among the "moderates" calling in airstrikes against their opposition either from Asssad's forces or the "moderates". The whole thing stinks. Again, another situation where the United States refuses to coordinate efforts with those who have the will to fight. And, counter-productively, we'll be continuing to be giving weapons to ISIS, be it either directly and indirectly.

I don't mind we're going to war (or whatever you wanna call it) with ISIS. But, I think we're going about it all wrong. And I don't support US boots on the ground either. We should be coordinating ground efforts with those with the will to fight. Sure, we don't like Iran, but we should on certain conditions coordinate our airstrikes with their ground efforts to push ISIS out of Iraq, since they wanna play mop up on the ground. Same can be done in Syria. But, a dialogue has to start their first, and conditions be set that they're only there to push ISIS out, and conditions on them avoiding unnecessary civilian casualties. I support this, because frankly the Iraqis are useless and don't have the will to fight for themselves.

I also think it's rather hypocritical of us to be working with Saudi Arabia on this. I mean we're fighting murderous self-righteous jihadists who want to impose Sharia law, just like the Saudis have, who behead people who don't adhere to the stringent religious principles, just like the Saudi's do.

Eh. We did win the initial war. It's hard to fight insurgents unless you're willing to do what they do. And we won't.

He's right. At least given our goals.

We can go in and debilitate an enemy in the region, but to provide long term stability and safety there is beyond our reach (given the parameters in which we must work).

What? We've won all wars we've had in the middle east. Now keeping a country stable afterwards with an insurgency, that's a different story.

We've accomplished every single military objective that we've been given: We destroyed the Taliban, we killed Saddam Hussein, and we killed Osama bin Laden. I think this is a case of Bill Clinton saying something stupid to take some of the heat off Obama.

"moderate Sunni tribal leaders working with an inclusive Iraqi government can.

I am sure they are very moderate like they are in Saudi Arabia.

I think his comments are being taken correctly. The United States has already won a ground war in Iraq. The people living in Iraq just didn't have the will power to keep the victory won for them.

rofl obama the bomber

Define win. We won the iraq war under Bush, of course Obama ran for cover and didn't even try to finish it. Also the containment of Iraq under you bill worked rather well.