Despite President Barack Obama’s strident assurances that there will be no American ground troops deployed to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State (ISIS), Americans don’t believe him, Howard Fineman, editorial director for the Huffington Post Media Group, said Tuesday on "America's Forum"
on Newsmax TV.
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"The interesting thing to me is that the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll said that more than 70 percent of the American people expect there to be American combat boots on the ground in the region," Fineman said. "Whatever lines in the sand the president is drawing, the American people — both who support the idea of the putting boots on the ground in combat and those who oppose it — both believe it's going to happen regardless of what the president is saying right now. It means they're not paying attention to what he's saying. They're making their own judgments."
Combined with other missteps to combat the violent terror group, Obama’s repeated parroting of the
no ground troops mantra has resulted in painting himself into a corner, he said.
"He's in a tough position because he has infamously called ISIS the junior varsity and he's staked his entire political identity on the idea of being the guy who ends wars and conflicts, not the guy who agrees that it's time for us to reengage militarily," Fineman said. "If he does it down the road, his critics will say he's late to the game and he screwed up."
Many Democrats are avoiding the president for fear of paying for Obama’s mistakes at the polls.
"It's quite possible and that's one reason why Democrats are not uniformly enthusiastic about coming back to Washington to hold a vote on this," Fineman said, referring to a new authorization of force agreement. "It will lay bare substantial divisions within the Democratic Party. Obama first appeared on the scene as an anti-war candidate giving that speech back in Chicago in 2002 against the Iraq war. That's what got him inside position in the race against Hillary Clinton years later for the nomination and that's still his base in the party. They will be increasingly disappointed and questioning and he's fully aware of that."
The Obama administration’s fluid policies have made Democrats running for Senate seats in traditionally red or purple states
especially vulnerable, according to Fineman.
"As the steward of the never ending battle against terror, there are places where it can hurt him politically," he noted. "Attack ads in Georgia and New Hampshire, questioning whether the president was on the watch, on the ball or vigilant, could further deepen his negatives in those states. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in Kentucky, is attacking the president on this issue."
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