Former Head of Marine Corps ➡ Obama's ISIS Strategy Doesn't Have 'A Snowball's Chance in Hell'

Mad World

A former head of the Marine Corps had a blatant dose of reality for Obama and his ISIS strategy. According to those in attendance at the Maverick PAC Conference in Washington, D.C. Friday, retired Marine General James Conway, who served as the 34th Commandant of the Marine Corps during the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration, said, “I don’t think the president’s plan has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding.”

While this is a sentiment that most of us share, coming from a military commander with a résumé like the retired four-star General’s speaks volumes. As the top Marine general from 2006 until his retirement in 2010, hearing General Conway say President Barack Obama’s strategy to defeat the terrorist group the Islamic State is doomed to fail, should tell us something.

Not only was General Conway the top Marine general during the last years of his service, the Commandant of the Marine Corps also serves as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During the 2003 Iraq War, Conway led the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

Sources say that the primary concern expressed by General Conway was that “the U.S. did not have a force on the ground in Syria it could rely on, like the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq. Though the Obama administration believes it can support what it says are moderate rebel forces in Syria to aid in the fight against ISIS, many critics warn that there may be no truly moderate force in the country of any significant strength.”

Obama’s strategy is no stranger to coming under fire. General Conway’s concerns are not the only reasons for the criticisms. In addition to the issue Conway addressed in his statement, Obama has also been recently criticized for preemptively taking off the table the possibility of using American combat troops to achieve the mission. More