A history lesson from JFK:

                                           Use of military should be the last resort

                                                     Obama read the wrong book

I have written previously that President Barack Obama chose the wrong reading list when deciding upon how he should govern in the White House. While Doris Kearns Goodwin's treatise on Abraham Lincoln, "Team of Rivals," is an excellent work, Obama should have studied a 20th Century leader who had a spine of steel as he faced down his most significant opponent in the Cold War.

When America U-2 planes discovered that the Soviet Union was placing missiles in Cuba that could carry nuclear weapons in 1963, President John F. Kennedy put together a group to advise him that on the confrontation. It was later dubbed Ex-Comm. These included some cabinet members and military and national security advisers. These men were advisors, and the one with whom JFK felt the least affinity was Gen. Curtis LeMay, who was chief of staff in the U.S. Air Force at the time and a member of the national security council. 

Kennedy decided against the military's advice to attack Cuba with an armed invasion supported by airstrikes. JFK was more concerned with what would happen in Berlin, a city divided between East and West and a toxic region, more than in Cuba. However, he took the position that the best way to stop the missile shipments to Cuba would be a naval blockade, not an attack on the country just 90 miles from our shores. 

The blockade worked, and the Soviet ships turned around and returned to the USSR. However, during these meetings, LeMay said this to JFK: "And you have made some pretty strong statements about (Soviet weapons) being defensive and that we would take action against offensive weapons. I think that a blockade and political talk would be considered by a lot our friends and neutrals as being  pretty weak response to this. And I am sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way too."

Basically, LeMay was saying, "Put up (attack Cuba militarily) or shut up." He was saying that JFK was weak and that blockade was the action of a wimp. 

However, the wimp had steel in his backbone and did not need a military confrontation to demonstrate his machismo. 

That brings us to August, 2014. President Obama has demonstrated that he has a backbone. He went in after bin Laden and captured him; that was a major decision that he made shortly after assuming the presidency. If the mission had exploded in any way, he would never have been re-elected in 2012.

Obama then negotiated a way to end the Iraq War in 2011. His foreign policy vita was solid as he also announced that he was winding down the war in Afghanistan, adding to his foreign policy credentials. 

Despite the protestations from the right that we should become involved in Syria, Libya, the Ukraine … he has held the line on this. Until now. His announcement that he is now allowing "surgical strikes" in Iraq -- shows that instead of a steel spine, he is caving to the military people in his administration and to right-wing nuts like John McCain and Lindsey Graham. 

Prediction: Those two warmongers will be all over the talk shows on Sunday pontificating about how Obama must re-invade Iraq. Those two have been wrong about everything -- everything -- over the past ten years. McCain will argue that the surge worked in 2007. It did, and if we could have left 170,000 troops in Iraq, it could have held. 

Now ISIS is the new al Queda. We must destroy them there so that they will not attack us on our soil -- or in Benghazi. 

Obama's move is also wrong on a political level. He was elected by those who blamed Hillary Clinton for her vote for war in Iraq along with her other hawkish positions. In the fall, the Democrats have to be energized, and Obama has now taken that passion away from his base. 

A Quinnipiac poll illustrated how frustrated Americans are with Iraq. It showed that 61 percent of people believe that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong thing to do. A Pew Foundation poll found that 55 percent of Americans are opposed to becoming involved in Iraq. 

Even right-wing pundit George Will said that attacking Iraq was the worst foreign policy blunder in American history. http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/syndicated/george-will-ohio-senator-is-the-odd-man-out-with/article_a57f9954-1cb3-11e4-bdc0-001a4bcf887a.html

However, Obama is wrong militarily here too. What can we do to stop the march of ISIS by using selective bombings? Nothing. 

Mr. President, stay the hell out of there.