Worse than you can possibly believe.

The truth is evident. Barack Obama is a tiny, timorous man who is intellectually unable to comprehend the challenge facing the United States and Europe from ISIS and even if he could recognize the challenge he is morally incapable responding.

“It is not just my view but the view of my closest military and civilian advisers that that would be a mistake,” Obama said about the possibility of sending more U.S. ground troops. “Not because our military could not march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and temporarily clear out ISIL but because we would see a repetition of what we’ve seen before, which is if you do not have local populations that are committing to inclusive governance and who are pushing back against ideological extremes, that they resurface, unless we’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries.”

Really. ISIS arose in those areas because Barack Obama peremptorily withdrew US forces. This left people who had been allied with us against al-Qaeda on their own and it allowed ISIS to spring from al-Qaeda.  While he clearly blames the Iraqis for ISIS, he fails to see that the presence of US forces were necessary to give the Iraqis time to build civil institutions that, had they ever existed, were destroyed by Saddam Hussein.

In answering to criticism that he has not done enough to fight ISIL, Obama said he hasn’t seen a sound alternative. “If there’s a good idea out there, then we’re going to do it,” Obama said. “I don’t think I’ve shown a hesitation to act.” He also responded to reporters’ repeated questions with mild irritation. “All right, this is another variation on the same question. And I guess, let me try it one last time.”

If “folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do, present a specific plan,” Obama remarked, an implicit rebuke of some Republican presidential candidates…

“If they think somehow that their advisers are better than my joint chiefs of staff or my generals on the ground, I want to meet them. And we can have that debate,” the president said, an apparent response to Carson’s claim, while also taking a dig at Donald Trump in the process.

Would these be the advisers you are talking about?

“Every few weeks I meet with my entire National Security team”…to “go after every single threat stream” @POTUS @CBSNews

— Norah O’Donnell (@NorahODonnell) November 16, 2015

In fact, Obama has done nothing but issue press releases and act an internet troll. It is not the job of Obama’s critics, from either right or left, to present him with a plan. It is the job of critics to point out what is not working. Right now, Obama has done something that hasn’t happened in foreign policy since 9/11. Both left and right are united it saying that what he is doing is ineffectual. The fact is that Obama is facing a popular movement that is based on a fairly mainstream Sunni vision of an Islamic state. He is trying to ignore it while entertaining us with airstrikes that are doing nothing.

“What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies and people like France. I’m too busy for that.”

So how’s that working out for you? How well are you doing in supporting our regional allies? Why are Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan looking to Russia for leadership? Why did Benjamin Netanyahu visit Moscow? If you aren’t interesting in pursuing “some notion of… America winning” then how are you acting any different from ISIS?

“We have the right strategy and we’re gonna see it through,” he declared.

Really. How well did that strategy work Friday, after you declared ISIS had been contained? Does anyone associated with your strategy believe it is working? 

A former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) says the U.S. strategy toward the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) “is not working.”

 Michael Morell said recent attacks by the terrorist group in Paris and on a Russian passenger plane show it’s time for the U.S. to reconsider its strategy.

“I think it’s now crystal clear to us that our strategy, our policy vis-à-vis ISIS is not working, and it’s time to look at something else,” Morell said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

This guy is out of his depth. He doesn’t know what to do because to do anything would require him to act against his two core beliefs: an intense dislike of the United States and admiration for all enemies of the United States. Now, finally, he has been revealed to the world as a poseur, something most of us have known since 2007. It is just a shame 500 people had to be killed or wounded in Paris to make the point clear.