President Obama's Islamic State War Czar Is Resigning

Eli Lake and Josh Rogin, Bloomberg: Obama's Islamic State War Czar Stepping Down

President Barack Obama is about to lose the man he hand-picked to build the war effort against the Islamic State. Retired General John Allen will be stepping down as envoy to the global coalition this fall, and the White House is searching for a replacement to be the face of America’s flailing effort to destroy the jihadist group in Syria and Iraq.

Allen will leave government service in the coming weeks, four administration officials told us. State Department officials said they were not ready to officially announce Allen’s departure, but he has notified his superiors he will give up his job in early November, after serving just over one year. His chief of staff, Karin von Hippel, will also depart, to join a British think tank.

WNU Editor: If this is true it is just more evidence that President Obama's Middle East policy is in disarray, and also on how deeply divided his administration has become on this policy. My analysis ..... I do not expect President Obama to change .... he is determined to limit U.S. military involvement in the many wars that are now erupting throughout the region .... even going against the advice of his Islamic State war scar (who is now resigning), his Generals, his national security advisers, the intelligence community, and much of Congress. Is President Obama right? I for one have always advocated a limited involvement .... we do not have the resources, the political/public support, and more importantly .... the will to engage in the Middle East on a massive scale. In short .... I have been supportive to a certain degree on President Obama's strategy. But I am now wondering if I have been wrong. Since withdrawing from Iraq and limiting the U.S. footprint in the Middle East .... the entire region is now in the process of collapsing into multiple wars. This has spawned a massive refugee crisis .... that Europe is now realizing will probably involve the mass migration of millions of people into their continent. This is the point in time where I must say that a new strategy needs to be developed, debated, and agreed upon. The current strategy is clearly a failure .... in fact .... if trends continue it may spawn a far worst crisis in the next year or two. Unfortunately .... I do not see such a revisit of policy happening in this White House. I am also fearful that President Obama's replacement will be faced with a situation where massive numbers of U.S. troops will need to be deployed to the Middle East to restore a semblance of peace because we decided in the past to elect a President who made it his mandate to disengage U.S. forces from the region .... a disengagement that resulted in the worst of the worst stepping into the vacuum.