Tuesday, Jan 27, military advisers went to congress, and excoriated Obama's terror strategy - reminding Congress that we do not have a strategy for success.

In US News and World Report, here,  we are told of todays (1/27/2015) appearance of three of the best military minds in the business of terror warfare,  appearing before a congressional committee,  and telling that committee,  in no uncertain terms,  that Obama's strategy against ISIS and domestic terror,  is not working,  that it is a profound failure,  and something needs to done,  now,  to change our national direction as to terror.
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Read the full report at US News and World Report.  Here is a rather lengthy excerpt:  

An absence of clear policies from the White House makes it impossible for the U.S. to achieve any sort of victory in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the region, according to three former top military officers who oversaw recent wars there.

“[We need to] come out from our reactive crouch and take a firm, strategic stance in defense of our values,” retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis said to Congress Tuesday morning.

“America needs a refreshed national security strategy,” he added, saying that it must look beyond the string of crisis “currently consuming the executive branch.”  . . . . . . . . . . .  The three former commanders highlighted what they see as a common problem among top conflicts sucking in U.S. forces deployed abroad, and threats to the American people at home.

The U.S. has been in a “strategy-free” stance in Iraq for some time, and it didn’t begin with the Obama administration, Mattis said. He applauded President Barack Obama for visiting Saudi Arabia this week to reinforce ties with the longtime Middle Eastern ally, and for using U.S. influence to help oust Nouri al-Maliki, the polarizing former Iraqi prime minister.

But many countries in the region, including the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, remain confused about what America hopes to achieve there while stating its goal remains to pivot to the Pacific.

“We’ve disappointed a lot of friends out there, from Abu Dabi to Riyadh, from Tel Aviv to Cairo,” Mattis said.

Keane, a Vietnam veteran, helped oversee the initial invasion of Iraq and became one of the most vocal advocates following his 2003 retirement for increasing the number of troops deployed to the war there. 

Keane, along with Mattis and Fallon, criticized Obama’s preference for ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on a preconceived deadline, instead of weighing progress on the ground, he says.

The U.S. fight against Islamic extremism should resemble something closer to U.S. efforts to contain communist ideology wrought by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, he said Tuesday.

A “policy of disengagement in the Middle East” has contributed to the rise of such extremism, he said, conceding that the appeal of groups like the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, or al-Qaida in Pakistan or Yemen, would still exist were it not for U.S. intervention in the region.

The U.S. must focus on gathering allies who share similar values and political beliefs to confront his threat, he said, or it remains doomed to face the same problems again. This is particularly important ahead of the reported massive offensive against the Islamic State group in the key Iraqi city of Mosul and in Anbar province this spring.

“Will there be something after ISIS to deal with?” he said, using a common alternative name for the Islamic State group. “You bet, if we don’t take a comprehensive approach to deal with it.”

Mattis offered a similar example in Syria, saying it remains unclear what the administration hopes to achieve politically in that country. . . . . . . . . . .