Among the presidential candidates of the Republican Party and their foreign policy leaders on Capitol Hill, the cry is almost universal: Barack Obama has no strategy for winning the war on Islamic State. This criticism, however, sounds strange coming from a party that controls Congress but has yet to devise its own strategy, or even to authorize the use of U.S. military force in Syria. Congress has punted. And compared to the cacophony from Republican ranks, Barack Obama sounds like Prince Bismarck. The president’s strategy is to contain, degrade and defeat IS. Although no one has provided the troops to defeat IS, the U.S. is using Kurdish and Yazidi forces, backed by U.S. air power,...
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