Carol E. Lee :Battle of Mosul Has Bearing on Two Presidencies Outcome Could Affect Obama Legacy, Successor’s Challenge
http://www.wsj.com/articles/battle-of-mosul-has-bearing-on-two-presidencies-1477232656
WASHINGTON—The U.S.-backed fight to wrest Iraq’s second-largest city from Islamic State control holds implications extending beyond the battlefield and into both the departing and incoming U.S. presidential administrations, raising the stakes for how it unfolds in the closing weeks of the election campaign.
For President Barack Obama, Mosul is reverberating beyond his broader fight against Islamic State and into his legacy as a reluctant wartime president. It is an opportunity for Mr. Obama to secure a victory in a region that has given him few, but also a risky operation that has put his foreign policy under renewed scrutiny.
For Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, one of whom will inherit the Islamic State fight in January, the battle for Mosul has spotlighted their contrasting positions. Mrs. Clinton has said she would attempt to defeat Islamic State without resorting to the use of U.S. combat forces, while Mr. Trump points to Mosul as evidence of the failures of the administration in which Mrs. Clinton served.
The challenges and stakes of the battle were underscored last week by the death of a U.S. sailor, the first U.S. service member killed during the fight over Mosul. In a signal of the importance of the offensive both to the Obama administration and to the wider fight, Defense Secretary Ash Carter spent the weekend in Iraq, meeting with top officials and traveling outside Baghdad for meetings.
Speaking to reporters in Erbil on Sunday, Mr. Carter said taking back control of Mosul and Raqqa, Syria, were essential to eliminating the group’s territorial holdings, but wouldn’t spell the end of Islamic State.
“It is absolutely essential that we destroy ISIL in these cities of Mosul and Raqqa, however, even in Iraq and Syria, that doesn’t end the campaign,” Mr. Carter said, using another name for Islamic State. “We know that ISIL will take to other, lesser locations in the countryside in Iraq, to take the Iraq example, and we are all planning to help the Iraqi Security Forces to consolidate their control over all of Iraqi territory. “
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Mr. Obama’s reluctance to intervene in the conflict in Syria is more likely to define his legacy than the fight in Mosul.
“It would help if Iraq was to be made free of ISIS,” Mr. Haass said, using another acronym for the group, “even [though] making Iraq viable is a long-term and difficult proposition.”
But the battle in Mosul, paired with a future coordinated campaign in Raqqa, could hold strategic implications, said Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank with ties to the Obama administration.
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