If you've been following the crisis in Greece, you may not have noticed, but U.S. President Barack Obama held a news conference Monday at the Pentagon that will be significant for his legacy. What was important was not so much what he said as what he didn't say: that there's any chance of defeating Islamic State in the foreseeable future. Instead, the president emphasized that the fight against the Sunni Muslim insurgent group will be "long" and that experience has shown that it can be "degraded" only with effective local ground forces.
In effect, Obama was acknowledging that when he leaves office, Islamic State will still be around. And he was signaling that his real objective now is to keep the militants from entering Baghdad before his presidency ends. If this sounds familiar, it should: It's basically the same strategy the U.S. has been taking toward the Taliban in Afghanistan. Obama apparently thinks he can't win the Islamic State war any more than he can win in Afghanistan — but he also doesn't want to lose either one.
So why, you might well ask, would Obama bother to hold a Pentagon news conference about Islamic State if he had little more to say than that the U.S. supports the Iraqi plan to retake Ramadi?