When Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize before he even became president, the hopes for peace worldwide rose. However, the realities of world conflict overshadowed any hopes of peace. Now, President Obama finds himself waging war, this time against ISIL/ISIS in Syria. This week, the United States unleashed a storm of death and thunder to ISIS militants in the country of Syria.
U.S. military assets included Tomahawk cruise missiles, unmanned Predator drones as well as air to ground attacks by a multitude of military aircraft. However, the U.S. did not do it alone, many Arab nations also joined in the attack on the militants. A serious diplomatic issue has developed because the Syrian government did not request, nor were they informed that an attack was imminent. United States and its coalition of forces have violated Syrian sovereignty, which could embroil the United States into the Syrian civil war.
The president has promised the nation that there will be no ground troops used in this military action. Nevertheless, this is something that the American public has heard before, not only from this president but also from past leaders. It was in 1950 that then President Harry S. Truman promised the American public that the United States would only use air assets to fight North Korea and Chinese troops in what became the Korean War. A slippery slope led Truman to commit thousands of U.S. ground troops in what was known as a police action. The term police action is no longer used by the U.S. government because it was a byword for undeclared war.
There is no way to tell what the full impact of these airstrikes will mean to not only the United States, but also its allies and its enemies.
