Add Richard Engel – NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent – to the growing number of voices in the media who have criticized the United States’ strategy to defeat the Islamic State. On the May 21 edition of The Rundown with Jose Diaz-Balart, Engel found no reason to dispute that ISIS was a de facto nation and argued that U.S. efforts to repel the terror group have been largely ineffective.
Engel claimed that the U.S.’s repeated failures “raise enormous questions about strategy.” He ended with a final shot at the president’s foreign policy decisions in Iraq: “Can the U.S. continue on its course even when, you know, the definition of stupidity, frankly, is continuing on the same course and expecting a different result. And I think we may be heading in that direction.”
When Engel – hardly a conservative voice – abandons President Obama’s largely ineffective air war against ISIS, it’s clear the wheels have fallen off. Engel made similar statements on the NBC Nightly News earlier in the week. He hit ‘Washington’ hard for its convoluted strategy regarding Iraq:
And with Ramadi gone, what's to keep ISIS from Baghdad, less than 70 miles away. The answer could be these men. Shiite militia's backed by Iran. Iraq is imploding and Washington is trying, unsuccessfully, to manage it by remote control through groups with competing agendas. A decade ago, hundreds of Americans gave their lives in the fight for Ramadi.
Engel lamented how “the sense of accomplishment of those who served in Iraq is being chipped away, one city at a time.”
The relevant portion of the transcript is below.
MSNBC
The Rundown with Jose Diaz-Balart
May 21, 2015
9:14 a.m. EasternJOSE DIAZ-BALART, host: That was former White House counter-terrorism advisor Richard Clark on Morning Joe giving a stark assessment of the fight with ISIS. The terror group scored its second major battlefield victory in a week seizing the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra just days after driving Iraqi forces from Ramadi. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says ISIS now controls – listen to this – more than half of Syria, an area stretching over 36,000 square miles, about the size of the state of Virginia. Joining me now NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel. You heard Richard Clark. He’s saying that ISIS has become a de facto nation.
RICHARD ENGEL, NBC News chief foreign correspondent: I can’t think of any reason why you would dispute that. It's not a traditional nation, it certainly doesn't have a seat at the UN, it’s a terrorist state, but it is a state that international efforts – U.S.-led efforts – have not been able to dislodge. And it seems to be getting bigger. Although the U.S. is leading an air war against Iraq, or in Iraq and Syria against ISIS, the group is continuing to expand and I think it raises enormous questions about the strategy. It raises huge questions about, do things need to change? Can the U.S. continue on its course even when, you know, the definition of stupidity, frankly, is continuing on the same course and expecting a different result. And I think we may be heading in that direction.
