Our own Max Boot, whose commentary has been indispensable on all things national security related, wrote this earlier today:

What is needed now is not strongly worded condemnation of [James] Foley’s murder, much less a hashtag campaign. What is needed is a politico-military strategy to annihilate ISIS rather than simply chip around the edges of its burgeoning empire. In the Spectator of London I recently outlined what such a strategy should look like. In brief, it will require a commitment of some 10,000 U.S. advisors and Special Operators, along with enhanced air power, to work with moderate elements in both Iraq and Syria–meaning not only the peshmerga but also the Sunni tribes, elements of the Iraqi Security Forces, and the Free Syrian Army–to stage a major offensive to rout ISIS out of its newly conquered strongholds. The fact that Nouri al-Maliki is leaving power in Baghdad clears away a major obstacle to such a campaign. Now it is simply a matter of resources and resolve on the part of the U.S. and its allies. That, of course, remains the big unknown–how far will President Obama go?

That is, I think, the operative question. I dearly hope Mr. Obama will do what’s necessary, and go as far as he needs to, given the stakes involved. I will admit I’m quite skeptical. That skepticism is based on the entire arc of the Obama presidency, which is itself the manifestation of Mr. Obama’s deepest convictions. All of his training and education, all his political and moral reflexes, all his actions as president, indicate he won’t do what is needed at this moment in time. He is simply not up to the challenge.

Mr. Obama is the most dogmatic person to serve as president that I can name. He seems arrogantly settled in his ways, always alert to invent an excuse for his multiplying failures. So far he’s shown he doesn’t have the cognitive flexibility, the proper regard for empirical data, or the wisdom to change as circumstances do. For Mr. Obama to meet the rising threat of the Islamic state, as well as the disorder sweeping the world, will require him to reverse course, to re-examine his core suppositions, to alter his most cherished beliefs (the most important one being that Obama was right from the start).

We’re asking him to do what I don’t think he is emotionally able to do. He’s wired all the wrong way.

I hope I’m proved wrong. I rather doubt I will be.