Pres Hussein Obama does not want to defeat Isil - yet.

Pres Hussein Obama does not want to defeat Isil - yet. (telegraph).

America and its allies have not won the war against Isil, and are not even, at the moment, winning.

According to the view of the world taken by President Obama, however, this does not represent failure.

The truth is - and this is no cheap smear - Mr Obama does not want to win the war against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - yet. He thinks winning quickly would be pointless and potentially disastrous.

In Iraq, his professorial mind sees Isil as being one part of a multilateral equation, involving Iraqis who are Sunni Muslim, like Isil, but also the Kurds, the Shia majority, the Iranians, and the sweep of American involvement since 2003.

America supports the Kurds against Isil - but not so far as to encourage them to seek independence. That would involve breaking up Iraq, which America promised not to do after the 2003 invasion - and some American promises have to be kept.

In Mr Obama’s ideal world, the non-jihadi, anti-Isil rebels would some day acquire the moral and military stature to establish themselves and eventually extend their sway across the country.

Waging war has usually, in world history, been a fairly simple affair: use the force necessary to defeat the enemy, as quickly as possible. Mr Obama believes that the world has changed so much that such old-fashioned views no longer apply. Hmmm......The make believe presidency. “But as I’ve already said,” Obama noted, “I have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options.” Read the full story here.