The final major foreign policy difference between President Obama and President Bush has been cast aside.

Last week the State Department’s top lawyer, Brian Egan, gave an important but underreported speech that marked the final stage of the Obama administration’s normalization of once-controversial Bush-era doctrines about the conduct of war. Before a gathering of geeky international law-loving lawyers in Washington, D.C., Egan announced the Obama administration’s official embrace of the same preemption doctrine that justified the invasion of Iraq.
Egan’s speech marks the culmination of a continuity project that began, to many people’s surprise, at the beginning of Barack Obama’s first term. Since 2009, Obama has adopted the notion of a global war against al-Qaeda and associates; he expanded the legal basis of that war to include ISIS; he embraced military detention without trial, military commissions, state secrets and large-scale secret surveillance; and he ramped up drone strikes, deployment of Special Forces and cyberattacks.
...
Egan’s speech, however, cleared up the ambiguity and made plain that preemption is now the official doctrine of the Obama administration.

Obviously "it's OK when a Democrat does it" (IOWADDI), but some may not see it that way.
For instance, we agreed to a "cap" of about 3,870 ground troops in Iraq with the Baghdad government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. It seems there are some Iraqis who are sensitive to the idea of large amounts of American combat troops in their country, I don't know why.
Well, it turns out that keeping our promises to Iraq is a hard thing to do.

The U.S. military has around 5,000 service members in Iraq, officials said on Monday, far more than previously reported, as the Obama administration quietly expands ground operations against the Islamic State.

The Iraqis won't mind because IOWADDI.
And speaking of expanding ground operations, it seems that as the Iraqi army completely stalls out, the Pentagon is probably opening more fire bases in Iraq and sending more troops to Syria.
Where have I heard this before? Oh, well. It'll come to me eventually.

"It's very strange, and I cannot understand it."
- Ahmed Othman, commander of one U.S.-backed rebel group in Syria regarding U.S. policy

This wouldn't be the first time that America's foreign policy stopped making sense, but our current Syrian war strategy may have just hit a whole new level of stupid.

The fighting has intensified over the past two months, as CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed ones have repeatedly shot at each other as they have maneuvered through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, U.S. officials and rebel leaders have confirmed.

As interesting as a proxy war between the Pentagon and CIA is, I think an even more despicable policy action happened earlier this week and few paid attention to.

On March 12, US Consul General Steve Walker visited Al-Sadr Teaching Hospital in Basra to pay his respects to wounded members of the Popular Mobilization Units. The visit marked the first time a US official has publicly met these troops....
Walker made it clear that the trip was not just a courtesy visit. Accompanied by TV stations such as the US-based Alhurra, which broadcast the visit and his remarks in Arabic, Walker said, "The US recognizes the important contribution of the Popular Mobilization Units under the command of Prime Minister [Haider al-Abadi], and most of the Popular Mobilization troops came from the south. This is why I would like to express my condolences to the people of Basra and the south who have lost their loved ones or friends in the war against the Islamic State."

Just to give you an idea, this is the latest news about these so-called allies.

A militia group in Iraq has purportedly used Instagram to put to a vote the fate of a captured Islamic State fighterwhich, if genuine, is “unquestionably” a war crime.
The account @iraqiswat, claiming to be that of Iraq Special Operation Force, posted an image to its 80,400 followers on Monday that appeared to show a captured Isis fighter.
According to the caption, the Isis jihadi had been arrested south of Mosul, and followers had one hour in which to decide whether he was killed or released.
“You can vote For (kill him or let him go) You have one houer to vote We will post his fate after one houer Tag your friends and take your right take your reveng from isis right now. Please we dont have the time just one houer so tag your friends,” the post reads.
A follow-up image indicated the “vote” had resulted in the fighter’s death.

Death by Instagram sounds like a great name for a punk band, but its also a good headline for a war crimes trial.

Let's be clear about a few things:
1) Several of these groups are listed as terrorist groups by the State Department (for instance Kata’ib Hezbollah)
2) All of them have killed American soldiers (around 500 by last count)

Now what I don't get is what is the Kata’ib Hezbollah doing tooling around in an American-made M1 Abrams tank while still being on our terrorist list?
Come to think of it, what is Kata’ib Sayyid al Shuhada, an off-shoot of the Badr Brigade, doing tooling around in a US-made M1 Abrams tank?
Isn't that curious?

The U.S. has since 2010 been supplying the government of Iraq with M-1 tanks. The Iraqi government is denying their involvement with KSS, and claims “not to know” how they obtained the U.S.-made tank. Tanks, of course, are just darned hard things to keep track of...
This war just keeps getting better (it is not getting better.)