President Barack Obama could end his Potemkin war against ISIS in one of two ways. He could annihilate the enemy, or he could write off Iraq and Syria. This is a tough leadership decision that a real leader would agonize over. Barack Obama in no way resembles a real leader. He will take the easy wrong over a hard right. Continuing to send additional military advisors into Iraq to train the Iraqi Army is exactly how we’ve been losing this conflict one piece at a time.

The Obama administration is about to announce the U.S. will send more troops to Iraq to boost the training of local forces, officials said Wednesday, in a response to recent setbacks at the hands of the Islamic State and Baghdad’s appeals for more help. Fewer than 500 troops are to be sent, said the officials, who were not authorized to provide the information by name in advance of the announcement and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Annihilating ISIS would involve some intense wet-work with a vast number of civilian casualties. CNN would say the unkind things about us. That matters much more than victory. So going in there like a military force on a vital mission is not on the table. We won’t be dismembering ISIS, and ISIS knows this well.

So we could write Iraq and Syria off. Let Iran, Turkey and Israel kick them back into the field of play if they try to break out. After a good 30 years or so if this, they won’t be anyone’s problem but the Devil’s. Peace will prevail when the people who don’t deserve any have successfully assassinated one another.

Ah, but then we get accused of just not caring. It would be a sin for a country that can’t even find gainful employment for over 1/3 of its adult workforce to take a step back from international chaos and tend its own garden for a spell. We are the indispensable nation with a responsibility to protect. We can’t let them suffer!

So we can’t level the enemy, we can’t let the enemy level whoever they please. Instead, we manage failure and look increasingly laughable as we so endeavor. We are sending 500 additional soldiers to train an army that is increasingly unable to send us any additional recruits.

What’s the problem? Are Iraqis just not rallying to the defense of their government? It’s more complicated than that. According to The Hill, Al Asad Air Base is where Sunni tribal fighters will be trained. The catch is that the Iraqi government, which is Shia-dominated and increasingly allied with Iran, is reluctant to recruit Sunnis. For their part, Sunnis are reluctant to rally behind the Iraqi government due to previous persecution by Shias. This raises more questions about whether President Obama’s plan to fight ISIS can succeed. He just admitted that there is no “complete strategy” against the Islamic State.

Clearly our non-strategy has begun to circle the drain. We are doing exactly what Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi needs us to do in order for him to win. Right now, either [mc_name name=’Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’P000603′ ] or Lindsay Graham would do a better job of handling ISIS as POTUS than Barack Obama. They’d move in diametrically opposite directions, but either one of them would at least both men would have the guts to get off his (expletive) off the fence.

The next president owns a big chunk of the situation in Iraq whether we want that or not. That president will have to choose to fix it or divest us of it. Relieve himself or exit the Porta-San. After eight years at The Waffle House, we will have a situation there that is scattered, smothered and chunked. Part of the hard part in choosing which nominee the GOP sends forward will be making our own decision as to how to fix this god-awful mess.