Let me say something simple about the upcoming airstrikes in Iraq, the 300 military “advisors” we’re dispatching there, and 250 combat troops who are being brought in to defend the embassy. Something plain that no doubt the geniuses around Washington will regard as primitive and ill-conceived:

Either we get in Iraq to win, or we don’t get in at all. If we are going to start bombing and sending military “advisors” and a paltry number of combat troops, then send many more combat troops and establish enough of a presence to blow the Jihadists straight upstairs to the virgins who await them in Heaven.

Because, as we have so often done in the past, the United States is putting a toe in roiling waters, dispatching just enough people to make us part of the fight without sending in enough to ensure success. And that will get people killed. Our people.

“Military advisor,” for example, is a technical term for “sitting duck.”

Do we have a national security interest in what happens in Iraq or not? If we do, then we need to take care of business.

Mark my word. Americans will die in Iraq because we are getting into the fight without the ability to protect our people. We never do learn that a failure to use overwhelming force has grave consequence. Vietnam. Beirut. Mogadishu. Even Afghanistan, where we took our eye off the ball, and Iraq, where we went in with a limited force and invited a civil war, until Bush finally got serious with the surge.

Obama did a really stupid thing, with predictable consequences, by not heeding the advice of his commanders and leaving 10-15,000 troops in Iraq. They would have kept a lid on this, kept Iran out of it, and influenced Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki not to alienate his population. Now the whole place is on fire, a conflagration that will eventually burn us here at home.

President Obama’s faith in government is grounded in the faith that he can rationally ascertain needs and that the force of his logic can determine outcomes. But he can’t. Nobody can.

The American solider is the best fighter, and the best equipped fighter, in the history of the world. Please, Mr. President, if you are going to send him in harm’s way, make sure he has the tools and the support to protect himself and do whatever mission you have in mind. Otherwise, keep him home and let the barbarians settle it themselves.

Who knows? Maybe the good barbarians will still win.

Here’s Charles Krauthammer invoking a little history to illustrate the folly of what Obama is doing. Obama thinks he can avoid mission creep. But soon he will be faced with a choice between that or an ignominious retreat that will further prove for our enemies – Obama has done some much already to convince them – that the United States is helpless and can be attacked with impunity.