Obama's Islamic State policy threatens Clinton election victory

Entrusting Iraqi and Peshmerga troops to defeat Islamic State – declared a threat to world peace and security by the United Nations Security Council – was always a high risk Obama policy.

Now that attack has started - Hillary Clinton has been effectively lumbered with Obama's policy if she becomes America's next President.

Any suggestion of abandoning Obama's policy now would send a bad signal to American voters.

Clinton's situation has been further complicated by Carter indicating at the same press conference:

… we want to see isolation operations begin, oriented at Raqqa as soon as possible. We're working with our partners there to do that. And so there will be some simultaneity to these two operations. We've long anticipated that.

This contradicts what Clinton said in the third Presidential debate:

The goal here is to take back Mosul. It's going to be a hard fight. I've got no illusions about that. And then continue to press into Syria to begin to take back and move on Raqqa, which is the ISIS headquarters.

The IBD/TIPP poll finds widespread dissatisfaction with America's direction - 62% of the public saying it's headed in the wrong direction.

Obama's decision could not have come at a worse time for Clinton.

Joseph Chamberlain said in 1886:

In politics, there is no use in looking beyond the next fortnight.

Pollsters beware.

Pictures of body bags returning dead American soldiers, never-ending TV reports of murdered and injured civilians and people fleeing Mosul could certainly cause a huge voter backlash.