Unless President Obama says something fast to give secular Sunnis some hope that the US will take their interests seriously this time, they have no alternative to ISIS.

Say something to the Sunnis!  Give them an alternative!  And it has to be real.  If we are seen to be warming to Iran, it will be a disaster.  Sunnis will never believe they have a path ahead.  And it must be soon.  Before any possible US military or intelligence support to existing government forces, or consideration of dialogue with Iran.  Finally, we must make clear that Maliki will go.   President Obama now owns the Iraq issue.  He needs to act now, not later this week.

If he doesn’t, it will be a mistake even bigger than the early missteps of President Bush’s Administration in firing the Iraqi Army and equating all secular Sunnis they have no place in the “new Iraq.”  It’s worse this time because it demonstrates an inability to learn from the past.

The President needs to be public in this message.  And he needs through credible representatives, reach out to tribal leaders, in Iraq and respected Iraqi leaders who have exiled themselves outside Iraq.  They have been pleading for the US to take a greater role for years to offset the drift of the Baghdad government toward sectarian division.

Ten years from now I hope people are not debating the mistakes of the Obama administration in Iraq–for Iraq’s sake as well as our own.