The Republican presidential candidates’ responses to President Barack Obama’s Dec. 6 speech on his strategy to defeat the Islamic State group were uniformly negative.

Donald Trump said, “Is that all there is? We need a new president — fast!” Marco Rubio said the president’s anti-Islamic State coalition is “absurd.” Jeb Bush called his address “weak.” George Pataki called the president’s strategy “pathetic.” Carly Fiorina tweeted: “Vintage Obama: No strategy, no leadership. Politics as usual.” And so on.

Some Democrats expressed skepticism as well. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said, “The president is trying to lay out a plan that is thoughtful. It may not be robust enough.”

Other Democrats wanted to hear something more. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said, “When you interrupt the nation with an urgent and unscheduled statement from the Oval Office ... there’s I think an expectation that the address will contain a new approach or a new element.”

But it’s hard to imagine what the new element would be unless it’s the deployment of a significant number of American ground troops to fight the Islamic State. And on this the president was clear and emphatic: Wary after more than a decade of mostly ineffective war-making in Afghanistan and Iraq, at the cost of enormous resources and many thousands of casualties, the president refuses to put the lives of American soldiers at risk in a savage battle far from home.

And good for him. In general, the prominent Republican candidates have far more bellicose plans — well, “plans” may not be the right term. Donald Trump promises to “bomb the s—-” out of the Islamic State. Ted Cruz says that he will “carpet-bomb them into oblivion,” despite the “inadvertent collateral casualties” he told NPR are inevitable in war.

Moderate Republicans are calling for more military action as well. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham want to deploy 20,000 American troops in Iraq and Syria. Even Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, told Breitbart News that he wants to “bomb the absolute stink out of them.”

So I prefer Obama’s more measured and deliberate strategy, even though — as the New York Times put it — it “underwhelms.”

There’s only one problem with Obama’s strategy: It may not work.

His strategy was in action last week, when Iraqi security forces and Sunni tribesmen, equipped and trained by the United States and supported by American air strikes, moved to retake Ramadi, the central Iraqi city that fell to the Islamic State in May.

The fighters have captured some of the surrounding areas and by last weekend were moving toward the city’s center, still held by some 300 Islamic State militants barricaded in booby-trapped buildings.

But victory is far from certain. At best, an American military spokesman says, “It’s a slow process.”

And then there’s Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities, still held by the Islamic State. Then Raqqa, in Syria. Then the vast controlled region on both sides of the border between Iraq and Syria.

At best, in the president’s strategy, success is a long way off and, in any case, his strategy may be overtaken by events beyond his control that could unavoidably tip us into a more aggressive military response.

Events such as an Islamic State attack in the U.S. on the scale of Paris. Or a captured American airman displayed in a cage and threatened with a fiery death. Or the election of a Republican for president next year. Obama’s cautious Islamic State strategy is unlikely to survive any of these events.

Some experts are still saying that a Trump or Cruz presidency is unlikely. But I wouldn’t count them out. They reflect a dark mood in the country that never lies very far beneath the surface and that could easily be provoked into action.

Few entities deserve “carpet-bombing” more than the Islamic State. But I suspect that no one really knows if such bombing will reduce the number of terrorists in the world or create more of them. Unfortunately, we may be on an unavoidable path to find out.

By John M. Crisp

John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. — Ed.

(Tribune Content Agency)