As George W. Bush’s presidency was winding down and a speedy withdrawal from the battlefields of Iraq was foremost on the minds of voters, Democrats grew fond of accusing the 43rd President of the United States of rushing into a war without fully preparing to secure the post-war peace.

Given the presently suboptimal state of affairs, it is worth reviewing some of President Barack Obama’s pontifications on the situation in Iraq while he was attracting the accolades of the nation’s foreign policy establishment in 2008.

“In ending the war, we must act with more wisdom than we started it,” then candidate Obama said in a speech delivered at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in 2007. “That is why my plan would maintain sufficient forces in the region to target al Qaeda within Iraq.”

“But we must recognize that al Qaeda is not the primary source of violence in Iraq, and has little support – not from Shia and Kurds who al Qaeda has targeted, or Sunni tribes hostile to foreigners,” he added. “On the contrary, al Qaeda’s appeal within Iraq is enhanced by our troop presence.”

Three years after the complete American withdrawal from Iraq, it is clear that Obama did not secure the troop presence required to prevent the return of terroristic and sectarian violence, and that the presence of coalition peacekeepers was not the primary source of instability in Iraq.

“For eight years, we have paid the price for a foreign policy that lectures without listening,” Obama said in an address on foreign policy in the summer of 2008, “that divides us from one another – and from the world – instead of calling us to a common purpose; that focuses on our tactics in fighting a war without end in Iraq instead of forging a new strategy to face down the true threats that we face.”

Yes, the irony is positively unbearable. Putting the press’s shameless refusal to hold the president accountable for his failure to live up to his own assertions aside, it seems as though history is set to repeat itself. In the effort to live up to his ideological commitment to avoid pledging American troops to again serve as custodians of Iraqi national security, the Obama administration is embracing a path of least resistance approach to the war against ISIS. In doing so, Obama is setting the stage for a dubious post-war peace.

For several weeks, American officials have been notifying reporters that the operation to retake the sprawling city of Mosul back from ISIS fighters could take months and would likely begin this spring. Last week, Pentagon officials elaborated on the details of this coming operation. The assault would begin as early as April or May. The advance will be undertaken primarily by Iraqi Security Forces, but with the aid of Shiite militias and the Kurdish Peshmerga. American airpower, and possibly some special forces units, will augment the capabilities of these forces as they clear Mosul of ISIS militants.

According to a disturbing report via Bloomberg’s Eli Lake, however, the result of a successful operation to retake Mosul would leave the city in tatters and create a power vacuum that could more closely resemble the post-war environment in Libya.

So the situation is this: U.S. military leaders are openly talking about an imminent offensive on a city of more than a million residents who are widely distrustful of the Baghdad government; it’s unclear whether the projected front-line troops for the invasion are up to the task; there seems to be no comprehensive plan for what happens after the fighting stops. It’s enough to make one think the uncertainty over the time table isn’t the worst thing, if indeed a delay might help clarify some of these issues.

Michael Knights, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he did not think it was likely that Shiite militias or Kurdish forces would attempt to ethnically cleanse Mosul, a la Amirli. But he does feel there is a disaster in the making if a retreat by the Islamic State leaves a power vacuum. “The politics of liberating Mosul have to be just perfect or the end result is that Mosul quickly looks like Tripoli,” Knights said, referring to the civil war that has emerged in Libya since the U.S.-led coalition helped overthrow Muammar Qaddafi’s government.

The analogy of Libya is cause for concern. Obama and his top advisers touted the initial light footprint for America’s role in the revolution there as a smart alternative to the George W. Bush-era occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That argument may have seemed persuasive in 2011. In 2015, however, Obama’s reluctance to place troops on the ground or actively help shape Libya’s future looks like a blunder.

But Lake’s report presumes that the operation to liberate Mosul (and the rest of Iraq and Syria) results in success. According to Michael Flynn, a former Army lieutenant general and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, that remains a dubious prospect.

The mission is welcome, but frankly it is unlikely to succeed unless there is, at the same time, a deeper understanding on the part of our government of the real threat that the Islamic State and its adherents pose to us as a nation—and what our role in this broader fight must be. Unless the United States takes dramatically more action than we have done so far in Iraq, the fractious, largely Shiite-composed units that make up the Iraqi army are not likely to be able, by themselves, to overwhelm a Sunni stronghold like Mosul, even though they outnumber the enemy by ten to one. The United States must be prepared to provide far more combat capabilities and enablers such as command and control, intelligence, logistics, and fire support, to name just a few things.

Yet to defeat an enemy, you first must admit they exist, and this we have not done. I believe there continues to be confusion at the highest level of our government about what it is we’re facing, and the American public want clarity as well as moral and intellectual courage, which they are not now getting.

If the last year has demonstrated anything, it is that a military strategy for Iraq that values convenience and domestic political concerns over efficacy is doomed to failure and will not allow America to extricate itself from Iraqi affairs.