Low confidence in US-led coalition against Islamic State? Here’s why

US Secretary of State John Kerry at the International Anti-ISIS Conference in Paris

Never mind Monday’s Paris conference on taking on Islamic State. All the bluster and bombast as foreign ministers from some 30 countries met in Paris to discuss the shape of a US-led international coalition could not disguise a key reality. You’ve got to have a great deal less confidence in America’s promise to fight – and smash – Islamic State when you know that it takes more than a year to not appoint ambassadors around the world. Upwards of 60 are waiting for senate confirmation. As Diplopundit, the anonymous blogger who covers the steps forward and stasis that marks American foreign policy, puts it, “apparently, the world’s greatest deliberative body is now unable to deliberate with sense and harmony.” (Click here to read that blog).

That said, last September, the Senate did confirm John Hoover as ambassador to the Republic of Sierra  Leone. He only waited 428 days.

Meanwhile, the putative ambassador to Namibia has been waiting nearly 450 days.

It doesn’t sound promising in terms of strategic decisiveness – and it isn’t.