While former key members of President Obama's team turn on the man who gave them historic opportunities of a lifetime, it doesn't seem to occur to them POTUS is determined to avoid another Vietnam -- this time in Iraq.

Mr. Obama is also reflecting the opinion of an overwhelming majority of 300 million Americans: no U.S. ground troops in Iraq's civil war.

Among the countries directly concerned, Saudi Arabia has spent about $100 billion on U.S. weapons for its armed forces over the past generation. Jordan has an impressive army funded almost entirely by Saudi Arabia and the U.S. taxpayer.

Since the 1978 Camp David accords on peace with Israel, Egypt has received some $50 billion in U.S. military assistance, now reduced to $1.2 billion a year.

U.S.-led wars in Iraq since 2003 have already cost the U.S. well over $1 trillion. And Iraq is now a shambles in far worse shape than when President Bush (43) committed the worst geopolitical blunder of his generation -- the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, then the best defense the Western world had against Iran's religious imperialism.

Saddam had fought an 8-year war (1980-1988) against Iran, but in 2003 the Bush Administration decided to invade Iraq, depose and execute the Iraqi dictator, and destroy his arsenal of nuclear weapons. As mentioned before, the only problem with this scenario is that Iraq did not have a single nuke. The faulty intelligence was the work of a phony Iraqi army defector -- code-named Curveball -- whose only aim was to be reunited with his German girlfriend.

Curveball refused to come to the U.S. to be debriefed and he managed to con the U.S. intelligence agents who interviewed him in Germany.

Following France's 1954 Indochina defeat at Dienbienphu (Laos), the most brilliant U.S. geopolitical minds saw Vietnam as a do-or-die barrier against the threat of world domination by a Sino-Soviet alliance. It was a figment of their imagination.

Iraq is now seen as the key barrier against a return to medieval religious barbarism and its spread over the entire Middle East. Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and Kuwait feel directly threatened by the spread of IS.

But for Turkey, the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria is a precondition for joining the fight against IS. And for the U.S., the precondition to working with Iran to fight IS is an enforceable ban on Tehran's nuclear weapons ambitions.

Iran's secret nuclear plans did not start with the ayatollahs who overthrew the monarchy in 1979. The late Shah nursed similar secret ambitions after the British devalued the pound in 1968 and relinquished all their geostrategic responsibilities from Suez to Singapore. The U.S. then appointed Iran as its proxy in charge of Persian Gulf security.

A united front against IS requires that both the U.S. and Turkey agree that the enemy of my enemy is my ally, however briefly. But Turkey is not about to back down. And both Obama and the U.S. Congress will also stick to a two-front war doctrine against both the Assad regime and IS. A recipe for failure.

IS is a much larger threat to Iran than it is to the U.S. Burying the hatchet for the foreseeable future would seem to be better part of valor.

In the opinion of geopolitical cognoscenti, cybercrime, cyberterrorism and cyberwarfare should now be America's highest priority. National sovereignty will soon be meaningless in a new era when cyberterrorists recently demonstrated their ability to paralyze the United States.

The U.S. has neglected its domestic infrastructure to the point where roads and streets in the nation's capital do not even meet Third World standards, let alone those of EU's capital cities.

The recent sabotage of air traffic control in Chicago and the nationwide discombobulation it provoked throughout America's friendly skies demonstrated scandalous neglect.

The accelerating disappearance of the middle class, America's backbone, and the phenomenal growth of the super wealthy along with the poor, do not bode well for the challenges of the next generation.

Many of our TV news channels -- e.g., one of them calls itself "World News Tonight" -- pay scant attention to world news. The trivial and insignificant rule the electronic roost.

Many experts claim the main IS threat to the U.S. is at home. And the more the U.S. gets involved in Iraq, the greater the IS threat will be in the U.S. This school also says IS has to be fought in Iraq by the Baghdad government and its Arab allies.

It is high time for Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran and, of course, Turkey. To challenge the Islamic authenticity of the medieval usurpers.

Airpower alone against asymmetric warfare simply forces the enemy to change strategy and tactics. IS has done so and is now occupying territory 10 miles from Baghdad.