I just had a thought about why the president's policy of no boots on the ground may be even more shrewd than it appears at first glance.
The standard reason for not sending in American combat troops—and it's a very good reason—is that when our troops dig in in a foreign war, it tends to turn into a quagmire that we get stuck in. These quagmires harm America's moral, its position in the world, and they are appallingly expensive.
However, there is a second reason that I don't recall reading about: if there are no American boots on the ground, we do not fit the traditional role of occupier.
One of the main enemies we had to fight in both Afghanistan and Iraq (especially Iraq) was the perception of us as occupiers. And this perception was not completely wrong.
Where we differed from the traditional occupiers is that we planned to leave (although there have been varying degrees of commitment to that principle by our different elected officials). Yet, in spite of that, even many Americans considered most of the Iraq campaign one of occupation. As far as the Iraqi and Afghan people and their coreligionists and regional neighbors, there was no reason to believe the Americans would depart except in the face of violent resistance, and so violent resistance there was.
But first in Libya and now in Syraq, we have fought the alleged repressors of the people, but from afar. Even if there may have been the occasional special forces incursion, what we are doing still looks very little like an occupation.
This stops a favorite anti-American rhetorical flourish in its tracks: we may still be foreign, we may still be infidels, but we are no longer invaders.
Perhaps this is even more important in the Islamic tradition, where there are well-known Koranic exhortations to fight to the last gasp against the foreign, infidel, invader/occupier.
In any case, if fight we must, it's still a very good idea to avoid quagmires, but it's also an excellent idea to stay away from invasions and occupations of places we do not intend to conquer and hold on to.