President Obama ordered another 615 U.S. troops to Iraq Wednesday as the Middle Eastern nation’s army prepares to take Mosul back from ISIS.

The announcement, the policy, and the timing drew swift criticism from Obama’s foreign policy critics.

“There is no 62-nation coalition … Obama’s coalition is a Potemkin village.”

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“The timing is so political that it’s disgusting,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a Donald Trump supporter and former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told LifeZette.

The announcement, by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, came before Obama’s “Commander-in-Chief” town hall with CNN on Wednesday.

The U.S. military has 4,565 troops serving in Iraq today. Flynn said the number will now rise to around 5,200. He called the upper limit a “political” cap that drives military planners crazy, because the number may not be enough.

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Media reports indicate the assault on Mosul will begin in October. This irks Flynn. The Obama administration constantly telegraphs to ISIS what it will do, how many U.S. troops will assist, and even what roads the coalition may use into Mosul, Flynn said.

Islamic State terrorists, better known as ISIS, have their biggest prize in Mosul. Six thousand ISIS members currently occupy the city, according to ABC News. The terrorist army has been training to keep the city from what is expected to be an October assault by Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

U.S. troops returned to Iraq in June 2014 when ISIS got close to Baghdad. Then, 275 troops went to Baghdad as ISIS rallied. President Obama has approved 10 increases in the number of troops since then, ABC News reported.

It all sounds familiar to Flynn, who says the piecemeal approach isn’t working.

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“This is exactly what happened in Vietnam,” said Flynn. “Why is it that we cannot learn from history?”

The troop level is inadequate for the task, says Sebastian Gorka, the vice president and professor of Strategy and Irregular Warfare at the Institute of World Politics.

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“We have the best military in the world, but 600 troops is neither here nor there,” said Gorka, the author of “Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War.”

ISIS has recruited 85,000 people, mostly fighting in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, he said. He suggests a blend of local Sunni nations and regional leaders banding together with the help of about 15,000 U.S. trainers, advisers, and special-operation troops.

Right now, the U.S. talks of a coalition of 62 nations. Gorka flatly denied that.

“There is no 62-nation coalition,” said Gorka. “Obama’s coalition is a Potemkin village.”

The president’s complete pullout of U.S. armed forces in 2010 caused the ISIS crisis, according to Robert G. Kaufman, a Pepperdine University professor of public policy and author of “Dangerous Doctrine: How Obama’s Grand Strategy Weakened America.”

“Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” said Kaufman.

This maneuver toward the ISIS quandary was made when Obama gave up talks on keeping forces in Iraq. Obama disputes this by saying the agreement was made under President George W. Bush, but Kaufman said Obama decided not to force the issue.

Obama’s re-election campaign was coming the next year. So instead, Obama indulged his wish to be completely free of U.S. involvement in Iraq, Kaufman said. The last 500 U.S. troops left in December 2011.

Within three years, U.S. troops returned to Baghdad. Obama finds the criticisms he levied at President George W. Bush were made when he was an inexperienced candidate. Now he is a “war president” — his promise of worldwide peace a naive dream and the creation of a vacuum now a cause of many civilian deaths. All the while, the global terrorist threat has grown.

ISIS retaliated with at least three U.S. attacks in 2015 and 2016, using homegrown recruits in suicide attacks such as the June massacre at the Orlando nightclub. In October 2015, Army Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler became the first soldier killed fighting ISIS in Iraq.

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Carter boasted of taking out the ISIS “cabinet” earlier this year. But the “command and control” center of ISIS is still unknown, according to Richard Grenell, a former spokesman for U.S. ambassadors at the United Nations.

Now, a new strategy is needed to dismantle ISIS. For one, Flynn said, the president and the Pentagon should try attacks ISIS hasn’t read about in newspapers or on the internet. Perhaps the U.S. and allies could attack Raqqa, the city in northern Syria said to be the ISIS capital.

But, Flynn said, the U.S. armed forces need to be strategic and secretive in attacking ISIS. Flynn, who is advising Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, likely convinced Trump to keep his plans on ISIS secret. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton protested at Monday’s debate, saying she had put her anti-ISIS plans on her campaign’s website.

Flynn recommends more discretion in attacks on ISIS.

“Let’s be cunning,” said Flynn.