"What could possibly go wrong, Mr. President?! Go for it!"
So, how's our latest splendid little war
going?
US-led air strikes in northern Syria have failed to interrupt the advance of Islamic State (Isis) fighters closing in on a key city on the Turkish border, raising questions about the western strategy for defeating the jihadi movement.
Almost two weeks after the Pentagon extended its aerial campaign from Iraq to neighbouring Syria in an attempt to take on Isis militants in their desert strongholds, Kurdish fighters said the bombing campaign was having little impact in driving them back.
Isis units have edged to within two kilometres of the centre of Kobani, according to Kurds fighting a rearguard action inside the city. The jihadis, who this weekend generated further outrage with the murder of the British hostage Alan Henning, are simply too numerous to be cowed by the air assault by US fighter jets, the Kurds say.
“Air strikes alone are really not enough to defeat Isis in Kobani,” said Idris Nassan, a senior spokesman for the Kurdish fighters desperately trying to defend the important strategic redoubt from the advancing militants. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every Isis fighter on the ground.”
He said Isis had adapted its tactics to military strikes from the air. “Each time a jet approaches, they leave their open positions, they scatter and hide. What we really need is ground support. We need heavy weapons and ammunition in order to fend them off and defeat them.”
ISIS has also recently captured significant territory close to Baghdad
according to McClatchy. The FBI says that ISIS recruitment and support is
up significantly since American intervention in the Sunni/Shia war. Meanwhile, going largely unnoticed in the American
war propaganda service media are fresh new atrocities being
committed by Shia militias against the Sunni:
The area’s majority Sunni population is paying a high price for the town’s location and its reputation for being restive. Residents told me that Shia militias, still operating under the control of former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, are laying siege to the town, especially the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq militia. Sunni residents of other towns to the north accused that group and other militias of carrying out summary executions there after the militas took control in the wake of US air strikes against the Islamic State.
The militias, along with federal police and the Iraqi army’s infamous seventeenth division, have kidnapped and killed dozens of residents in Latifiyya, the residents told me – but their stories are falling on deaf ears in Washington.
...
Over a dozen other Latifiyya residents told me that militias have destroyed the area with bulldozers and explosions since the beginning of June, with repeated militia attacks against Sunni residents and their property, despite the absence of active combat in the town.
“It is a peaceful neighbourhood,” one resident told me, echoing a number of others. “We always lived side by side. But now militias come to Sunnis’ homes and destroy them.”
On June 11, militiamen took 137 men from the Um Weilha market in Latifiyya, according to residents and local media reports. Police have found the bodies of about 30 of them, but no one has heard any information about the rest.
On top of all this is growing support among older Sunni jihadists for ISIS as it appears to withstand American bombing and continue successful operations. The Taliban has thrown its support to ISIS, and then
this happened:
The two most powerful Islamist groups in Syria -- the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra -- have spent much of the last year killing each other. But in an interview with CNN, a senior al-Nusra commander says the two groups now have a common enemy: the "crusaders' coalition."
So, what we've got here is a yet another grade-A clusterfuck. Which means the only thing missing here seems to be American ground forces. In order to make it a truly epochal, George W. Bush level clusterfuck:
President Obama has been adamant that the U.S. will not deploy ground troops to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL), saying American forces will degrade the group using airstrikes while regional partners fight the extremists on the ground in Iraq and Syria.
Some Republicans, though, have insisted American ground troops will eventually be necessary, and they've chided the president for taking that option off the table.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, said Sunday on "Face the Nation" that U.S. Special Forces will likely need to be deployed to determine the efficacy of the air campaign.
"I think Special Forces and others are probably going to have to be on the ground," he said, "because after those missiles hit and they get out of those Humvees, they repaint their trucks, we have got to know where they are, and are the hits being successful?"
So, now that attack helicopters are
now in the mix, what could possibly go wrong with just a few thousand special forces on the ground? Ah yes... the propaganda feat ISIS is hoping for, capturing and beheading an American servicemember. How firmly will Democrats hold against ground troops then when all it took was beheading a civilian to get them to fold on bombing?
This thing is going exactly as ISIS planned. Seriously.