Thursday, July 09, 2015

Islamic State on the Run?

Islamic State on the Run? - WSJ
President Obama delivered on upbeat progress report Monday on the fight against Islamic State, and we can only hope that this time he’s right.
A reason for skepticism is that Mr. Obama has offered similarly confident predictions of eventual victory before.
Speaking at the Pentagon, the President noted that Islamic State had been hit by more than 5,000 air strikes, “lost more than a quarter of the populated areas that it had seized in Iraq,” failed in key battles at Kobani, Mosul Dam and Tikrit, “alienated those under its rule” and united the world against it.
He also promised an intensified air campaign against its leadership in Syria and its oil facilities in Iraq, along with an intensified effort to train and equip friendly local forces.
These promises are encouraging if belated, but his strategic summary is not the whole truth.
While the President delicately referred to the Islamic State’s conquest of Ramadi along with swaths of central and southern Syria, he made no mention of its offensive against Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, or its seizure of Palmyra, which in addition to its archeological sites is a center of oil production. Five thousand air strikes (over a year) sound impressive, but that’s a fraction of the 30,000 sorties that President Clinton ordered, over 78 days, to dislodge Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo in 1999.
More broadly, Islamic State continues to attract foreign recruits and expand its global franchise at an accelerating rate.
Joiners don’t like losers, and the new jihadis must not think ISIS is losing..."

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