Islamic State Gains Test Obama’s No Ground-Force Stance

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obama.no.boots.on.ground.caption_independentUS President Barack Obama is facing the slippery-slope problem in Iraq and Syria that he’s sought to avoid, with some advisers concluding that limited airstrikes are insufficient to break Islamic State’s momentum.

As airpower has failed to dislodge the extremists from the Syrian border town of Kobani or halt their offensive in Iraq, Obama’s appeals for strategic patience are being challenged by some U.S. military and intelligence officers and diplomats who say more needs to be done.

Obama has declined to consider sending American forces for ground-combat roles in Iraq, despite recent warnings from Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State John Kerry and senior intelligence officials that continued reliance on limited airstrikes and training is inadequate to achieve his goal of degrading and destroying Islamic State, according to three officials active in planning and executing the administration’s strategy.

Military analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the two-month-old air campaign “seems to be doing too little, too slowly” and is so small by the standards of recent conflicts that “it amounts to little more than military tokenism.”

“This has been disguised in part by official reporting that touts the effect of daily sorties in hitting given target areas, makes claims to strategic effects that are never justified or fully explained, and includes occasional figures for minor damage to given weapons systems,” he said in a report on the website of the Washington-based policy center.

‘Substantial Gains’

Islamic State fighters have made “some substantial gains” in Iraq, retired Marine General John Allen, Obama’s special envoy for the coalition against the group, told reporters yesterday. This week, extremists have captured an Iraqi military base near the city of Hit and are threatening the Ayn al-Asad airbase, which controls the approach to Iraq’s second-largest dam, and Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.

Obama told alliance military leaders meeting near Washington on Oct. 14 not to judge daily developments in what will be a “long-term” campaign that includes training Iraqi and Syrian fighters, as well as non-military measures to weaken the jihadist group.

“As with any military effort, there will be days of progress and there are going to be periods of setback,” he said of the mission, which the Pentagon has named “Operation Inherent Resolve.”

Buying Time

In Syria, the U.S., joined by several allies, has intensified bombardment in and near Kobani during the past week.

Given the militants’ advances in Iraq, “the intent at this juncture is to take those steps that are necessary — with the forces that we have available and the airpower that we have at our fingertips” — to buy time for “the training program for those elements of the Iraqi national security forces that will have to be refurbished and then put back into the field,” Allen said.

Cordesman said it’s “all too clear from Iraq’s recent defeats” that it needs U.S. forward advisers, which means “risking combat losses, but it seems to be essential.”

Obama isn’t alone in his reluctance, though, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations and classified intelligence assessments.

Surge’s Limits

The president is joined by some political advisers who worry about escalating the military campaign on the eve of congressional elections, and by some military officials who say that the 2007 “surge” of American forces in Iraq failed to stamp out Sunni extremism even with 135,000 troops and hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to Sunni tribes.

Dempsey said yesterday on CNN that it’s possible he will ask for a small number of U.S. troops in Iraq to accompany Iraqi combat units to help identify targets for airstrikes.

Dempsey hasn’t ruled out the possibility of asking Obama for combat forces if circumstances require it, and the general said he recently ordered Army Apache attack helicopters into action to prevent jihadists from moving against Baghdad airport.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that ground combat must be waged by Iraqi and Syrian forces, not Americans.

The strategy “does require forces on the ground, but they must be local forces,” he said yesterday in a speech to the Association of the U.S. Army in Washington. “It is the only sustainable path to defeating terrorism and extremism.”

Training Iraqis

The U.S. is proposing that a program to rebuild Iraqi forces be conducted by as many as 1,000 trainers from the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Australia, according to a report on Foreign Policy’s website that doesn’t identify the official who provided the information.

Events on the ground may not wait for those longer-term measures. Two key targets in Iraq — the Baghdad Airport and the Haditha Dam on the Euphrates River — are at risk now, and the loss of Kobani near the border with Turkey would be a major symbolic and tactical victory for Islamic State, said the three American officials.

Even without seizing the airport, militants could use artillery to shut down the facility. One U.S. official said intelligence analysts think Islamic State has captured as many as 50 American-made M198 155-mm howitzers, which have a range of about 14 miles (23 kilometers). The extremists also may have seized some M109 self-propelled howitzers, which have an 11-mile range, as well as some old Soviet-made artillery with a range as great as 17 miles, he said.

Air Traffic

“By shelling the airport a few times a day, you’re going to stop commercial air traffic,” Cordesman said in an interview. “It won’t matter if you hit anything.”

From the start, several of the officials said, some U.S. veterans of the campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have been skeptical that the Iraqi military and a proposed National Guard can be trained fast enough to stave off strategic defeats that would enhance the extremists’ appeal to potential recruits, aggravate existing social divisions and further undermine the still-incomplete Iraqi government.

The most immediate action being considered, the officials said, is intensifying the air campaign, which they said would be aided if Turkey agrees to U.S. requests to launch combat missions from the NATO airbase at Incirlik and perhaps other Turkish facilities. One official described the recent increase in sorties as minimal, saying the current rate is a fraction of the round-the-clock campaign that’s needed.

Attack Aircraft

The campaign also would be more effective, two of the officials said, if the Army and Air Force deployed to Iraq additional attack aircraft, including Apache helicopters and AC-130 gunships, a move they said wouldn’t violate Obama’s pledge not to put combat boots on the ground even though it would require more maintenance technicians and other personnel.

Another U.S. official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal debates, said Obama appears to have trapped himself by promising more militarily than he’s prepared to deliver, as he did by drawing a “red line” against Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

In this case, said the official, who also participates in the internal policy discussions, other nations the president and Kerry have recruited into the anti-Islamic State coalition are calling the president’s bluff by refusing to commit additional personnel or step up combat activity unless the U.S. does so first.

Bloomberg

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10 responses to “Islamic State Gains Test Obama’s No Ground-Force Stance”

  1. Fauzia45 Avatar

    The ^Islamic Extremists^ are gaining control and they are ^training and planning to train^!!!!

    1. 5thDrawer Avatar

      Don’t need to train much to chop (saw, slice) off a head …

  2. The way the Maliki regime treated the sunnis made the Israelis looks like angles.

    an example is when SHIA child was made to beat and humiliate a grown man sunni man, just because he was sunni.

    In the days of the prophet ,people who did less than this were executed,

    USA who want to fight evil ISIS, are not on the moral high ground.

    It would not be a stretch to say that the United States is actually a greater threat to peace and stability in the region than ISIS – not least because US policies in Iraq, Libya and Syria have largely paved the way for ISIS’s emergence as a major regional actor.

    Of course, US soldiers and contractors have and continue to torture their enemies, often taking obscene photos to brag about and reminisce upon their acts. The contractors who were implicated in these abuses have never been prosecuted. Instead, one whistleblower who initially exposed these crimes, Chelsea Manning, has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.

    But perhaps more disturbingly, many of the same behaviors condemned by the Obama administration and used to justify its most recent campaign into Iraq and Syria are commonly perpetrated by US troops and are ubiquitous in the broader American society. Until these problems are better addressed, United States’ efforts to undermine ISIS will be akin to using a dirty rag to clean an infected wound.

    There are further reports of US servicemen committing massacres, desecrating the corpses of their enemies, or even hunting the locals for sport while collecting photos, and even body parts, as trophies. And these are just a sampling of the acts which have been picked up by war correspondents and detailed in the media – many more crimes have never received exposure abroad, with crimes committed against Iraqis and Afghans by US servicemen going largely under-prosecuted or altogether unprosecuted.

    Religious Persecution

    Finally, many Westerners have been horrified by ISIS’s persecution of religious minorities (especially crimes against Christians). However, the United States is complicit in this as well: US policies in Iraq helped spark this cycle of sectarian violence.

    Meanwhile, its own armed forces were indoctrinated with anti-Muslim propaganda – complete with recommendations for servicemen to resort to “Hiroshima tactics,” in a “total war against Islam,” in which protections for civilians were “no longer relevant.” Reflective of this mentality, the armed forces have been heavily infiltrated by white-supremacists, neo-Nazis and other hate groups who believe and act as though they are engaged in a holy war to begin in the Middle East and then be carried back into America. This institutionalized misrepresentation of Islam and dehumanization of Muslims probably played a significant role in the aforementioned atrocities.

    However, this is hardly just an issue in the Army. Anti-Muslim discrimination and hate crimes are pervasive in America, from the classroom to the boardroom. In the popular culture, Islamophobia transcends the political spectrum and is fairly mainstream – to the point where pundits and politicians can openly call for Muslim internment camps, or push for laws restricting or altogether banning Muslims from practicing their faith, even as many of these same people work to obliterate the lines between the (Christian) church and state
    http://www.awdnews.Com/top-news/9984-how-much-moral-high-ground-does-the-us-have-over-isis.html

    1. Maborlz Ez-Hari Avatar
      Maborlz Ez-Hari

      Quite possible.

    2. MekensehParty Avatar
      MekensehParty

      Sure, US is out cutting heads, selling women as slaves and lining and killing people by their religion…
      You people deserve ISIS, keep complaining and we might listen and let you go back to the jahiliya where you should have stayed.

      1. May Allah (Most high and glorious) give strength, guidance and support to the servants of his JUST cause. And may he destroy and plunge into darkness, the evil plotters that wish to extinguish his light. AMEEN

        1. MekensehParty Avatar
          MekensehParty

          more jahiliya poetry

          1. أَفَحَسِبْتُمْ أَنَّمَا خَلَقْنَاكُمْ عَبَثًا وَأَنَّكُمْ إِلَيْنَا لَا تُرْجَعُونَ {115
            023:115 Khan :”Did you think that We had created you in jest (without any purpose), and that you would not be brought back to Us “(for account)?

          2. MekensehParty Avatar
            MekensehParty

            Refer to my previous comment

  3. MekensehParty Avatar
    MekensehParty

    It’s a support mission, not an invasion and even less a wish well. People on the ground must fight against terrorism and the US will support. Here are the Kurds, they resisted all by themselves and they were saved and continue to be supported.
    Not one Syrian rebel of the FSA lifted a finger to what’s happening in Kobane, not one Turk (non-Kurd) went to protest Erdogan’s blockade on Kobane and yet, thanks to the coalition hits, the Kurds still have a fighting chance to keep the city.

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