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Raqqa Falls, ISIS Reels
Osama bin Laden famously said, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will naturally want to side with the strong horse.” These days, ISIS is looking more like a dead horse.
US-led forces have liberated Raqqa, the so-called capital of the terror group. Mop-up operations continue, but the city is swarmed with coalition fighters.
“Major military operations in Raqqa are finished but they are now clearing the city of sleeper cells — if they exist — and mines,” said a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed coalition of Arabs and Kurds. “The situation in Raqqa is under control and soon there will be an official statement declaring the liberation of the city.”
ISIS was founded in Iraq as Obama rapidly withdrew the necessary US military presence there. The Islamist group swept through ill-trained Iraqi forces and soon entered Syria, a nation reduced to anarchy by years of civil war. As they gobbled up land and flooded the media with grisly images, tens of thousands of jihadis flocked to their black banner.
But the group stumbled as the US targeted their finances and lucrative oil infrastructure. Then, with a new president in Washington, things really got dicey. This map shows ISIS’s precipitous decline over the past two and a half years:
ISIS has lost about two-thirds of its territory and is reduced to a trans-border strip of the Euphrates and the desert wastes surrounding it. Why have they fallen so far, so fast? Look at the change in airstrikes after January 20, 2017:
President Trump and Secretary of Defense James Mattis deserve tremendous credit, even though the media will be loath to give it. Where the previous administration was content with precision drone strikes and economic damage, the current Commander-in-Chief decided to snuff out the would-be caliphate. Well done.
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Published in Islamist Terrorism, Military
Jon,
Slammin!! Three more cheers for President Trump. He gets the job done and he hires people who get the job done.
Regards,
Jim
In this case, then, I am all for beating a dead horse.
Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces are seen in Raqqa, Syria October 17, 2017 CREDIT: REUTERS
A fighter from Syrian Democratic Forces takes a selfie as he stands near rubble at a damaged site in Raqqa CREDIT: REUTERS
Can see a twitter feed.
Damaged building are pictured during the fighting with Islamic State’s fighters in the old city of Raqqa
Nice find, Jon. That’s striking.
rebark,
Yes, agreed. ISIS is one of the least sympathetic enemies one can imagine. Judged by their own claims most of them have committed war crimes.
Regards,
Jim
Does Syria still exist? Can we expect the Syria-Iraq border to change? Will Iraq exist as before if the Kurds get their way?
ISIS might be withering under fire — and that’s a very good thing, a point of pride — but there is likely to be war in that area for years yet. And there will be others like ISIS. Evil is subdued, never eliminated.
Before everyone celebrates too much, let me add another graph here.
It only goes through July, so it’s incomplete, but you get the idea.
I would just like to point at that this happy result was achieved without a massive ground presence. For all the hue and cry following Obama’s withdrawal (“we gave up all our hard earned gains”) in hindsight looks like a strategic masterstroke. We coaxed the enemy out into the open where they could be decimated by conventional means.
An ugly and tragic consequence of every war. I’m not thrilled with our continued involvement in the region, but if we’re gonna war, we need to war. Just sending troops to stand around like mall cops is a terrible idea, and I fear that’s how Obama liked to use them.
Actually, I think Bush II deserves most of the credit for that.
Well, there’s different ways to do that. The Obama administration tried to limit civilian casualties from American airstrikes and restricted their use. The Trump administration has removed many of those limits, resulting in the above predicable consequences.
Limiting civilian casualties isn’t just a moral thing. Every kid that dies from an American bomb means more pissed off people who hate America. It’s in America’s interest to limit civilian casualties.
Fred,
Gee Fred, I wonder how many civilians ISIS murdered and tortured and raped during those oh so careful Obama years. Got any stats on that?
Regards,
Jim
So, are you suggesting that we should have stayed out of the war altogether?
Or, maybe Obama had the “fight ISIS”/”protect kids” ratio optimized more to you liking?
What I found in three seconds of googling was this:
So, in March of this year, the US killed more civilians than either the Russians or ISIS.
No, that doesn’t answer your question. But, to be blunt, whatever happens in someone else’s civil war is not my moral responsibility. Civil wars are very messy and bloody. All the more reason not to get involved. The longer they go on, the more people die. And the way to prolong civil wars is for outside forces (for example, the US) to back one side or the other.
I am, however, morally responsible for people killed by my government, because whenever the US drops bombs on people, I’m the one paying for those bombs. When “US-led coalition forces” kill people with guns and tanks we supply them, or are better able to fight because we trained them, our country is responsible.
Fred,
I’m absolutely sure that the Syrian and Iraqi civilians who knew very well that the Obama administration allowed them to be murdered and tortured for 8 years by ISIS are so very thankful for this. Gee, I remember that the Yazidi women who were being systematically gang-raped begged for us to bomb them. I remember that there were Jewish delegations begging the FDR administration to bomb the concentration camps. I guess they overreacted huh.
I’m so glad that your cool head reminds us of our responsibility to do absolutely nothing while genocide relentlessly pursues its victims.
Thanks, Fred.
Regards,
Jim
We should have stayed out of the Syrian Civil War altogether. Period.
We should have let the Kurd and the Iraqi government fight ISIS.
Our interference in these conflicts creates ripples. The Saudis pulled back their involvement in fighting ISIS because we got involved. They instead put those resources into killing more people in Yemen. The more forces the US put into the fight against ISIS, the more it freed up Iranian backed militias to cause problems elsewhere.
Giving guns and support to the Kurds will have consequences down the line in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. We’re already seeing that in Kirkuk where American trained and equipped Kurdish forces are squaring off against American trained and equipped Iraqi government forces and Iranian-backed Shia militias.
We’re talking about a part of the world where they were playing power politics 2,000 years before Christ was born. They’ll fight it out, get exhausted, and settle things their way. As a general rule, the more local people have to settle these problems without American interference, the better the long term results will be.
Characterizing the war against ISIS as a civil war is certainly a novel concept. And leaving ISIS in place to establish a caliphate and dominate innocent civilians seems rather uncharitable on our part when we have the capability of freeing those people.
I guess there are differing opinions about the meaning of moral responsibility.
Moderator Note:
CoC[Redacted.]
Okay, so let me clarify a few things for you here because … you need some clarification:
It certainly fit the definition:
How would you classify it?
The Islamic State was founded to establish a new state spanning the boundaries of existing states. It does not fit any of the criteria you presented.
I can (and did) make the case that it applies.
But you didn’t answer my question:
How would you classify it?
If you have a label that fits better, I’m curious to hear what it is.
Fred, I just described it.
Yeah. Do you have a label for it? If it’s not a “civil war,” it’s gotta be something, right.
Fred,
Because the war was allowed to fester on and on that many refugees were in camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan. Once they were in the camps they could have easily gone back to their homes once the war ended. In fact, when questioned that is exactly what they wanted to do. Instead, they were lured into becoming migrants. They weren’t in danger of losing their lives in the facilities that they were already in so they were migrants, not refugees. A lie that is still being told by the EU to ram an infinite number of migrants down their member nation’s throats.
Obama’s cowardice created the problem. Then his administration relentlessly lied about accepting a ludicrous number of unvetted unabsorbable migrants and blaming the American people for their completely understandable reticence. As in almost everything else the Obama administration did, Gruber & Rhodes, lying was central. A hideous cultural Marxist knows only to spew propaganda.
I don’t think there is anyone who is a serious person on the face of this earth who actually believes it would be a good idea to let ISIS go on murdering for another decade. Of course, there is always you Fred. Truly you are the exception to every rule.
Regards,
Jim
Right. It is something. I just described that something in twenty words or less. Isn’t that good enough for you? What can a label provide that a description doesn’t?
Okay, they pretended to be war refugees to trick everyone into letting them in? That rather than fleeing from a bloody civil war, they’re migrants that are just scamming everyone?
Well, you’re disputing me calling it a “civil war,” which is literally is. If it’s not a civil war, I want to know what it is.
The ISIS war (which we don’t even have a name for, because it would require us as a nation to discuss it) is obviously part of the Syrian Civil War, and if you want to call what’s going on in Iraq a civil war, it’s part of that one too. Either way, we’re involved in someone else’s civil war.
Freddy,
At least try to follow what I am saying. They were already in camps in safety in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. From there, with the war over, they could have gone home which is what they wanted to do. The whole idea of allowing the ISIS genocidal Jihadist lunatics create a mass migration is perhaps the dumbest sickest policy decision that I can remember. It was a lose-lose-lose proposition. Stupidity on a grand scale. An Obama specialty.
Regards,
Jim
Okay, I get your point. You would prefer that we had allowed the Islamic State to continue it’s raping and murdering of civilians (including kids) while establishing a fully-functioning economically sustainable caliphate founded on the suppression of people’s liberties and literal enslavement of women.