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Something to Cheer the Gloomy
Reuters/Rodi Siad
From Slate:
Residents from the northern Syrian city of Manbij are celebrating their freshly restored freedoms after U.S.–backed forces seized full control of the town from ISIS, which had been using civilians as human shields. Photographs show people pouring into the streets to celebrate after a battle that lasted 73 days. Wrestling control of Mabij from ISIS marks the biggest defeat for the group in Syria since July 2015, notes the Associated Press, and comes amid a string of territorial losses for the extremist group. […] One particularly poignant photo shows a woman burning her niqab, as women could finally walk the streets without having to cover their faces for the first time in more than two-and-a-half years. Similar scenes have become common in other towns liberated from ISIS.the expression on her face is wonderful.
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Love it.
So much for ISIS winning hearts and minds.
This is cheering news.
Just curious, but since when did ISIS ever claim to want to win over hearts and minds?
Hope you can upload it. Female equality is worth fighting for.
I’m off to pick up pizzas and have a beer with my kid while we wait. He may die in one of those hell holes so I think I’ll enjoy his company now.
It’s clearly a flawed business model.
Wonderful story!
Thank you. That was lovely.
They said “Wrestling?”
Is there anyone on Ricochet who does not attribute the rise of ISIS to the withdrawal of America when Obama “ended the war”?
I attribute the rise of ISIS to the removal of Saddam without a follow up plan.
Alas there was one but it wasn’t followed through by the current president.
I can see how you’d want to associate a policy you dislike with an outcome that you dislike, but you do recognise that the rise of ISIS took place in a different country years later after some pretty dramatic events in that country, and that the rise of ISIS in Iraq seems likely to be relatively brief (two and a bit years), shallow, and lacking in more than momentary popular support?
What sort of follow up plan would have stopped there from being large numbers of guys trained in the uniquely toxic Islam of Saddam’s final decade’s seminaries, trained in his abuses, and lacking government jobs? So far as I can tell, that was the chief contribution of Iraq to Syria’s rise of ISIS, and it’s not something that the US could have done anything to prevent.
Oh, yes; those guys were in circulation and there was no possible way of rounding them up.
If we had not brought Saddam down, those madrassahs would have kept turning out an energetic corps of capable jihadiis.
By leaving the field in Iraq, we gave them breathing room that allowed them to gain a foothold in Syria.
I feel like a US presence in Iraq that stayed out of Syria would not have been enormously helpful in Syria. Indeed, I’m not certain that the US withdrawal from Iraq was not helpful to the Syrians; the invasion of Iraq seems to have been a terrible idea that would not have been attempted if there’d been even a small force of Americans present. As it is, it appears likely that within the next year ISIS will cease to exist in the form of a governing entity anywhere on the planet with the possible exception of an Afghan or Pakistani village or two. That’s partly because they bit off more than they could chew in Iraq and helped unify the Middle East into action.
I attribute the rise of ISIS to Obama’s decision not to destroy them in the open desert as they advanced through Syria into Iraq. This was contemporaneous with his JV comment, as I recall.
I disagree. ISIS evaded the very light border security in their early days. When they grew more powerful, they took control of the border and hopped back and forth to evade Syrian/ Russian air power. Having large areas of Iraq in which to run free, tormenting America’s friends and stealing weapons from Iraqi police and defense installations, and taking over oil fields to sell black market oil for cash were major factors in the rise of ISIS.
They took some weapons, and got a substantial cash influx, but they suffered substantial defeats, lost a lot of their manpower and ended the period of their existence when their neighbors mostly let them be. If you’re more than a few hours from the border, it’s not super useful to be able to cross the border to avoid air strikes (and the Russian air strikes have been helpful to ISIS, not harmful; ISIS not collapsing is essential to the Putin/ Assad goal of having Assad remain in power for the long term, so the Russian attacks have been mostly nominal on ISIS, focused heavily on the anti-ISIS forces the Russians like to lump in with ISIS). The US absense was helpful for ISIS smuggling, which was important, but not amazingly helpful; even with a small US presence in the area, smuggling would still have been substantial (as it was, for instance, during the surge, even when US presence was not small).
A US presence would have protected Iraq, and that would have been exceptionally valuable in terms of avoiding the harm that ISIS would inflict, but ISIS and Iraq were both losers from ISIS’ decision to invade Anbar and from ISIS’ subsequent decision to attack the Kurds.
Like Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the short term was definitely helpful in resources terms, but the medium term does not appear to have been. In the long term it has certainly been a disaster.
The short term from when Obama pulled out of Iraq ?
I agree that ISIS has suffered reversals. What I am saying is that they never would have reached the peak strength that they did achieve if Obama had not abandoned the field.
And, if, in the long term ISIS bungled their position and lost much of what they had gained, still I attribute much of the damage to Obama, because by withdrawing he abandoned our friends and betrayed our allies. How many were killed by ISIS over the past six years in Iraq? How many raped? How many became refugees? How much needless destruction?
ISIS didn’t use those words (those are Americans’ words), but ISIS has been advertising and inviting people to come join the caliphate, saying how great it is to live under.
The short term was about 6 months starting when ISIS invaded.
It’s true that there would have been a little less smuggling, but until the invasion, I don’t get the impression that Iraq offered all that much in terms of preventable benefits to ISIS. If the US had still been there, that would have added support to those in the Middle East who wanted to support ISIS essentially on the basis that many supported Trump in the primaries; you might not agree with everything they say, but they’re a heck of a poke in the eye to the establishment. US withdrawal from Iraq really did reduce the intensity of anger at the Arab establishment for giving way to them and supporting “the occupation”. There had been a widespread belief that the US would never leave, that this was an attempt at literal colonialism, and leaving was helpful in demonstrating that we would eventually leave, that this wasn’t a complicated scheme to steal the oil. It also meant that ISIS couldn’t engage in popularity boosting attacks on Americans in Iraq. It’s not obvious to me that the US withdrawal was even unhelpful for the FSA and other anti-ISIS forces, let alone a significant factor in the rise of ISIS.
Very few were killed or raped in Iraq in the first years after the withdrawal. It’s really just the last couple of years. I agree that the failure to respond then when an ally called for help was awful, and incredibly harmful. MwtA is right to note that there were easy targets that could have made a huge difference. Then, after the US gets involved a little, it withdrew air cover on the morning of the Ramadi assault, with the consequence that the Iraqis lost Ramadi.
“This was bad for Iraq/ the world” and “this was good for ISIS” are separate concepts, though. To use the Hitler analogy again, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was catastrophic of the Soviets, but was also bad for Hitler. The US abandonment of Iraq in 2014 (not the compliance with the SOFA, but the failure to provide air support etc.), and, more importantly, the failure to support the FSA/ YPG/ etc. earlier and with more force in Syria was responsible for a massive catastrophe, for Syria, Iraq, the region, Europe, and a host of other areas. I’m not in any way suggesting that American isolationism wasn’t a problem, just that the problem was in Syria in 2011-2015 and Iraq in 2014-2015; ISIS wasn’t created by decisions related to Iraq in 2011.
James – it’s my understanding that the group that became ISIS first emerged in Iraq (under the leadership of a Jordaniam born person) – the issue doesn’t necessarily seem limited by modern borders, though a Baghdad Administration which enjoyed the Sunni Arab population’s support (or at least not opposition) might have been more successful in limiting its metastasizing.
Re linking bad outcomes to policies/politicians we don’t think much of – probably guilty Mr Pot – but I have no problem saying that Obama left Iraq unwisely. It’s the truth and I have no investment (because foreigner) in burnishing either brand’s credentials by massaging stuff into successes and ignoring their failures.
Winning the hearts and minds of teenage foreigners and winning the hearts and minds of the locals are very different things. For instance, turning locals into child sex slaves for the use of foreigners is popular with foreigners, but not with locals. See also; Democrats getting votes by defending the use of lynching; it was a hearts and minds issue, but not the hearts and minds of the community being lynched.
Zafar,
Just catching up I’ve been offline. May that photo go viral.
Regards,
Jim
Thank you editors for working your magic with the photograph!
I have no doubt that there are people in town taking names so if ISIS returns, retribution will be swift and horrible.
No, but the greatly diminished American presence in Iraq 2012-2014 allowed ISIS free run of large areas, in which they intimidated locals, killed a handful of collaborators, supported their operations in Syria and gathered intelligence.
Your nuance is greatly appreciated, but it seems to sometimes get in the way of bashing Obama, who is guilty of betraying America’s friends and allies.
Interesting. If I suggest that beards and burkas are part of a fascistic movement then I am raciest, hater, bigot, that discriminates against religion. These folk decide to shave their beards and shed their burkas and it is FREEDOM.
Because: choice.
President J.V. — as Hugh Hewitt calls him. Seems apt.