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The Fall of Ramadi
I’m sure you’ve heard the ghastly descriptions and fully understand the meaning of this. I don’t need to rehearse it. I’m puzzled by this:
The fall of Ramadi, despite intensified American airstrikes in recent weeks in a bid to save the city, represented the biggest victory so far this year for the Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate, or Islamic state, in the vast areas of Syria and Iraq that it controls.
Intensified airstrikes? Here’s the Department of Defense’s own list of airstrikes carried out near Ramadi since parts of the city fell under ISIS control late last month. If there have been others, they haven’t reported them.
On April 28, they reported one strike: “Near Ramadi, an airstrike destroyed an ISIL excavator.” On the 29th, one strike: “Near Ramadi, an airstrike destroyed three ISIL tanker trucks.” On the 30th, two strikes: “Near Ramadi, two airstrikes struck two ISIL tactical units, destroying an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL structure.” On May 1, three strikes: “Near Ramadi, three airstrikes struck two ISIL tactical units, destroying an ISIL fighting position, and an ISIL resupply cache.”
On May 1, Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder briefed Centcom via teleconference. He said there had been no significant changes in Ramadi during the past week. Iraqi forces continued to hold the key ground. ISIS was trying to keep the territory they’d captured in the east. “We expect Ramadi to remain contested,” he said. “ISIL has shown that Beiji and Ramadi are strategically important to them, and they are committing a significant amount of limited resources to secure these locations. [my emphasis]”
There are no further reports of air strikes near Ramadi until May 4, when only one was reported. “Near Ramadi, an airstrike destroyed four ISIL caches.” On May 5, one strike: “Near Ramadi, an airstrike struck an ISIL large tactical unit, destroying three ISIL structures, three ISIL tanks and an ISIL armored vehicle.” On May 6, two: “Near Ramadi, two airstrikes struck one large and one small ISIL tactical units, destroying four ISIL structures and an ISIL mortar system.” There were none on May 7, and none were reported again until May 11: “Near Ramadi, one airstrike struck an ISIL tactical unit, destroying an ISIL fighting position.”
None were reported on the 12th or 13th. There were two on the 14th: “Near Ramadi, two airstrikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL fighting position.”
That evening, ISIS launched a massive attack against Iraqi units using car bombs, mortars, and snipers. But there are no reports of airstrikes near Ramadi on the next day.
The day after that, I suppose, is when the airstrikes “intensified.” The Department of Defense reported four on May 16: “Near Ramadi, four airstrikes struck one large and three small ISIL tactical units, destroying four ISIL vehicles, three ISIL structures, two ISIL fighting positions and an ISIL vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.” There were seven on May 17: “Near Ramadi, seven airstrikes struck one large and five small ISIL tactical units and an ISIL IED facility, destroying four ISIL resupply structures, three ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL buildings, two ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL VBIED and an ISIL motorcycle.”
There’s the intensifying air campaign: 25 airstrikes in total. That’s it. There are hundreds of strike aircraft within reach. We knew they were committing resources to Ramadi. We knew their objective and what would happen if they achieved it. It might be true that a war can’t be won through air power alone, but how can you know unless you try? Were they just sitting there with a bag of popcorn?
Then, as we know, yesterday ISIS took full control of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. The Iraqi units abandoned their US-provided equipment–again. ISIS seized it all (apparently including RPGs) and no doubt more than replaced the materiel they’d lost to our intensified airstrikes. The reports of massacres are streaming in:
Ramadi’s mayor, Dalaf al-Kubaisi, said more than 250 civilians and security forces had been killed over the past two days, including dozens of police and other government supporters shot dead in the streets or their homes, along with their wives, children and other family members.
The mayor confirmed that 90 percent of the city is in ISIS’s hands. McClatchy is citing a local police officer who says 30 U.S. Humvees were abandoned to ISIS in just one neighborhood (Malaab), and the Ramadi-Baghdad road is “completely controlled by the Islamic State.”
As this is happening, the Pentagon fronts its own version of Baghdad Bob:
“Ramadi has been contested since last summer and ISIL now has the advantage,” Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said, using another acronym for Islamic State. She said the loss of the city would not mean the overall Iraq military campaign was turning in Islamic State’s favor, but acknowledged it would give the group a ‘propaganda boost.’
To counter the propaganda boost, they released the stirring story of our special forces dropping from the sky in a Blackhawk, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, killing a terrorist, blowing holes through buildings, freeing a slave, and saving some artefacts without hurting any women and children. Go, team America!
Are we children? ISIS now physically and symbolically rules Anbar, where more than 1,300 American soldiers and Marines died. They’ve got Mosul. There are reportedly no soldiers left to defend the roads to Baghdad. They’re on the the outskirts of Palmyra, the bride of the desert, the capital of the Arab Queen Zenobia in the third century A.D; they’ve murdered 23 civilians there, and they’ll surely bulldoze the city, just as they did Nimrud.
And instead of using our airforce–we could try that, at least–we’re countering “propaganda boosts” with “propaganda boosts.” But ours are directed at our own citizens. The rest of the world didn’t know or care who Abu Sayyaf was, and his death was definitely not, as our officials said, “a major blow to the Islamic State.” (And everyone and his uncle is called Abu Sayyaf, anyway. Abu means he’s Sayyaf’s father, it’s meaningless. Umm Sayyaf would be Sayyaf’s mother, but we’re saying she’s his wife. We didn’t know her name, so we gave her one that made no sense. We’ve been involved in this part of the world for decades, but we didn’t even try to sound credible about this. Why not?)
Published in General
Yet another American ally sold out by the Democrats. South Vietnam will soon have company.
It’s bitter knowledge, & there is more coming. Later, a war might be fought; now, it is merely being lost.
We shouldn’t care who controls Ramadi as long as they don’t mess with us. It is a mistake to take sides in a Sunni vs. Shia war, especially since we have allies and enemies on both sides. The problem is once we said that we DO care, we should have never let Ramadi fall to ISIS. Obama sees ISIS as a terrorist group but it is really an army. And the more they win, the more they recruit. Some ideologies are magnets of evil: nazism, communism and now ISIS.
Would it make a difference if Congress declared war on ISIS?
And again Iraqi forces, that we trained, that we paid top dollar to equip, have thrown down their weapons and ran.
If the Iraqis refuse to fight ISIS, why the hell are we doing their fighting for them?
We don’t declare war anymore.
We replaced that with voting on wars. We don’t even do that anymore.
Voting on anything requires politicians in Washington to take a stand. That’s too risky politically.
<sigh> Such a tangled web we have woven.
FWIW, a daily report I received on May 15 (apologies for the formatting!) contained the following about airstrikes:
10. Airstrike: On 4 May 15, international coalition airstrikes targeted IS elements near al Qaim, two
airstrikes struck two IS tactical units, destroying an IS vehicle.
Casualties: UNK
Source: DOD 4MAY15
11. Airstrike: On 4 May 15, international coalition airstrikes targeted IS elements near Ramadi, an airstrike
destroyed four IS caches.
Casualties: UNK
Source: DOD 4MAY15
12. Airstrike: On 4 May 15, international coalition airstrikes targeted IS elements near Fallujah, three
airstrikes struck two IS tactical units, destroying five IS fighting positions and an IS vehicle.
Casualties: UNK
Source: DOD 4MAY15
13. IDF: On 5 May 15, indirect mortar fire targeted the city Fallujah, killed one citizen and wounded four
others in the attacks.
Casualties: 1 x Civ KIA, 8 x Civ WIA
Source: Al Qurtas 5MAY15
14. Airstrike: On 4 May 15, international coalition airstrikes targeted IS elements near al Asad Airbase,
three airstrikes struck an IS tactical unit, destroying two IS excavators.
Casualties: UNK
Source: DOD 4MAY15
15. Other: On 5 May 15, the commander of the tribe forces in the Haditha district has stated that IS have
begun to gather near the district and intend to attack. The tribe forces have begun to fortify the security
within the area to fend off any attacks.
Casualties: N/A
Source: Shafaq 5MAY15
That could be one of the drivers here.
Is Obama unwilling to go back to war in Iraq, after a pretty popular withdrawal, without Congress taking some of the heat?
or
Is this a present for Iran?
There’s more than two sides to this. There’s like six.
Iran is actually on the side of the Iraqi govt fighting against ISIS.
Indeed. Hence a muted response to ISIS. Don’t want them to win, but do want them to be a thorn in Iran’s side. Or perhaps a factor that keeps the two oil producing regions in Iraq (the South and the North) dependant on external help.
It’s possible, right?
Because otherwise ISIS has those weapons.
No. Now they’re sending in the Shi’a militias. Only now. And they’re as barbarous as ISIS. They didn’t do it precisely to avoid turning this into an outright battle of Karbala. Now that’s going to become a reality.
Well, ONE way to look at this is to think of children. Once they learn to walk, one doesn’t just then totally disregard them and let them go where ever their little hearts take them.
We did, indeed, equip and “train” the Iraqis. But training a new-found army isn’t just showing them the manual and then leaving. One might rationally decide that one needs to stand with them for a while, to bolster them.
This is not to say that this all makes sense. But it would be a rationale for us to continue being there and fighting there. We spent a lot longer training and equipping the South Vietnamese military. They, indeed, were willing and able to fight. But fighting requires these things called “ammunition” and “gasoline” to carry out the fight. We denied them that.
Perhaps the smarter thing would have been to simply take it all over and slowly rebuild it from the ground up. But that might also have required some response to the riot in Syria.
I believe the key here is that this administration has simply washed its hands of the whole Mideast. What actions we see is the smoke-and-mirrors for the American people.
Maybe this is a good moment to take a gander at Mr. Kessler’s interview with Mr. Helprin about the Middle East.
The impressive thing about ISIS is how successful they are with relatively low levels of foreign governmental support.
North Vietnam had active military aid from Communist countries at a time when we cut off the South.
The Houthis have aid from Iran in taking over Yemen.
Hezbollah had aid from Iran when it took over Lebanon.
The Taliban had aid from the US and Pakistan when it took over Afghanistan.
The PLO had aid from all sorts of sources.
ISIS shows the power of pure fanaticism/adrenaline.
They are not fighting a kid glove wearing Israel or English-speaking country. They are fighting Hezbollah and Iran.
However, this could be part of Iran’s game: allowing any independent Western-trained portions of the Iraqi military to fall apart while reconstituting a military as branches of the IRGC.
The reporting on this–everywhere--is repeating the same theme: a major loss despite the support of US-led airstrikes targeting the extremists. … It also calls into question the Obama administration’s hopes of relying solely on airstrikes to support the Iraqi forces in expelling the extremists.
But where were the airstrikes?
“it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
Henry Kissinger.
THIS was an airstrike in the good old days…..
Thats ONE, count em one, B-52 BUFF on an Arclight mission.
The ground shook for literally multiple 10’s of miles.
This is classic, “Liberal Democrats go to War”.
Make sure you only use minimal force, with slow escalation to allow your enemy to adapt. Hamper the mission with impossible requirements about casualties, collateral damage, and civilian casualties. Set an impossible goal with the puny means you have designated for the mission. When you fail, declare victory, and later, say see “force never solves anything”.
That’s an interesting clip, Titus. It seems to support what I have thought for a long time – that this whole area is tribal. They fight the typical tribal fights, constantly “raiding” each other – for fun and profit. Unless you are going to somehow subjugate the WHOLE tribal system (and that is islam, too) you aren’t likely to have much luck.
But the other point is also crucial. What this whole “slow walk” has “proven” to these tribesmen is that the United States can be beaten. That leads to the United States can be messed with. That’s potentially a far more dangerous thing for them to think – for both of us.
I don’t understand this. Can’t anyone grasp that the whole world has been given the impression that ISIS can somehow survive everything the the powerful US military can rain on them from the sky, like supermen? We’re dropping leaflets in Raaqa boasting that they’re powerless to stop us and we can strike them anywhere, and then we just watch them roll into Ramadi, “purge the entire city,” and do nothing? Why? Why? To keep Iran out? They weren’t there, but now they’re at the east of the city preparing for a counter-attack! It just makes no sense–what are we thinking?
“Knowing what we know now, would you support pulling our troops out of Iraq?” When will a journalist ask that question?
Which makes me think that they do get foreign assistance. Well they have US weapons for one thing. That is not assistance but it explains their access to weapons. Then they get support from wealthy Gulf Arabs, if not governments, and at least a passive attitude from Turkey.
As far as I’m aware, no-one actually thinks we’re really trying all that hard to stop ISIS precisely because the geopolitical situation is so delicate.
You’re all missing an element: they are also well organized and highly motivated.
You can dump arms and training on people, but unless they’re organized and motivated, it won’t get you very far. (See:the Iraqi army)
See #15 where I believe I phrased motivation as “ISIS shows the power of pure fanaticism/adrenaline.”
Just hear on FNS that we launched 168 air strikes in the recent weeks. That is hardly an air war, but it IS a bit more than you note.
It’s also a matter of what the punishiment for being caught is. They can torture and kill you and your whole family if you fight for the Iraqi forces or be a policeman etc. The enemies they don’t kill they make run away. We don’t do that. Enemies can stay and hide and the worst that can happen is they die in a firefight. The stakes are vastlt different for each side.
Not that we’re actually doing that, but you don’t grasp the basis of fighting an insurgency. It can be done. We just aren’t.