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?)