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Breaking: France Launches Airstrikes against ISIS Capital of Raqqa
Rumors have been floating on social media for the past hour, but France has now confirmed the attack:
Published in Foreign PolicyFrance has launched a series of airstrikes on an ISIS stronghold in Syria, the French Defense Ministry told The Associated Press on Sunday.
It comes after ISIS claimed responsibility for a series of coordinated terror attacks that left 129 people dead and injured 352 more in six locations throughout Paris on Friday.
Sunday’s strikes targeted the ISIS-held city of Raqqa in Syria, The Associated Press reports.
French officials told the Associated Press 10 fighter jets dropped 20 bombs, striking an ISIS command and control center, jihadi recruitment center, a munitions depot and a training camp.
So much for the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Who are the cheese-eaters now?
You know when we have really hit bottom when the French president shows more backbone than the American president.
I ask how hard was that? It is matter of will.
Better late than never. I’ve been extremely critical of Hollande and French military history en générale in the 20th century, but I do know they have the scientific and technological skills to help win this war against jihadism.
Let us hope they choose to take full advantage of their impressive skill-sets.
I wonder if we have tankers compatible with the French fighter-bombers. If so, it’d be all right with me if we at least tanked them over the Med so the strikes could come from Metropolitan France, too.
That way we could lead from behind usefully.
‘Course, it’d be better if we joined the strikes and banged a potful of targets simultaneously, instead of our gradualist nonsense.
Eric Hines
This is a good start, but do the planes carry only two bombs each? 20 bombs doesn’t seem like a lot to me. Why not more?
This is what a cash-strapped military can be reduced to. The French Air Force, as I understand it, has three different strike fighters. Two of them can carry only two dumb bombs each. They can carry other weapons, too, but the NBC article implies that only dumb bombs were used. The third model can carry more, but that one apparently is not stationed in the Arabian Peninsula.
Regarding my comment just above, it appears France has its own tankers; it doesn’t need our help. Still: in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did not invoke NATO Article V; our allies did. Now it’s our turn, especially in light of Hollande’s declaration that the Paris atrocity was an act of war. We should be invoking Article V.
Eric Hines
Before one applauds too much, remember that this is still the country that made us take the long route from Britain to Lybia. How many dead does it take?
Obama is already leading the world’s largest ever coalition to destroy ISIS -a couple more French bombs will make a difference? And what are the odds that they bombed mostly empty buildings.
Obviously they knew about this target already. Makes you wonder why they didn’t bomb it a week or a month ago.
Rock the casbah!
I hope the military signed the bombs with an appropriate message. :)
EJ, the French have gone out of their way to be the counterbalance to the evil U.S./Israeli axis in the Middle East.
They still got hit.
That’s more than enough to make them salty. And salty Frenchmen have short fuses.
If I were president, of France or the United States, I would have dropped a nuclear bomb on Raqqa Friday evening.
(Actually, I would have done that a year ago…but I’ll never be president.)
All of the now they are going to get it talk is meaningless -it’s not how to fight a war.
A defence official was quoted by Associated Press as saying the strikes were ‘massive’… including 10 fighter jets …Twenty bombs were dropped …
I don’t want to seem hard to impress, but thus far the only thing ‘massive’ about this strike is the exaggeration of the press release. Who’s their spokesman, Baghdad Bob?
Good news.
Now if we could find a way to graft some French backbone onto Obama.
[Redacted for CoC violation.]
How do you say, “Hit ’em again!” in French?
Charles The Hammer Martel.
You’re welcome.
Vlad – I thought the exact same thing when I read that 20 bombs = massive. Symbolic is more like it. We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks…but I don’t have much confidence in the West (which is itself a rather quaint notion).
Les frapper a nouveau?
Claire will likely correct my junior high school French, but Frappez-les à nouveau! Plus fort, plus fort!
Eric Hines
Also, the Germans should have invoked Article 5 so that Eldorado Canyon would have been a NATO op. But when the targets of terrorism on German soil are Israelis or Americans…
Western, I know you are into serious patootey kickin’, but this action doesn’t qualify as a kickin’ and the patootie was probably empty buildings.
Since the world’s largest coalition is already destroying ISIS -Obama has told us repeatedly how large the coalition. Does this non-action even qualify as good PR? Are empty PR gestures good or bad for morale?
Excellent point!
And I think this is the proof of the lack of serious commitment to fighting ISIS. Every building, car, and person flying the black flag of ISIS should have been bombed over a year ago.
Good one. But time will tell. Dropping bombs may not be enough. Then what?
And wrapped them in bacon.
Yep