Boiled down....
The Islamic State overran Iraq, defeated the Iraqi Army, and established a Caliphate proving firstly that our withdrawal in December 2011 from Iraq was too early. Proved that withdrawal was based on political election considerations rather than geopolitical realities. Proved that withdrawal in fact wasn't "about time" as some of our Members had opined here.
All tpf Members here at some point realized that the United States Military would need to do as you spoke to here earlier. Be agile, adapt, and accept reality. At some point realize that limiting our involvement to covert air and ground operations wasn't getting it done, wasn't reducing the threat ISIS posed. Many Members came from quite a distance away.
Many considered opinions that the Islamic State was any business of ours at all were misdirected. Some vehemently opposed US involvement, many advised limited involvement was more desirable as overt operations would just create more terrorists, risk mission creep, and take hundreds of thousands of US military personnel.
"The John Boltons. The Neocons. The 'war mongers'. Those who wished destabilization and to meddle"....were urging the US to insert armor and troops coordinated with massive airstrikes. That once US heavy artillery and airpower were engaged, US military 'boots on the ground' were both inevitable and necessary. That the longer we waited the more expensive in blood and money the task of defeating ISIS would be. And that's exactly what happened. It was the introduction of United States overt action against ISIS that extracted them from Mosul, most of Iraq, and then their Syrian strongholds. We did ally and work with the Iraq Military, Sunni, Kurd, and even Shia militia but without the US coordinating, without our logistics, ammunition, airpower, and firepower.....ISIS wasn't going anywhere as had been proven throughout 2014-2015.
Getting involved after November of 2015 was too late to the table, Tahuyaman. It was in reaction to the Islamic State, it wasn't being proactive. That terror attack in Paris brought many here on our forum to the realization that the debate was over.....the time to act had come. The arguments of mission creep, arguing it's none of our business, any arguments that our meddling would just inspire more terror...vanished. All aboard was the call. I had to register new Neocon Tent applications all week!
The last days of the Islamic State
They have a small plot of land left to their Caliphate. The assault will begin once enough civilians have been evacuated.
At the end, the Islamic State is little more than a hamlet of tents, pitched in panic between U.S. bombing raids.
Inside, there has been chaos, witnesses say. Families have fled. Militants are hoarding food. Some fighters have turned their guns on each other.
As U.S.-backed forces surround the last square mile of Islamic State territory, preparing for a final assault on the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz, people who have escaped describe a desperate scrabble for survival in the dying days of the statelet.
In more than a dozen interviews at screening points outside the village and at the al-Hol displacement camp, those who fled recounted the end of the self-proclaimed caliphate in graphic, often harrowing, detail. Wives and children of the Islamic State fighters looked confused and exhausted. Yazidi women and their families, who had been enslaved by the militants, were in shock.
One said she had walked “out of hell.”
They described how they had retreated in recent weeks from city to town and then into rural villages as the bombs kept falling and their Islamic State shrank. By the time they reached the villages of Sousa and then Shaafa, near Baghouz close to the Iraqi border, they had given up unpacking their suitcases, several women said.
ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Ransom (02-21-2019)
Almost every town being cleaned up in Syria is turning up large caches of Israeli and US weapons still in freight boxes and unopened.....everything from rocket launchers and ammo to manpads , rifles , communication gear , you name it - to assist ISIS to hang on a bit more until some miracle face saving strategy can emerge.
nathanbforrest45 (02-22-2019)