Today's U.S. Senate Hearing On The War Against The Islamic State Revealed That U.S. War Strategy Has Completely Failed

Nancy A. Youssef & Tim Mak, Daily Beast: Obama’s General Just Set His ISIS War Plan on Fire

Even the Pentagon was wincing as a top general fumbled the most basic questions about the Obama administration’s strategy to combat ISIS.

In the span of two hours, the cornerstone of the U.S. strategy toward the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria crumbled—loudly, and in public.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the general in charge of the war effort made clear that the U.S. strategy for arming “moderate” Syrian fighters had failed. Of the thousands of fighters they had hoped to train, just “four or five” are currently in the fight in Syria.

And with that, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command, came under a blistering, bipartisan attack about the strategy in Syria and Iraq.

Senators called the strategy “a joke,” “an abject failure” and in deep need of revision. But neither Austin—testifying alongside Christine Wormuth, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy—nor the critical senators had any better ideas.

Previous Post: U.S. CENTCOM General: Only Four Or Five U.S.-Trained Rebels Fighting In Syria

Update #1: US general: Only handful of Syrian fighters remain in battle -- AP
Update #2: U.S. general says never ordered Islamic State intelligence manipulation -- Reuters

WNU Editor: One can now say with confidence that the U.S. war strategy against the Islamic State has failed .... and failed spectacularly. And what is even more disturbing about this story is that with the exception of the wire services ... no one else is covering this story. But this failure should not surprise anyone .... everyone knows that to have an impact against the Islamic State you will need to have boots on the ground. But it is obvious to me that no one in the White House or Congress is willing to go down that road. I can also now understand why Russia decided this summer to radically changed its Syrian policy. They probably came to the conclusion weeks ago (if not months ago) that the U.S. strategy against the Islamic State was going to fail, and from that analysis made the decision to boost their military presence in Syria significantly. While the U.S. may not want boots on the ground .... the Russians have clearly made the decision that boots on the ground is far more preferable than the alternative.