The U.S. Department of Defense sends another of the emails almost every day. They are lists of air and artillery strikes conducted by the U.S. and coalition forces, ISIS assets targeted, damage and destruction accomplished. On a recent Monday, the tally included 116 ISIS fuel trucks, 11 ISIS tactical units, one large ISIS tactical unit, seven ISIS fighting positions, seven ISIS buildings, one ISIS storage depot, six ISIS vehicles, one ISIS tactical vehicle, one ISIS fighter (he was wounded, the Pentagon said), one ISIS staging area, one ISIS heavy machine gun, one ISIS homemade explosives cache, one ISIS weapons cache, and six ISIS command and control nodes.
The lists, taken on their own, can seem impressive. But they mask the fact that it's still not clear any of this is really accomplishing much.
"The airstrikes, in terms of limiting ISIS' capacity to make advancements in the area it controls, it's probably a C+ or a B-," says Christopher Swift, an adjunct professor of national security studies at Georgetown University. "In terms of forcing ISIS to adapt to a less permissive environment it's probably been a D-."
WNU Editor: You would think that after 15 months something would give ... but the war grinds on.
3 comments:
Because these strikes are so few and so limited in their rules of engagement that they can be nothing but ineffective.
When the west decides that this is no longet a police action or a pr stunt and switch to war mode the results will speak for themselves
This war is a money making machine!!
Yeah its not even a war more like a training exercise.
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