Has The White House Given Up On Defeating The Islamic State?

US Marines fire a Howitzer artillery gun during the Second Battle of Fallujah. / Photo by Lance Corporal Samantha L. Jones, USMC.

Kimberly Dozier, Daily Beast: Have U.S. Officials Given Up on ‘Defeating’ ISIS?

You don’t hear national security leaders speak of ISIS like an enemy to be beaten. They talk about the terror group like a chronic illness in the global body politic.

ASPEN, Colorado — Officially, the Obama administration is still committed to defeating ISIS. But at the annual gathering of national security chiefs in Aspen, no one was talking about beating the terror army and its adherents. Instead, grim resignation and dark warnings of a long hard fight to come dominated the discussion, with every official predicting a global rise in terror attacks, including in the United States.

“Do we expect more attacks? Regrettably we do, both in Europe and the U.S.,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee.

While some here held out hope for a military triumph over ISIS in Iraq and Syria, they acknowledged that any such advances would represent the first stage in a years-long battle against a group that’s already spread to unstable parts of the Mideast, Africa, and Southeast Asia—and already inspired attacks from Paris to San Bernardino, Orlando to Istanbul.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: From my vantage point .... I see Washington more focused on containing the Islamic State, letting local governments and military forces fight them, and to only intercede to shift a certain battle (or battles) that will help shift the war against the Islamic State in the long term. But U.S. forces directly involved in defeating the Islamic State ... it is clear that there is no stomach for that.