You dont hear too much about Iraq and ISIS these days. ISIS was a big deal 2 years ago. I’m I delusional?
There was a war, they were driven out of all the territory that they occupied.
As to the matter of whether you are delusional, do you think someone is trying to poison you, or that Taylor Swift is in love with you?
They attacked a Druze region in Syria 2 weeks ago, killing 250 civilians and kidnapping a number of Druze girls/women.
They are still around (indeed, they have reoccupied a small portion of the territory they were driven out of) but in terms of sustaining a caliphate, they are finished. They are basically cheerleaders and teachers now, convincing (or just taking credit for) Muslims in Western nations to drive trucks into crowds, build and blow up bombs, and other terrorist attacks.
You don’t hear about Isis because it was defeated. It was driven out of Mosul in July of last year, and continued to lose territory until by December 2017 Iraq declared it had been driven from the country. It doesn’t control any meaningful territory any more.
Vox: “The Pentagon says ISIS is ‘well-positioned’ to make a comeback”.
*On Thursday, a Pentagon spokesperson said that the terrorist group “is well-positioned to rebuild and work on enabling its physical caliphate to re-emerge.”
“ISIS probably is still more capable than al-Qaida in Iraq at its peak in 2006-2007, when the group had declared an Islamic State and operated under the name Islamic State of Iraq,” Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Sean Robertson told the news outlet VOA in an emailed statement.*
You know how the doctor tells you to take all of the antibiotics lest the infection return with more virulence? That lesson has apparently been unlearnt by this administration.
Stranger
Is this an area we can give credit to Trump though?
Maybe the sources you hear don’t have anything to say about it. Or you’re listening to th e wrong sources. Hell, there could be dozens of reasons why you have questionable impressions about current events. 1,335 strike sorties against ISIS targets in the month of June would indicate we were still pretty busy supporting the so-called mop-up operation.
No. ISIS was down to appx. 35-40% of it’s former area and Trump, after taking office, did nothing to change the military strategy that was in place…
Apparently, his secret plan was to continue what Obama had been doing.
Which part of the article’s $230M are you quibbling about? The part where it pulls our guys and gals boots off the ground in and around Syria, or the part where we spend it on bombs and missiles supporting the kurds and Iraqis doing their own dirty work?
Sort of. The work in Iraq was pretty much in place by the time Trump came into office. The Raqqa and Mosul campaigns both started well before he took office. The real victory though belonged to Russia and Assad pushing them out of Western Syria. Since Trump is a Russian client, he should get some credit.
Less facetiously, he should probably get some credit for finally giving up on the FSA. As US and Gulf support subsided for the rebels, it took enough pressure off of Assad to actually make it militarily and just as importantly politically feasible to actually defeat ISIS.
And you give Trump no credit for this? If only this were Trump’s secret plan on all policy.
No credit, that was sarcasm.