[Zero Hedge] Under President Obama’s watch, the Islamic State conquered a so-called caliphate the size of Ohio in Syria and Iraq. Luckily a new, "tough" president - Donald Trump - stepped in, loosed restrictions on his military, and, defeated the bad guys. At least that’s the popular story and the party line.
Of course, the ground-level truth is much messier.
If ISIS is so decisively and irreversibly defeated, how then to explain last week’s gruesome double-suicide bombing in Baghdad and expert warnings that up to 10,000 ISIS loyalists remain in Iraq and Syria?
The problem is that, even after 17 years of hard lessons to the contrary, most Americans - and administration spokespeople - insist on viewing ISIS as a linear, conventional threat. A quick look at color-coded Syria maps gives the obvious impression that ISIS as a conventional military force indeed has receded. Plentiful U.S. airstrikes, ample American advisory teams, and local Kurdish ground troops combined to devastate Islamic State’s fighters - which is a positive development.
Unfortunately, that may have been the easy part. Conventional destruction does not equate to total, ideological defeat. ISIS is as much idea as army, and such groups have proved remarkably resilient and capable of morphing into new, menacing manifestations. |