Posted on 05/18/2015 4:05:10 AM PDT by markomalley
This past week, the ISIS terrorist army kicked off its final assault into the Iraqi city of Ramadi by sending six jihadis to blow themselves up in cars next to the Iraqi Army (IA) front lines. The horde then pushed through the city center, sending IA forces to flee, and entered the government headquarters for all of Anbar Province. Soon the ISIS black flag was snapping smartly in the wind over the capital buildings. Apparently uninterested in future administration, ISIS later set fire to the compound for good measure.
True to form, ISIS then opted to take the central city residents prisoner, confiscating their cell phones and publicly executing more than 50 tribal fighters who had opposed them.
A police officer who fled told McClatchy news service reporter Mitchell Prothero that the people fleeing “are begging anyone to save them after the Iraqi government abandoned them because of fears that the Daesh will massacre their sons.” IA officials have now ordered the ragtag troops and some civilians into a soccer stadium on the outskirts of Ramadi for helicopter evacuation.
An Anbar provincial official, Sabah Karhout, implored Baghdad for reinforcements and he urged the U.S.-led coalition to increase its airstrikes against the terrorists in Ramadi. “The city is undergoing vicious attack by Daesh and we are in dire need of any kind of assistance,” Karhout declared.
Mr. Karhout can be forgiven for thinking that the Coalition might not be entirely serious about stopping the horde’s advance across the entire provincial capital. For over the last three days, at least according to CENTCOM’s own website, only two airstrikes have been conducted on ISIS “near” Ramadi. These “struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL fighting position.” That’s it: two strikes, two bombs, two positions—nothing else. For all intents and purposes, Ramadi is on its own.
There is something almost perfunctory and haphazard about the Coalition’s Operation Inherent Resolve, something divorced from operational realities on the ground. Yes, we bomb individual ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, but not as part of any coordinated effort with the Iraqi security forces. It seems rather that the free forces in Iraq and Syria are left to fight their battles, while we separately bomb a few targets across both countries that our intelligence services declare to be ISIS. Our bombing, called Operation Inherent Resolve, bears no relation to the kinetic intensity of any particular ISIS battlefield. It has nothing to do with where the action is. Over the last several months, ISIS has massed its forces into taking the strategically important large city of Ramadi, and it is Ramadi where the Coalition should have been concentrating its efforts.
Victorious coalitions in history did not randomly bomb targets of opportunity; they bypassed targets that didn’t directly assist in the overall strategy for victory. In World War II, General MacArthur famously sent his armies “island-hopping” across the Pacific, bypassing any conquest of islands, no matter how many Japanese troops were present on them, which failed to conform to the ultimate goal of defeating Imperial Japan.
In the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, General Tommy Franks also bypassed cities, many packed with Iraqi Army reinforcements, that were not essential to the regime’s center of gravity in Baghdad. Anything else would have been a waste of time and human life.
Rather than randomly prowling over the deserts to find ISIS tents and trucks, CENTCOM should be focusing on supporting a definable strategy to actually defeat the enemy, and one that is coordinated with the Iraqi government’s own fight for survival on the ground. Perhaps it is too much to ask that a politicized Defense Department follow this basic rule of war. But is it not truly odd that no one in the international media thinks to ask these questions?
I agree our dear leader is a feckless ally.
However, the author’s assertion that “Dugout Doug” MacArthur was the architect of the island hopping is wrong, if I remember right. Doug was determined to recapture the Philippines (that he had left in haste in’42) before going on to Japan. Nimitz and Halsey were already knocking on the door.
Oldplayer
Once there we needed to remain and bolster the government
But we should have never gone in. We had a reason to be in Afghanistan and as it appears, Pakistan. We should have bombed Al Qaida training camps in Egypt and Saudi. I backed Bush for going into Iraq but we should have taken care of the prime mission first....not finish daddy’s battle.
This implies that CENTCOM is actually interested in defeating ISIS, which I sincerely doubt.
"Obama's Forces Win a Great Victory in Ramadi Today"
MacArthur was warned to move planes tanks etc after Pearl, so they wouldn’t be easy targets. He said it was a done deal. BOOM. He lost everything on the first attack wave.
The navy and the marines won the pacific war. MacArthur was the egotist who took the credit.
Who cares? Obama birdied that par 6!
Problem is.. there needs to a greater commitment than simply applying the minimal amount of force to manage the issue off the front pages.
Fox News just announcing on 7:30am WSBA and WMAL newscasts that Ramadi has fallen to muzzie-troglodytes-from-hell, but that Baghdad isn’t in any danger, right now. Heh.
The correct answer to the question, “Knowing what we now know, would you have invaded Iraq?” is: “Knowing what we now know, I would not have pulled our troops out.”
Saddam’s forces fought harder against the coalition’s finest than “free” Iraq’s forces are fighting against the j.v.
Individual v collective
declaration v king
constitution v state
Quran v individual, declaration, constitution, king, state, etc.
1400 yrs v upstart republics alert!
/purple fingers
/heads
Iran will defend Baghdad against ISIS Sunnis, with O’s blessing.
And we’ll provide air support, to our Iranian “allies”?
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi must be so ecstatic today!
Agreed. While all of the "knowledgeable observers" are wringing their hands about W entering into Iraq precious little is being said about the ruinous decision that grasped defeat from a hard won victory.
From Libya to Afghanistan to Yemen the region is enflamed and the people holding the torch and the gas can are our loyal Iranian allies.
The only stable countries across that broad crescent are Egypt and Israel who, not coincidently are on our leader' sh!t list.
Absolutely. The surge won the war. The White House muslim gave it all away to the enemy.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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That’s it: two strikes, two bombs, two positions—nothing else
10 bombs would have been enough to break the ISIS attacks and hold the city.
FWIW, 2 bombs isn’t even near a full ordnance load out on an F/A18, so the pilot flying the Hornet probably had to jettison the rest of his bombs over the ocean before heading back to the carrier to land.
Author is confused, thinking that soetoro wants to win against isis.
Obama defeated by the Junior Varsity.
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