The way things are now, a new Republican Admin could come in and mop up ISIS in six months, making the commies... I mean Democrats, look bad. They would have to lie that on down for a long time. They can gain some political benefit however, from backstabbing their jihadi friends on the way out.
But more importantly to them, they risk a lot of blowback going into the election, from the repeated massacres that their refugee and immigrant friends are likely to commit this Summer in Europe. They must cover their butts for the election.
A few weeks offensive to capture Manbij and al Bab, shutting ISIS off from Turkey, would be checkmate. It could have already been done, but the dogs have been held back. The Kurds have been waiting a few miles from Manbij for over a month, with very little air activity.
All the initial plunder has been spent, and the Russians screwed up their oil smuggling business. ISIS is going broke, salaries have been cut in half across the board, and the new recruits are mostly going to Libya. Their top leaders are being picked off rapidly (so I guess they won’t be testifying).
Militarily, they are vulnerable. Drop a few planeloads of ammo to the Kurds, and ramp up airstrikes from a few a day to a few hundred, and they will be routed in short order. It is just waiting on the political decision.
ISIS headed to Libya...but, but, but, that’s another country the CIA and State killed the leader of and overthrew. How weird is that...a recurrent theme. “We came, we saw, he died.”
Vlad had enough of the CIA’s “secret” army in Syria and waged a REAL war against ISIS. The US isn’t going to take on Vlad. Evil and stupid yes, suicidal, no.
BeauBo: I think you’re closer to the real situation than many newspaper reporters. We can destroy ISIS strongholds in Raqqa, Mosul, etc just by bombing the hell out of the cities (but Mosul has a population of around 500,000 or more, with many being held captive in that they will be killed by snipers of they try to leave, according to sources in Syria.
However, ramping up the airstrikes on every known ISIS target at one time (but over a couple of days), will take out a lot of their camps, depots, communication facilities, and just plain old tank, artillery and checkpoint positions.
It’s called “a war of attrition”, meaning that you keep the pressure on them 24/7 so that they can’t regroup, move freely like they used to, get enough supplies to keep their forces at close to 100% efficient, and keep their lines of communication open to other ISIS and Al Qaeda groups in the neighborhood.
This is when we send in the small sniper teams and commando teams to pick off their sentries (instill the fear of God in them because they know they will be killed if they main checkpoints, towers, or even drive on the roads outside of their base cities).
This is one way to break their hold on their captive populations and if enough flee the cities, then you can “carpet bomb” (selectively), use the beautiful Daisy Cutters to level specific areas (like killing a circle of cockroaches by dropping a huge telephone book on them), and if they flee en mass, it’s crispy critter time (Napalm - bring it back now) and A10 thunder runs.
Meanwhile we need to do more in Nigeria/Mali to destroy the leadership and massed troops of Boko Harum. It seems that this is happening but on what scale I do not know. News reporting from that area is pisspoor.
The same for Al Shahab in Somalia, and most Islamic terrorist groups in Libya, Tripoli, Serte, etc. When you kill them by the dozen or score, it demoralized them so we need good targeting intelligence. That is the secret to blowing the bastards to hell.
Meanwhile, Europe is going to have to close their borders to almost everyone, at least for a while (Trump was right on this approach), and we have to stop this crap of letting people who we know have fought in Syria/Iraq come back to the US. The same for the Brits, French, Italians, Belgians, etc.
If you know they are the enemy, either arrest them and jail them or kill them outright. The Europeans have to quite being so damned timid and fight this as a war because it is.
Also, we should encourage Egypt and Israel to continue their join collaboration in the Sinai Desert. That place has to be cleared out of Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Bedouin smugglers and any other troublemakers.
The best defense is a good offensive based on good intelligence, firepower, and the will to win.