Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com – 2015-06-03 23:49:48
Gen. Allen: ISIS War to Last ‘A Generation or More’
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(June 3, 2015) — Out of and quickly back into Iraq, the Pentagon and its officials have talked about the new ISIS war with barely restrained glee as another chance to keep pushing Congress for bigger budgets, and for “emergency” war funding every single year.
Retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who has become President Obama’s special ambassador for the war, going around the world selling it to potential allies, today predicted the conflict would be much longer than anyone imagines, saying it “will likely take a generation or more.”
Citing his four decades in the Marines, Allen insists ISIS is the most brutal group ever, and claimed they are a threat to “the progress of humanity” if not defeated militarily. Which, again, he says is going to take “a generation or more.”
The American publicly is likely not up for another protracted, nation-bankrupting conflict, particularly since they’ve already got one ongoing in Afghanistan and just freshly got extricated from the last one in Iraq. Polls show war weariness already growing among voters nine months into the new war, with 61% saying the war is going badly, and 29% saying it’s going “very badly.”
That’s a surprising level of skepticism for this early in a war, particularly with the administration loudly insisting, every chance they get, that they are “winning” the war. The public is clearly not buying it, and that’s going to be a problem for the pro-war factions of both parties as months extend into years, let alone “generations.”
To the extent officials attempted to sell the American public on the ISIS war at all, it was couched as an extremely limited conflict, both in scope and timescale.
The Pentagon has since escalated their involvement countless times, seemingly only making things worse with each escalation, and is now making it plain that what was supposed to be a quick intervention to shift the momentum in favor of the Iraqi military is actually going to be an endless war of attrition aimed at destroying the de facto caliphate.
Petraeus: US ‘Probably Losing’ ISIS War, Needs New Strategy
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(June 3, 2015) — In a far-reaching interview with CBS, former US General David Petraeus, the commander during much of the last US war in Iraq, insisted that the US is “probably losing” the war against ISIS right now, and needs to reevaluate its strategy going forward.
Petraeus declared the loss of Ramadi “both an operation and strategy setback, a significant one,” adding that he believes that US needs to deploy more troops on the ground, including embedding advisers with Iraqi troops, a plan other Pentagon officials have recently been talking up.
Petraeus added that putting more troops on the ground “is risk, but there is also risk of losing the fight.” He also warned against backing Shi’ite militias inside Iraq, saying that should be “a very last resort.” He insisted the US could win militarily in Iraq, but only with changes in strategy.
Active Pentagon and administration officials have refused to address the prospect of losing the war, insisting that despite mounting losses, they have a winning strategy. Today they bragged of killing over 10,000 ISIS fighters in the last nine months, saying this would obviously have a big effect in the long run.
At Least 70 Killed, Including Civilians, as US Strikes ISIS ‘Bomb Factory’
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(June 3, 2015) — US warplanes launched a concentrated attack on the ISIS-held Iraqi town of Hawijah today, sparking major explosions that killed at least 70 people, including a number of civilian bystanders in the Sunni town.
The attacks centered around a warehouse in the city, which Iraqi officials claimed was the “largest car bomb factory” in ISIS territory, which they said was the reason for the explosions and the large casualties caused by the strikes.
Hawijah was ground zero of the sectarian blood-letting that fueled the war with ISIS, when the Iraqi military launched a bloody crackdown on civilian protesters in the area in 2013.
This fueled months of growing tensions among Iraq’s Sunni Arab population, capped off with an expulsion of Iraqi forces from Ramadi and Fallujah by local protesters in January 2014. ISIS entered the area shortly thereafter.
The latest US strikes and the subsequent civilian casualties are likely to fuel more Sunni resentment both of the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government and the US-led coalition, which usually denies Sunni civilian deaths, and on the rare occasions it confirms the strikes they try to justify them.
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