The US has bombed 800 targets in Syria. ISIS continues to gain territory. Insurgents cannot be defeated from the air alone. They just can’t. This a lesson the US resolutely refuses to learn. By bombing whatever, we will inevitably kill noncombatants who will probably then be way more sympathetic to ISIS. And why are we bombing Syria anyway? Why is this our fight? The US detests Assad, who we now are implicitly backing. All of this makes absolutely no sense.
This Pentagon pronouncement reminds me of propaganda we heard from them during the Vietnam War. “60 Viet Cong were killed. One US soldier suffered a hangnail.” It wan’t true then, it’s not true now.
“Yes, they have gained some ground. But we have stopped their momentum,” one Pentagon official told The Daily Beast.
A map developed by the Coalition for a Democratic Syria (CDS), a Syrian-American opposition umbrella group, shows that ISIS has nearly doubled the amount of territory it controls since airstrikes began last year.
Gosh, ISIS doubling seized territory in a year does not sound like their momentum has been stopped.
From the always savvy War News Updates.
If the Islamic State is gaining territory in Syria …. despite consistent and persistent U.S. air strikes …. one has to wonder if the Obama administration’s Mideast strategy is working. When this U.S. campaign started a few months ago …. top U.S. Generals and Pentagon spokespersons reiterated the need for time …. but that time is now coming to an end …. and I do not see any progress at all.