There is and always has been a strategy.
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These sources said that rebels equipped with TOWs are continuing to keep Assad’s forces in check despite Russia’s air bombardments and the bolstering of Assad’s ground forces by Russian advisers and Iranian militiamen.
Bush applauded Obama for deciding to deploy special forces.
“There should be a real strategy to take out Isis and to take out Assad”, Bush said, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “The core of our navy technique inside Syria is to construct up the capability of native forces”.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said the latest escalation “is unlikely to succeed in achieving our objective of defeating ISIL and instead threatens to embroil the United States in Syria’s civil war”.
There is no quick fix to Syria’s problems. At the end of the day Barack Obama has turned out to be a completely incompetent commander-in-chief. They said an agreement hadn’t yet been reached, but that the 19 nations meeting in Vienna were considering the idea. If any cease-fire is agreed to, it would not prevent attacks against such groups. “ISIL is not going to be intimidated by this move”, Graham said. The Syrian Arab coalition is a US term for a group of about 5,000 Sunni Arab fighters.
President Obama was compelled to order this limited deployment because of the changing military balance following Russia’s direct involvement in the war on the side of the Assad regime, and the failure of the worldwide air campaign that the US has been leading for more than a year to seriously degrade or roll back the tactical gains of the Islamic State ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. “It could be a screening operation; these Special Forces could extract something or somebody from these “moderate” rebels”.
The goal is to determine what further military cooperation can develop. This would be the first time U.S. troops work on the ground, officials said. “There’s nothing quite like the face-to-face contact”.
The new group consisting of Kurdish fighters would get trained and given weapons, but this will be a daunting task to the US.
Administration officials denied the troops – fewer than 50 – will engage in combat operations, but the fact remains they’ll be where the action is. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees group said government forces fired more than 11 missiles at a market in the suburb of Douma. The US has done special operations raids in Syria, and it participated in a ground operation to rescue hostages last week in northern Iraq that resulted in the first USA combat death in that country since 2011.
He added that the USA will soon beef up its air campaign by sending F-15 fighter planes to a Turkish air base, giving the U.S.an opportunity to accelerate airstrikes. Another dozen more F-15 fighter bombers also are on their way. This step is not to be considered “the start of a no-fly zone or a creeping no-fly zone”. They are relatively tiny in number and will only be in an advisory and assistance role, leaving the United States still depending heavily on rebel allies who have not always proven reliable. “Iran is just slapping Obama and Kerry in the face”.
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Walter Pincus reports on intelligence, defense and foreign policy for The Washington Post and writes the Fine Print column.
