We’ve heard this before.
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One of America’s primary objectives is to eventually take the key city, a mission that USA defense officials say needs to be accomplished primarily by local combat forces.
Obama, who had ruled out sending ground troops into Syria or Iraq, counted on defeating ISIS with airstrikes.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told “Fox News Sunday” that President Barack Obama is a “completely incompetent commander-in-chief” and that Secretary of State John Kerry is “completely delusional”.
A few liberal Democrats described the president’s moves as a slippery slope to a deeper USA commitment.
They will increase air operations in northern Syria, particularly in the Turkish border area to cut the flow of foreign fighters, money and materiel coming in to support the Islamic State.
The White House said Friday that fewer than 50 special operations soldiers would go into Syria, in a noncombat advisory role. It is not clear how many rebel groups would agree to a plan that doesn’t result in Assad’s immediate departure.
Senator John McCain said the “limited action” was “yet another insufficient step” by a president who had no realistic and coherent strategy on Syria. “We need to get on the ground, meet them”, the Pentagon official said.
During an interview with NBC News, the president pushed back against the idea that the new deployment violates his pledge not to put boots on the ground in Syria to fight ISIS.
“There’s no denying the serious risk they will be facing”, Earnest said, but “they are not in a combat mission”.
The decision by President Obama to deploy less than fifty American Special Operation forces to Kurdish controlled Northern Syria to assist and advise local forces and coordinate bombing raids with the global air campaign is emblematic of his leadership style in dealing with the raging conflicts in Iraq and Syria; incremental, tactical, timid and reactiveary.
Still, it’s telling that Obama has been forced by circumstances to up the USA ante in Syria.
Speaking to ARA News in Hasakah, Kurdish fighter of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) Heval Seradar said the SDF seized control of the Hasakah-Hawl road and other key points in the area after battles with ISIS militants in the countryside of al-Hawl town, “causing heavy losses in the ranks of the terror group”.
A member of Kurdish forces guards the front line near Kirkuk in Syria.
A coalition of US-backed Kurdish militia and rebel groups has launched its first operation against territory controlled by the Islamic State jihadist group in northeast Syria, a spokesman said Saturday.
The presentation to the U.S. Institute of Peace, dated May 29, 2014 but updated recently for this article, Deptula highlighted a number of key considerations, but really boil down to a direct question: what are the strategic objectives for such an action?
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A joint rebel force in Syria consisting of Sunni Arabs, Assyrians and Kurds announced it was launching an offensive to liberate portions of the country’s northeastern al-Hasakah province from Islamic State militants.
