The additional capabilities provided by the Marines include artillery fire to give cover to locals battling the militants. About 300 Marines arrived in Syria in arly March 2017 to provide additional capabilities for allied forces working to push Islamic State forces from their de facto capital of Raqqa. The so-called caliphate has been shrunk thanks to ground action by allies, including Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish militias and reconstituted Iraqi state forces.Ībout 100 soldiers with the 75th Army Ranger Regiment under Operation Noble Lance were deployed in and around Manbij, Syria, with Stryker armored fighting vehicles. The terror group’s ability to replenish itself with foreign recruits has been choked. The Pentagon claims U.S.-led airstrikes have killed up to 75 percent of IS fighters, including 180 top commanders. Pentagon planners said much had changed tactically since Flynn wrote The Field of Fight. If the countries sheltering jihadists won’t eradicate them, then American forces should march in and do so, he argued. Flynn also argued for cutting ties with any foreign powers deemed to be assisting the jihadists indirectly or otherwise, including traditional Gulf allies. In "The Field of Fight", Flynn says the full weight of American power should be brought to bear on the jihadists, much as the United States did in the Second World War to defeat its foes. In book "The Field of Fight", which was published July 2017 and co-authored with conservative historian Michael Ledeen, Flynn offered what he described as “a winning strategy” to defeat IS and al-Qaida, one relying more on military muscle than the technology-driven and drone-strike policy favored by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. On 03 February 2017, Trump turned to his generals for a detailed military strategy, and he signed an executive order instructing members of his Cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to come up with a plan within 30 days - one that can be implemented immediately. military commanders believe that ultimately they can influence the SDF's behaviour and temper their territorial ambitions in Syria." rank and file PKK fighters believe that the fight against Daesh is not an end in itself, but the first step in a continuum of a struggle for independence, and more than likely the prelude to the ultimate battle: fighting the Turks. This myopic approach is a recipe for future disaster. Anything else is considered peripheral and a distraction from the mission at hand. Oubai Shahbandar, a Fellow in New America's International Security Program, noted 08 March 2017 that "The US military has one simple binary objective to achieve in Syria: defeating Daesh. Ankara's position was that the inclusion of the US-backed YPG in any operation to take Raqqa from Daesh was unacceptable. Turkish forces were ready to work with the US-led coalition on the operation to liberate Raqqa, which is Daesh's de facto capital in Syria, provided the YPG was not involved. Both the Turks and the Kurds were more interested in fighting each other than Da-esh, but the small American force was postured to discourge such action. Neither nationality had a sigificant presence in Raqqa, a Sunni Arab city, so the matter of who and what would govern Raqqa after it was liberated remained an open question. The Turkish proxies were largely Turkoman Syrians, and the American proxies were largely Kurdish Syrians. When it came to a war plan, candidate Trump offered just three tactics: intensifying the bombing of the Islamic State, seizing control of oilfields in Iraq, and recruiting NATO to invade strongholds in the Middle East to “knock the hell out of ISIS.”īy early 2017 forces backed by NATO members Turkey and the United States were slowly moving on Raqqa, the headquarters of Da-esh in Syria. On the presidential campaign trail, Donald Trump demurred when asked to outline his war plan to defeat the so-called Islamic State terror group, arguing he wasn’t going to tip his hand to America’s foes by revealing his intentions. Operation Inherent Resolve - 2017 - Trump
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