Tag: sunnis
Fall Of Ramadi Prompts New Questions About Obama’s Strategy Against Islamic State

Fall Of Ramadi Prompts New Questions About Obama’s Strategy Against Islamic State

By Matthew Fleming, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle called for action from the White House after the Islamic State terror group’s victory in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province.

While White House press secretary Josh Earnest insisted Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s leave-the-ground-fighting-to-locals strategy has been a success “overall,” he hinted there could be tweaks after Ramadi.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, ramped up their concerns about how the war they have yet to explicitly authorize is going.

“Alarm bells should be going off” about the White House’s strategy, said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat of the House Select Intelligence Committee.

Unsurprisingly, Republican hawks such as Senator John McCain of Arizona and likely presidential candidate Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are torching the president’s handling of the war, with Graham on Monday calling for Obama to send 10,000 troops to help fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, and McCain agreeing with his buddy.

McCain called Obama’s decision to withdraw troops years ago “shameful” and said it was the cause of today’s troubles.

“Ramadi fell because of the president’s failure to leave a residual force behind, which is one of the most shameful acts in recent history,” said McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said to reverse ISIL’s gains, “that means more of most everything: more boots on the ground, more forward air controllers, more training, more equipping.”

McCain said Obama didn’t have a strategy to win in Iraq and Syria.

“What’s even more disgraceful is they’re basically papering over what is a significant and impactful loss of the capital of the Anbar province,” McCain said. “Now if it’s Shiite militias that come in, it’ll permanently estrange the Sunni population from Baghdad.”

But more boots on the ground would face certain resistance in Obama’s own party.

Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), entirely dismissed the idea.

“On the ground? U.S. (troops)?” asked Cardin, who is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “No. That’s an easy no.”

Cardin said the fall of Ramadi is a “major concern,” and said the president needed to work very closely with the Iraqis, to manage the Sunni/Shiite conflict.

“It’s a sensitive issue between the Sunnis and the Shiites,” Cardin said. “You’ve got to have confidence among the Sunnis that they can maintain control of their own areas.”

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), declined to offer suggestions to Obama, including whether to commit more troops. But Corker, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, said the fall of Ramadi is evidence the Islamic State group is more of a factor in Iraq than previously thought.

“It’s very disappointing,” Corker said of the Ramadi situation. “I was there not long ago and I know that the discussions at that moment were about Mosul, which is a much bigger undertaking. And I think it calls into question, a big question, whether there are the resources there to deal with what needs to be dealt with in Mosul.”

Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), said the Ramadi situation was a “disgrace,” but was also hesitant to urge more troops on the ground, and he said the U.S. needed a clear strategy first. But he said airstrikes alone were not working.

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Last week, reporters asked many of the candidates for president whether they thought going into Iraq initially was a mistake. But Cornyn suggested that question was the wrong one.

“People are asking the candidates for president if it was a mistake to go into Iraq, but they should be asking the president of the United States, ‘Why did you pull the plug on Iraq and squander the money and the lives of the people who fought to give the people of Iraq a chance?’ ” Cornyn said.

But not everyone was convinced that Obama was taking the wrong approach. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said ISIL is constantly looking for areas to counterattack, “to disrupt momentum and to get headlines.”

Reed said while these types of events will be “constant over the next several months,” the White House should stick to its approach and not add troops on the ground.

“We should be committed to building up adequate Iraqi forces on the ground using air power we have,” Reed said.

Earlier Tuesday, on the other side of the Capitol, Speaker John A. Boehner (R-OH), said the president should start over with a new strategy and a new proposal for an Authorization to Use Military Force to take on the terror group. Earnest dismissed that, saying that Boehner, as well as other lawmakers in both parties, had been “AWOL” on an AUMF against the Islamic State. He said Boehner has given “excuse after excuse” instead of doing his job and considering the AUMF.

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), agreed with Earnest.

“After ten months of the House avoiding the responsibility to even have any meaningful debate on the current war on (ISIS), the speaker’s plea for the president to submit a new authorization is clearly an admission that the House cannot initiate discussion of an issue of this magnitude,” Kaine said in a statement.

He suggested the Senate take it up instead.

Photo: DVIDSHUB via Flickr

U.S., Arab Allies Strike IS Jihadists In Syria

U.S., Arab Allies Strike IS Jihadists In Syria

Damascus (AFP) — The United States and its Arab allies unleashed deadly bomb and missile strikes on jihadists in Syria on Tuesday, opening a new front in the battle against the Islamic State group.

Dozens of IS and Al-Qaeda militants were reported to have been killed in the raids, which Washington said had partly targeted extremists plotting an “imminent attack” against the West.

Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates joined the U.S.-led operation, which involved fighter jets, bombers, drones and Tomahawk missiles fired from U.S. warships.

The strikes marked a turning point in the war against IS militants, who have seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, and declared an Islamic “caliphate”.

The fact that the five Arab nations joining the strikes are Sunni-ruled will also be of crucial symbolic importance in the fight against the Sunni extremists of IS.

Washington had been reluctant to intervene in Syria’s raging civil war, but was jolted into action as the jihadists captured more territory and committed atrocities including the beheadings of three Western hostages.

President Bashar al-Assad’s regime gave a muted initial response, saying it had been notified in advance of the strikes and supported “any international effort” against the jihadists.

The Pentagon said the raids had destroyed or damaged IS fighter positions, training compounds, command centers and armed vehicles in the jihadist stronghold of Raqa and near the border with Iraq.

– ‘Huge impact’ –

An anti-regime activist in Raqa, Abu Yusef, said that IS had redeployed its fighters in response.

“The impact of the strikes has been huge,” he told AFP via the Internet.

The jihadists “are focused on trying to save themselves now,” he added.

The raids prompted many residents to run from their homes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

“Civilians who live near IS positions across Syria have fled,” director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

It follows a recent exodus of tens of thousands of residents into neighboring Turkey in response to a jihadist assault on a strategic Kurdish town in northern Syria.

IS militants have warned the U.S.-led campaign would be met with a harsh response, and an IS-linked Algerian group on Monday threatened to kill a French hostage within 24 hours if Paris did not end its participation in air strikes in Iraq.

The group said it was responding to an IS call to kill Westerners whose nations are among 50 countries that have joined the campaign to battle the jihadist group.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls ruled out negotiation and said Paris would continue its air strikes.

-‘Al-Qaeda plot’ –

Washington said it launched 14 strikes — including 47 Tomahawk missiles — against IS targets around the jihadist stronghold of Raqa, as well as in Deir Ezzor, Albu Kamal and Hasakeh on the border with Iraq.

Its five Arab allies “participated in or supported” the attacks. Jordan and Bahrain said they deployed warplanes.

Four air strikes were also conducted Monday in neighboring Iraq, the Pentagon said, bringing the total number of U.S. raids in that country to 194.

In Syria, eight strikes were carried out on a group of “seasoned Al-Qaeda” veterans to disrupt “imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests”, the Pentagon said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 50 Al-Qaeda militants were killed, as well as more than 70 members of IS.

Eight civilians, including three children, were also among the dead, it said.

The new strikes came less than two weeks after U.S. President Barack Obama warned that he had approved an expansion of the campaign against the IS group to include action in Syria.

Obama was preparing to give his first public remarks on the raids from the White House at 10:00 am (1400 GMT) on Tuesday, a U.S. official said.

Washington has said the goal of the strikes is to degrade the group’s capabilities so it can be taken on by local ground forces including the Iraqi army and moderate Syrian rebels, who are to be trained and equipped by the coalition.

Syria’s opposition — which had pleaded for the strikes — welcomed the new raids, but urged sustained pressure on Assad’s government.

“This war cannot be won by military means alone,” National Coalition president Hadi al-Bahra said.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, Israel downed a Syrian fighter jet over the Golan Heights, indicating that it had crossed a ceasefire line into the Israeli-occupied sector.

Israeli army radio said it was apparently a MiG-21 which was shot down by a surface-to-air Patriot missile, with the wreckage landing on the Syrian-controlled side of the plateau.

AFP Photo/Mohammed al-Shaikh

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