As airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIL) intensify, President Barack Obama reiterated his strategy to combat the brutal extremist group by training local forces to fight it with the help of U.S.-led air power.
Progress has sometimes been slow, Obama admitted. However, coalition forces have has conducted more than 5,000 airstrikes and eliminated “thousands” of ISIL fighters, including senior leaders.
“This will not be quick. This is a long-term campaign. ISIL is opportunistic, and it is nimble,” he said in a press briefing today at the Pentagon. But “over the past year, we’ve seen that when we do have an effective partner on the ground, they can be pushed back.”
The president visited the Pentagon this afternoon for a briefing on the counter-ISIL strategy from his team of national security advisers. They did not discuss the possibility of deploying more troops to the region, he said.
Obama’s statements came on the heels of a Defense Department announcement of further strikes this morning and yesterday. Attack, fighter, bomber and remotely piloted aircraft carried out a series of eight airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria and 11 in Iraq. In Syria, strikes in Hasakah, Raqqa and Kobani destroyed ISIL equipment such as a tank, armored personnel carrier, mortars and vehicles. In Iraqi cities including Fallujah, Sinjar and Ramadi, the military took out machine guns and various ISIL facilities.
“We’re intensifying our efforts against ISIL’s base in Syria.” Obama said. “Our airstrikes will continue to target the oil and gas facilities that fund so much of the operations. We’re going after ISIL leadership and facilities.”
The administration also continues to accelerate the delivery of equipment, including anti-tank weapons, to Iraqi Security Forces, the Peshmerga and tribal fighters, he said.
Over the weekend, the U.S. military conducted a series airstrikes against the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. The goal of the strikes was to cut off the Islamic State’s freedom of movement, allowing Kurdish People’s Protection Unit ( YPG) fighters to advance, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters in a briefing this morning.
“That’s the manner in which the effective and lasting defeat of ISIL will occur, when there are effective, local forces on the ground that we can support and enable so that they can take territory, hold territory and make sure good governance comes in behind it,” he said.
Finding those local forces has been a challenge for the Defense Department. The United States in recent months has increased the number of military trainers deployed to Iraq, but the Iraqi government has been unsuccessful in recruiting enough troops to meet the department’s goal to train 24,000 Iraqi Security Forces troops by the fall. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is trying to train an opposition force that can take on the Islamic State in Syria, but has struggled to find Syrian rebels that can make it through its vetting process.
Obama said the fall of Ramadi in May had galvanized the Iraqi government, and more recruits, including Sunni volunteers, are coming forward.
Before the president’s meeting at the Pentagon, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) released a statement criticizing Obama’s approach in Iraq and Syria, and imploring him to rescind his threat to veto the fiscal year 2016 defense budget.
“The President’s afternoon at the Pentagon should lead him to the same conclusion I have reached from similar briefings: His strategy to defeat ISIL isn’t working. From Libya and Tunisia, to Afghanistan, ISIL continues to advance while we lose ground and time,” he said. “I hope that the President will acknowledge these realities, end the veto threats on bills that would enhance his ability to take the fight to ISIL and rethink his own inadequate strategy.”
Obama had his own message for Congress: confirm Adam Szubin for the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes.
“This is a vital position to our counterterrorism efforts,” he said. “Unfortunately, his nomination has been languishing on the Hill.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, said the plan to defeat ISIL is not working.
“There is no compelling reason to believe that anything we are currently doing will be sufficient to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL,” he said. “None of the so-called progress that the president cited suggests that we are on a path to success, and when you are not winning in warfare, you are losing.”