Tag: Joseph Dunford

Oh, how I want to believe this assertion.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter says we’re turning the corner in the fight against the Islamic State.

He is pushing back against criticism — chiefly from the remaining Republican candidates for president and their allies in Congress — that we are “losing” the fight.

Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Joseph Dunford today told the media that the death this week of the Islamic State’s chief financial officer — the No. 2 man in the ISIS high command — illustrates the progress U.S. and allied forces are making in the fight against ISIS.

“The momentum of this campaign is now clearly on our side,” Carter declared.

Carter: We’re turning the tide

OK. Maybe it is. I have long endorsed the air campaign that we’ve launched against ISIS, believing that a concentrated aerial barrage of military targets could eventually destroy the monstrous terrorist cult.

Indeed, we keep killing ISIS leaders, not to mention the fighters who follow them.

Our allies in Iraq and resistance forces in Syria reportedly are taking back ISIS-held territory.

We keep getting news of “setbacks” and defeats of ISIS on the battlefield.

Is it true? Are these victories real?

Part of me wants to believe they are. Another part of me remembers a day when military leaders and their civilian bosses in government said the same thing about another war, the one in Vietnam. Americans were assured that more ground troops and greater concentrations of military power would demoralize the enemy and force them to give up the fight against a superior military machine.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

I know this fight is different. I also know that a victory declaration will be harder to come by.

We’ve all known when this war commenced that it required maximum patience among Americans.

My own patience is still pretty stout. It does, however, have its limits.

I just hope Secretary Carter and Gen. Dunford are telling us the actual truth this time.

One of two key figures in the war against the Islamic State has it wrong about whether American military power has “contained” the terrorist organization.

President Barack Obama said ISIS has been “contained” on the battlefield. He said so the other day and then on the very next day, the Islamic State launched those horrifying attacks in Paris.

U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee that ISIS is “not contained.”

Who you gonna believe? The politician or the career military man?

I am going to stick with the Marine on this one.

Do I think we’re losing the war? I tend to believe we will be able ultimately to destroy the Islamic State. It’s going to take a lot more than just U.S. air power to do it. More nations already have joined in the fight, most notably France and Russia, two nations that have paid heavily for ISIS’s terror tactics.

Gen. Dunford told the committee — chaired by Republican Mac Thornberry of Clarendon — that “technically we are not at war” with the Islamic State. The word “technically” is critical here. To be at war requires — in the strictest sense — a declaration issued by Congress at the request of the president.

But in reality, we’re at war.

As for whether the general has contradicted the commander in chief and the secretary of defense and whether that puts Gen. Dunford’s status in some jeopardy, I’ll just add one final point.

We put the military under civilian command. Gen. Dunford answers to Defense Secretary Ash Carter and President Barack Obama, both of whom have said one thing about ISIS containment; meanwhile, Dunford has said something else. Yes, I believe Dunford’s time as Joint Chiefs chairman might be coming to a close.

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Hoping it’s true that we’re beating ISIS

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