“You may not be interested in war,” former Russian politician Leon Trotsky once said. “But the war is interested in you.” Whether or not those words passed the lips of the Russian communist revolutionary and Soviet founder, they find resonance in Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Gordon’s narrative of the US-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a war that no one in the White House really wanted, but one that sought them out anyway.
Then-US President Barack Obama wanted 2014 to be his so-called year of withdrawals, Gordon writes in Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State, From Barack Obama to Donald Trump, cementing his legacy by bringing in US troops home from Afghanistan, already America’s longest war. (US troops had left Iraq three years earlier.) And after using a NATO-led coalition to freeze the skies over Libya in 2011 in support of rebels opposing then-Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi, Obama hoped that any future US intervention in the East A East could be equally gratuitous – or at the very least, with limited US boots (if any).
The Islamic State became a foreign policy problem for the United States at the very moment when Washington was bound to be the least interested in dealing with it. Obama dismissed the militant group and other local al Qaeda offshoots and affiliates in the Middle East and Africa as the “JV team” (compared to what he saw as the most serious threat from the central al Qaeda organization responsible for the 11 attacks). September 2014) in a New Yorker article in January 2014. General Lloyd Austin, then head of US Central Command and now Defense Secretary to US President Joe Biden, is said to have characterized the Islamic State as a “flash in the pan” when advising Obama on the group, though a spokesperson for Austin at the time denied that the general viewed the group in that way.
“You may not be interested in war,” former Russian politician Leon Trotsky once said. “But the war is interested in you.” Whether or not those words passed the lips of the Russian communist revolutionary and Soviet founder, they find resonance in Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Gordon’s narrative of the US-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a war that no one in the White House really wanted, but one that sought them out anyway.
Then-US President Barack Obama wanted 2014 to be his so-called year of withdrawals, Gordon writes in Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State, From Barack Obama to Donald Trump, cementing his legacy by bringing in US troops home from Afghanistan, already America’s longest war. (US troops had left Iraq three years earlier.) And after using a NATO-led coalition to freeze the skies over Libya in 2011 in support of rebels opposing then-Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi, Obama hoped that any future US intervention in the East A East could be just as gratuitous – or at the very least, with limited American boots (if any) on the ground.
The Islamic State became a foreign policy problem for the United States at the very moment when Washington was bound to be the least interested in dealing with it. Obama dismissed the militant group and other local al Qaeda offshoots and affiliates in the Middle East and Africa as the “JV team” (compared to what he saw as the most serious threat from the central al Qaeda organization responsible for the 11 attacks). September 2014) in a New Yorker article in January 2014. General Lloyd Austin, then head of US Central Command and now Defense Secretary to US President Joe Biden, is said to have characterized the Islamic State as a “flash in the pan” when advising Obama on the group, although a spokesperson for Austin at the time denied that the general viewed the group in that way.
But the ability to ignore or downplay the Islamic State threat did not last long. In September 2014, the group had beheaded two American reporters on camera in separate incidents and controlled a swath of land between the Syrian and Iraqi borders that was perhaps as large as Britain, according to estimates by the National Counterterrorism Center. from the USA. By the end of the following year, it would carry out attacks on foreign soil, including Paris. And American troops would be back in Iraq, preparing to fight the terrorist group.
Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State, From Barack Obama to Donald Trump, Michael Gordon, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 496 pp., $30, June 2022
That the United States was sucked back into Iraq for the third time in as many decades probably didn’t surprise Gordon, who covered the New York Times of both Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and the 2003 US invasion that toppled the then-president. Iraqi Saddam. Hussein had also written three books on the US wars in the region when the US returned to Iraq in 2014.
Gordon picks up the narrative when the US military – which had no legal agreement to house troops in Iraq after the 2003 war – began descending on Baghdad on fact-finding missions. If the Islamic State was a JV team, as Obama said, it was far more capable than anything the United States had seen before. Iraqi officials, already overwhelmed, described a terrorist infantry force that was ravaging their front lines with car bombs and sophisticated attacks. “I will say this very frankly. It scared me a lot,” retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Nagata, who led US special forces in the Middle East at the time of the rise of the Islamic State, told Gordon.
From there, Degrade and Destroy is a baton relay between different military figures who played a leading role in the campaign, with periodic stops in the White House Situation Room in a style that is half journalist Bob Woodward and half British military historian B. H. Liddell Hart. As Iraq’s military withered, writes Gordon, Obama faced increased pressure from within his government and from Iraqis — who relied on small Cessna planes for air cover — to send remotely piloted drones and then air power. Of government doves like Biden like then USA. vice president, Obama faced pressure to keep the mission close – if there was a mission at all.
Events, as Gordon’s book shows, would force Obama’s hand. The Islamic State’s massacre of Yazidis in the Sinjar Mountains of northern Iraq brought in US and British airstrikes that would become a staple of the struggle after US Central Command lobbied for them for months. And the most promising ally to eradicate the Islamic State from the Syrian side of the border – the Kurdish People’s Defense Units, despised by Turkey – were arrested by the terrorist group on one side and prevented from crossing the Turkish border on the other. With US military might as the only antidote, Obama approved airstrikes and airdrops.
If the battlefield was largely the same for three decades, the political climate in the United States was almost unrecognizable. What has changed in the three decades since Operation Desert Storm, which saw US air power crush Hussein’s forces and drive them out of Kuwait in little more than a month in 1991, is not just the waning US interest in seek monsters to destroy, but also the amount of military power the United States is willing to put up with to defeat them. After events forced the Obama administration back into Iraq — and later, Syria — the White House maintained tight control over troop levels, writes Gordon, resisting a desire by the U.S. Department of Defense to deploy power. US air force and, in giving way, trying its best to keep US forces away from the front lines.
But even if the Obama and Trump administrations weren’t interested in the war, the war was still interested in them. In 2016, the Iraqi military was knocking on the door of Mosul, Iraq, and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were preparing for their climactic battle in Raqqa, Syria – the two centers of the Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate. And US military advisers, who should only have been advising and assisting Iraqi (and later Syrian) forces, were getting much closer to the front lines than some leaders were comfortable with: US rules of engagement eventually had to be expanded to put the US in charge. troops closer to the front lines and give lower-level commanders the ability to independently call in air strikes. It turned out that military counseling is not a job for remote work.
If this book is a little different from Gordon’s earlier dry military stories, it’s because the war the United States fought in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State was different from its previous struggles in Iraq. This is not a hard-fought memoir like They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate by journalist James Verini or Shatter the Nations: ISIS and the War for the Caliphate by reporter Mike Giglio.
But Gordon’s narration as the voice of a god helps show that there was a cost to trying to fight for free. Deployments that limited troop rotations in Syria to 120 days, for example, left US troops close to Islamic State lines, reliant on partner forces for protection and worried they could become soft targets. “No one could say exactly how long the deployment would take, but it looked like it might be a ‘hello, I have to go’ mission,” writes Gordon of the US Army’s 5th Special Forces Group, which was deployed to the Euphrates, in Syria. River Valley after Trump had twice already asked US forces to leave the country – only to be overruled by his advisers. “There was a paradox at the heart of the enterprise, which could be managed but never really resolved: as the US military footprint diminished and its capabilities diminished, the risk to the security of US forces in Syria could increase.”
Although I sat next to Gordon at numerous press conferences where military officials tried to lull reporters to sleep with the idea that all US forces were training, advising and assisting, what he conveyed in the book is that they were doing so on a confusing, multinational battlefield. Iran-backed militants were in the fight, and the United States had to defuse airstrikes with their positions through Iraqi intermediaries. Washington had to accept that the Iraqis had their own priorities if they were going to do most of the fighting, and later had to learn the same lesson in Syria.
And that’s the problem with “by, with and through,” the Pentagon’s catchphrase for the mission that saw Iraqi and Syrian forces take the lead in fighting Islamic State, with airpower and artillery assistance from the United States and other powers. westerners. The Obama and Trump administrations have often been stuck, sometimes unsuccessfully, trying to dictate military strategy. In Mosul, as Americans tried to open a second front to attack Islamic State positions in the city, US military commanders learned to keep their mouths shut with Iraqi politicians and to argue in private. “Iraqis could not be ordered or even pressured to adopt the American strategy,” writes Gordon. Later, in Syria, the United States had to pressure Kurdish leaders of the Syrian Democratic Forces to mop up Islamic State killers in Arab areas, even as Turkey attacked their territory.
And partnerships are more like forced marriages, with the United States sometimes having to hold its nose and work with groups it finds repugnant or who, in other contexts, may even be enemies of the US, as it did with Iran-backed Shia militias in Iraq and Al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria. With the fight against the Islamic State not designed or sold as a US foreign policy priority, it has increasingly become a political albatross in a Trump administration that was weary of wars in the Middle East. Trump himself, true to form, thought that US allies “should open their wallets and pay for it,” writes Gordon.
This is also a story of invisible costs. Gordon’s portrait is useful in explaining how a military mission meant to be kept small took on dimensions of its own. The military’s Joint Special Operations Command sometimes carried out attacks in Iraq without obtaining approval from the top US general leading the mission in Iraq and Syria or without consulting Iraqi officials. In a particularly chilling early episode Gordon described, US Marines visiting their Kurdish counterparts in the Iraqi city of Duhok found themselves calling in air strikes to break out of an ambush. “It was a lesson that the line between special operations forces advisory mission and combat was porous and could change in the blink of an eye,” writes Gordon. And all the while, the specter of US and Iranian forces crossing paths in Iraq and Russian paramilitaries threatening US troops in Syria has loomed large.
The narrative ceases at the end of the Trump administration, only briefly delving into Biden’s periodic battery of attacks on Iranian targets in Syria. However, despite everything, US troops remain in both countries in minor advisory roles – an acknowledgment that the US will have to remain present in the Middle East, if not happily. Michèle Flournoy, a former senior Pentagon official, told an event for the book that a Middle Eastern colleague once told her that while Americans think all problems can be solved, “all problems in our part of the world can only be resolved.” managed.” Unfortunately for Americans trying to divert their attention away from this region, this aspect of the Middle East war has not changed.
What is Isis and how did it originate?
ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), also known as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), is a Sunni jihadist group with a particularly violent ideology that calls itself a caliphate and claims religious authority over all Muslims. It was inspired by Al Qaeda, but later publicly expelled from it.
Where was Isis founded? This may interest you : Welcome to Sharia Law in the United States.
What is the meaning of Isis?
Emphasis. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), also known as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), is a Sunni jihadist group with a particularly violent ideology that calls itself a caliphate and claims religious authority over all Muslims.
What is Isis origin story?
Isis was initially an obscure goddess who did not have her own dedicated temples, but grew in importance as the dynastic age progressed, until she became one of the most important deities in ancient Egypt. This may interest you : 10 New Books We Recommend This Week. Her cult later spread throughout the Roman Empire, and Isis was worshiped from England to Afghanistan.
How did Isis become a goddess?
Then the sun appeared on top of a hill rising from the waters. The sun god created air Shu and moisture Tefnut. Read also : Joe Biden Sells the United States to Iran | Opinion. Both, in turn, generated the sky Nut and the earth Geb. From the union of Geb and Nut were born the gods Osiris and Seth, and the goddesses Isis and Nephthys.
When was the goddess Isis created? Isis (Ancient Egyptian: ê£st; Coptic: â²â²¥â² Äse; Classical Greek: á¼¾ÏιÏ; Meroitic: ����&# xd802;�â Wos[ a] or Wusa) was an important goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom (c. 2686 – c.
Why does Isis have a throne on her head?
The throne is associated with the lap of Isis and so the headdress reinforces the belief that the king’s power depends on her (Baring & Cashford, 250). The headdress is often depicted as blue, which symbolizes the heavens and the primeval flood (and because of this, life and rebirth) in Egyptian art.
Is Isis a god or goddess?
The great mother Isis, the goddess of healing and magic, was crucial to ancient Egyptian religious beliefs. She is known today by her Greek name Isis; however, the ancient Egyptians called it Aset. Her name translates to “Queen of the Throne”, which is reflected in her headdress, which is normally a throne.
Are Isis in Pakistan?
| Islamic State – Khorasan Province | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Achin District, Afghanistan (in fact, originally) |
| active regions | Afghanistan Tajikistan Pakistan |
What did ISIS destroy?
Some of the first public acts of violence by ISIS were the destruction of historic monuments and antiquities – priceless artifacts in the Mosul Museum, the ancient sites of Nineveh and Palmyra, and much more. The ISIS media gave their reasons, of course.
What was destroyed by ISIS in August 2015? After taking the ancient city of Palmyra in 2015, ISIS militants launched a campaign of cultural destruction, detonating centuries-old temples, blowing up historic columns and mutilating precious works of art.
Why did ISIS destroy?
The ISIS media gave their reasons, of course. They talked about how their destructive acts were purifying, how they alone were preserving the integrity of the Muslim faith and, as they claim, preventing the worship of multiple gods by removing any built structures that could hypothetically be used for that purpose.
What has ISIS destroyed?
In 2016, ISIL destroyed the Minaret of Anah in Al Anbar Province, which dates back to the Abbasid Caliphate. The minaret was only rebuilt in 2013 after its destruction by an unknown perpetrator during the Iraqi Civil War in 2006. In 2017, ISIL destroyed the Great Mosque of al-Nuri and its leaning minaret.
What did ISIS steal?
The Islamic State may stand alone in its brutality in Iraq and Syria, where it has orchestrated massacres of civilians and suicide bombings and salted people’s homes with thousands of improvised explosives.
