US Sees Bombing Physical Money as Key to Beating ISIS

Officials: US Bombs Turning US Dollars Into Confetti

Early in the US war against ISIS, officials presented the key to the “economic war” as targeting ISIS’ oil industry, and when that failed to do much to change the situation on the ground, they shifted to bombing physical piles of cash in Iraq and Syria.

Even though they’ve been doing this for four solid months now, with officials bragging about turning millions of dollars in US currency into “confetti,” at the cost of millions of US dollars in airstrikes, they are still presenting this as a future solution.

That’s because four months of bombing doesn’t appear to have accomplished much, and with the group turning to things like fish farms and car dealerships to generate cash, it’s starting to look like just the latest in a series of US strategies that just isn’t going to work.

That officials are still clinging to it at all four months later is a testament to how much the Pentagon likes a “simple” plan, even a bad one, and that they don’t really have any better ideas for a war that some are openly conceding will last “generations.”

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.