UK General: We’re Killing ISIS Faster Than They Can Sustain

Credits Huge Death Toll for Victories Over ISIS

Hyping recent territorial gains against ISIS, Maj. Gen. Rupert Jones credited the huge number of people killed in the US-led coalition airstrikes, saying they are killing people more quickly than ISIS can replace them, and that this would inevitably lead to victory.

Of course, the US had been arguing as much for years, and putting forward gaudy figures of estimated killed to support them. At the same time, there’s never been a really good estimate of what the size of ISIS forces are at any given time, which has meant the number of people killed and the number of people left never seems to be connected.

Maj. Gen. Jones went on to say the fall of Mosul and Raqqa would be “the beginning of the end” for ISIS, and talked of the “inevitability of their destruction,” again crediting the huge numbers killed as putting ISIS in an unsustainable situation.

The comments underscore the underlying simplicity of the coalition’s anti-ISIS strategy, which appears to just be large body counts as a recipe for victory. Whether that ultimately works remains to be seen, but ISIS has been getting killed in huge numbers since before they were called ISIS, and territory losses aside, they have showed an incredible ability to adapt.

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.