Pentagon Continues to Resist Syria Pullout With ‘Warning’ About ISIS Resurgence

The Pentagon leadership has made no bones about not being keen on withdrawing from Syria, and even as they claim to be resigned to doing so, they continue to issue reports clearly intended to scare the administration away from the plan.

This new report, the full contents of which will be available on Monday, affirms that ISIS has lost materially of its its territory in both Iraq and Syria, but then warns it is conceivable that ISIS might regain some territory if left totally alone to do so.

The message is intended to be interpreted by US readers as saying the US needs to keep pressuring ISIS militarily, though in practice it really just means that any attempts by ISIS to reclaim lost territory need to be resisted by somebody, which they would with or without a US presence.

With territory estimated at less than five square kilometers inside Syria, ISIS has for all intents and purposes had to relocate its entire force into the deserts of Syria and Iraq. Yet the forces in the desert clearly don’t pose a serious threat to retake anything, or they’d be trying to retake something as it is. US troops, after all, are not on the front lines with ISIS forces to begin with, and the groups that are aren’t going anywhere.