Predictions of a victory within a matter of hours in Syria are nothing new. Recently, it seems such pronouncements out of US-backed Kurdish factions happen several times a week. On Thursday, President Trump bought in to the latest one.
Clutching a map of Syria in his hand, President Trump vowed that ISIS would be defeated “by tonight.” This isn’t the first time Trump has tried to get out in front of a prediction of victory, nor the first time he appears to have been wrong.
While the Kurdish SDF are as upbeat as ever about winning the battle for the village of Baghouz, they also confirmed that they are still carrying out searches around the “tiny” village looking for more ISIS fighters.
Though that makes it sound like everything is nearly over, past predictions of how many ISIS fighters were left have proven to be off by many thousands, and tens of thousands of civilians have also cropped up out of the village, repeatedly delaying the fight.
All the remaining gold the U.S. didn’t acquire has been smuggled piecemeal out of Baghouz by now. All those surrendering IS fighters and civvies in stupendous numbers probably formed a (gold) chain.
https:// washingtonsblog. com/2019/03/syria-accuses-u-s-stole-40-tons-of-its-gold.html
Victory without ever leaving. Understand…
What amazes me about this is how we can be on the cusp of a military win and that half the county seems to be rooting against a victory and that’s if they are aware of the fight at all.
It shows you how very little the American Public was ever actually convinced that ISIS was a threat. Here we have the US on the brink of taking back the last of their territory and all anyone can say is Ho Hum, who cares, Trump’s wrong again. Blah blah blah
Can you imagine what the people think who tried to hype ISIS as the next big threat compared with the Nazi’s or the Soviets? We wipe them out and the Average American couldn’t care less. Their marketing campaign aimed at hyping them as the worst boogiemen of all time didn’t work that well.
Now granted, some of this Ho Hum attitude is simply because our press doesn’t want to give Trump a win, so they are ignoring the story. However, even with the press ignoring the story there should be a lot of people following anyway, that’s if they were ever worried about ISIS in the first place. Apparently they were never worried about ISIS and they still are not worried about them in the least.
As for Trump, he seems to be correct to me and honestly who freaking cares, it’s not actually a news worthy story anyway. What’s news is that ISIS no longer controls any actual area. Are we really going to pick every last nit here too? Trumps’ wrong, ISIS still has three square feet of land? Is that really the story? How about this instead. “ISIS defeated and the US public yawns and asks, How’s that make Trump look bad?”. Because that’s what it really comes down to doesn’t it? This doesn’t make Trump look bad enough so they have to make him look bad by making it about his “Statement” that they are wiped out rather than the fact that they are no longer holding territory anywhere.
This is good news by any normal standard. Only in the age of Trump would the press take this event and turn it into yet another negative for Trump. And apparently the average American doesn’t care one way or another about ISIS, so so much for them having American’s shaking in their boots.
Trump-hate is now the heart of every issue, reality no longer a consideration.
Interesting times indeed.
Agreed. The IS is being destroyed, this is a good thing no matter who is doing it, Russia, Syria or Trump.
Some people are very sorry to see this ‘salafist principality’ Western terrorist proxy army go, though.
No doubt about it, they create a very compelling reason to stay engaged, or at least it can be spun that way. Not just in Syria and Iraq though, even in Afghanistan the ISIS boogieman is brought up as a reason we must never leave.
IS was the legal fig-leaf for U.S. entry into Syria; the so-called Iran threat doesn’t have the same legal cover as Iran (and Russia) were invited by the legal government and removing Assad outright illegal.
This has been stupid theatre from the day Trump declared victory and tried to leave. Then suddenly, IS had to be relevant again and the world’s longest battle over the smallest patch of real estate began.
The Syrian accusation that the U.S. ran off with at least half the IS gold stash, and delayed assault to get at it, was a neat sideshow though. Iraq might want to look into that, as much of IS gold probably came from Iraq as well.
Anything Trump says, with Israeli elections coming right up, is packed with political BS. He’ll say or do anything to get his buddy Satanyahu re-elected. Trumpsters need to realize that and give up any pretense that he’s some kind of libertarian peacenik or America Firster. But, just like poor Justin, who removed all comments from his latest missive, the ugly truth hurts and confirmation bias will always carry the day with them.
Actually, Trumps happens to not be reality-based. He lives within his own psychotic mind.
Too bad the Trumpsters don’t realize that.
Do the political math. Trumpians never thought Trump was a saint, just the only deal on offer to avoid new wars and hot confrontation with Russia. Of course, Golan support swipes at Russia, but only mildly relative to the sanctions war.
Where is Trump more likely to get votes? The Amen corner, Israel lobby as well as muddled progressives who may also support Israel above any progressive leanings.
The far smaller Israel-critical committed antiwar crowd, many of who want him gone by default, are hardly going to be catered to in his decision making.
The US “Amen Corner” includes Pence, a Christian Zionist who right along with the neocons Trump has surrounded himself with, is in place solely to escalate tensions in the Middle East and ultimately attack Iran. That would immediately escalate to a nuclear confrontation and their long sought-after Armageddon.
They are an f-ing death cult who expect to be raptured up to Heaven while the rest of us are turned into cinder cakes. For Trumpsters to deny this is total naiveté on their part .
Many Trumpsters are religious anyway. For myself, I’m not denying there isn’t a problem, but War Queen Hilary’s more secular death cult is little better and possibly worse. The faux progressives seem to have no built-in sense of restraint on escalations.
At least the violently extremist religious types generally seem to recognize Armageddon is God’s prerogative. For all that they may ‘prepare the way’, God or Satan pulls the trigger, not Man.
Secular faux progressivism is new enough to the power game as to have no built-in checks to self-immolation, while the Abramic traditions seemed to have learned from practice and example of earlier fails when war wasn’t a planet-killing endeavor.
Mission Accomplished!: Part IV
… Yeah, but whose mission force…