One picture to sum up Obama’s idiotic ISIS policy
Recently the Obama administration was crowing loudly about its success in vaporizing a single, notoriously vicious jihadist with a well-placed Hellfire missile. Mohammed Emwazi was a British citizen who not only joined the jihadist movement, but became one of its leading public executioners, quickly dubbed by the media Jihadi John. John had no qualms about publicly incriminating himself in widely distributed videos showing him sawing off the heads of helpless kneeling victims. His flair for such bloody publicity placed him at the very top of the high-value targets list and resulted in his mission as a fervent executioner for ISIS being abruptly truncated last week, according to U.S. authorities. Since John earned his own execution by drone missile last week, the Obama administration has been basking in the warm glow of his fiery demise, citing the event as evidence that its strategy for combatting ISIS is effective.
And therein lies the problem. In its article relating John’s demise, the U.K.’s Daily Mail includes a photograph that pretty much sums up the slapdash aspects of Obama’s strategy of going after newsworthy targets rather than those that are truly significant in terms of reducing the jihadis’ ability to wage war. View for a moment this aerial photo from the Mail’s article.
Note that the location of the drone strike on Jihadi John appears to be but a few city blocks from a large building marked “ISIS Main HQ.” Does the question not immediately arise in your mind why we would target a specific human enemy and yet leave perhaps hundreds of them alive and well to continue to conduct their war against us?
Will you please explain this strategy, Mr. Commander-in Chief?
Crossposted at American Thinker
Category: Politics
In Obama’s mind, you’re not smart enough to understand, PT.
Bodaprez (aka: the lightworker) is so ghettofabulous that you will never understand how he thinks… because he is so bored with people in general…
Thank you, Dr Manhattan.
Oh, Poetrooper, you just have to go and point out the obvious, don’t you?
It’s only Tuesday, too. What’s on your plate for Wednesday? Beef is bad? Pork will pollute? Limas are lovely? Cucumbers are cool?
You see, bodaprez doesn’t understand the size ratio of the human body to a drone missile. I would bet at least a thin dime that he thinks it’s the same as a bullet. And I can’t answer that rhetorical question with anything that makes sense, other than he’s leaving cleaning up the mess he’s created to his successor, who will get blamed for everything.
I knew if I looked hard enough, I would find confirmation of that dipshit’s lack of interest in the job he was hired to do.
And here it is: he had an interview with GQ. Here’s the link to the article about it.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/17/us-usa-obama-gq-idUSKCN0T61SI20151117
I think it’s plain that he just does not give a crap, never did and never will. May he fade into oblivion and never be heard from again.
If anyone thinks the world is not upside down, ponder this. Bruce Jenner is Woman of the Year and Obama is Man of the Year.
Too bad that a.h. and obozo weren’t holding hands when it went off!!!
It is too nuanced for us. We just wouldn’t get it. Remember, Scrotum Shaver is the internationalist, the glue that binds disparate interests, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the bearer of the Arab Spring. None of us would get it, no matter how simplified the explanation given. So, why bother?
If I had of been smart, I would have opened an exchange for gravitas and nuance. I could have made a killing on the transaction fees!
Military success is tied to the destruction of key nodes. While Johnny was a loathsome murder and propagandist, he was not critical to ISIS’ success. So far the “strategy” had been the elimination of loud people who are easily replaced, with no clear linkage of ways and means to a discernible endstate. What Obama is doing is very expensive varmint plinking, and there is no way that you are going to get rid of every gopher in a pasture by using one .17 HMR at a time.
The Daily Mail is a British publication, isn’t it? So I’m assuming that photo came from British intelligence? I don’t like Obama any better than anyone else here, but I will ask this question: Why does it always have to be us? We’re not the only nation with intelligence agencies, we’re not the only one with spy satellites, we’re not the only ones with drones. So why didn’t somebody else — LIKE THE BRITISH — fly a drone into that building? Why don’t the French? The Russians are in the area, why can’t they spare a drone and get the job done? Why are we blaming ourselves and our president for not solving a problem that the WHOLE WORLD should be taking a vital interest in?
That building looks to be on the order of 200′ x 75′ or so, PN. I believe taking that out would require more than the typical payload of even a largish “drone”.
I’d guess taking it out without substantial collateral damage would require probably 2-4 PGMs. Not many nations have and can deliver those.
It does beg the question of why we haven’t already nailed it with multiple JDAMs and/or Tomahawks, though.
If Bodaprez (aka: da preezy of the 57 steezy) is so concrned about the backlash from bombing the area in the pic, he can always call it an “urban redevelopment project”, since it’s a jobs, global warming or pay thing that brought about ISIS (according to Marie “bimbo” Harf)
The Daily Mail is a British publication, isn’t it? So I’m assuming that photo came from British intelligence?
That would be a wrong assumption. In fact, in using that picture as proof we or someone should have bombed the “ISIS Headquarters” doesn’t address the source of the “intelligence” This is the caption of the image:
This annotated image posted online by anti-ISIS activists Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently claims to show where Emwazi is believed to have been killed (circled), just yards from the group’s headquarters in Raqqa
I don’t know anything about the RIBSS and have never heard of them. Perhaps others and those in intelligence circles can address the quality of their intelligence, but until then, I am not will to say that we should listen to and go on what often self serving groups want. (And for the record, it appears that RIBSS is a human rights organization comprised of mostly foreigners – not Syrians.)
The article also says that it was British spies on the ground that gave the US intelligence as to where and when Jihadi John was going to be out in the open.
In short, it is not “always us.”
Interesting. Thank you for addressing that — it definitely adds information worth knowing.
It didn’t come from British intelligence. The source is listed in the article.
As I said in my post, the image was from the humanitarian group RIBSS.
As for British Intelligence being involved, once again quoting the article:
There is a high possibility British spies were operating on the ground in Raqqa to help identify Emwazi before the strike and may now be trying to collect DNA evidence to prove his death.
I am not sure what you think didn’t come from British intelligence, whether you misread what I wrote or whatever.
If any damage occurred to the clock at The Clock Roundabout, I know a kid who can probably fix it!
But he’ll need a big box to screw it into.
Today’s San Diego Union-Tribune is carrying yet another letter to the editor, claiming that the current problem with the Daesh is all Bush’s fault. Seriously, like the past several years of foolishness since then, just are not material.
But today, I am reminded of the ebola epidemic. We weren’t well-served by either this administration, or the CDC: in this country, we were protected by individuals who treated this disease with appropriate seriousness, namely the many travelers and doctors from the affected regions who self-quarantined, and the daughter-in-law of the one that died in Houston, who quarantined him and cleaned his apartment.
We have already seen this scenario. We know that this administration regards a few American deaths as a statistic that can be ignored. They are concerned with Larger Issues.
I see three great targets there. The headquarters, the court and the mosque.
I wish that photo was higher res. I can’t see the leaflets.
While I understand the point and the sarcasm to make that point, may I lay out an entirely possible hypothetical situation for you?
You, your wife, son and baby daughter are sitting in your home eating dinner when a heavily group from ISIS bursts through the door and says “drive a fuel truck or your family dies!”
What are you going to do? Are you going to drive the truck or watch these bastards kill your wife, son and daughter?
When we drop leaflets, it makes ISIS make a choice – lose just the fuel or lose the fuel and a driver they need further down the proverbial road.
Maybe the intel from sources on the ground shows that the drivers are being forced behind the wheel. Maybe we as a country don’t want the policy of essentially condemning all hostages to death in order to kill ISIS.
I don’t know if that is happening, but give other accounts I have read about ISIS forcing people to do things, I can see it happening.
I have no idea how we try to protect innocent lives and kill every living, breathing thing that either is a member of ISIS of supports ISIS. If you can tell me that the drivers are willing volunteers and or supporters of ISIS, then I am for bombing the trucks without any warning. If the drivers are innocents with the horrible choice of driving or watching their family die, things get a little more complicated.
Yeah, this is bullshit.
My best guess is that ISIS in Syria was merely being contained to allow it to continue operations against Assad.
While territorial gains were effectively controlled, efforts to contain their ability to export terrorism failed miserably.
So the gloves finally came off this weekend.
Possibly dumb question, but how old is that photo?
I was thinking the same thing. I’m no imagery interpretation guru, but that area doesn’t look like it suffered any battle damage.
IIRC, drone explosions leave a pretty large footprint.
One possible reason could be we are getting incredible intell out of those locations and exploiting it really well. Oh who am i kidding
I checked the source of this image; “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”, an anti-ISIS group.
And according to them the US is not striking the headquarters because ISIS holds valuable prisoners and hostages in it.
Some of the US prisoners captured in the Philippines were placed on hell ships for transport by the Japanese. We sunk some of those ships.
Not intentionally we thought it was carrying Japanese troops.
And that was a different time with a different tolerance for casualties.
Modern and immediate media and communication has dramatically changed the nature of conflict making information shaping critical to strategy.
When when Kayla Mueller was killed about the same time as one of our strikes ISIS used it to harm support for our efforts by making it appear we had killed on of our own.
Since it is already apparently public knowledge that we know there are prisoners and hostages in the ISIS headquarters in Syria a strike that kills them would be regarded as willful killing of hostages.
I am sure there is a point where we would tolerate that consequence but a guarantee that point had not been reached prior to the Paris attacks and may still not have been.
The japs also deliberately refused to mark the hell ships as carrying POWs in accordance with international law. Just one of many reasons why any mention of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the various firebombings deserves no response other than, “You fuckers started it.”
Those “hell ships” were so named for good reason, and the men who survived the journey were consigned to slavery, with many dying–sick, injured, and starving–as they labored for private Japanese companies that exist today. I do not doubt for an instant that if those men knew what lay ahead, many would have welcomed attacks on their merchant transport heel ships.
-You have to have two things for effective targeting: good Intel, and a plan. It doesn’t even have to be a good plan.
-This looks like a google maps screen shot. It is not a piece of ‘imagery’, which is shorthand for Imagery Intelligence. IMINT would be annotated differently.
-JJ may have been sold out by a HUMINT source who is probably himself a bad guy. We may or may not be getting more info from the source.
-whatever the source, if we have good collection on the HQ we may want to leave it standing so we can get more. Destroying it just means it will pop up again elsewhere
-Unless we have plan to do more than just whack a mole, in which case we may take it out as part of a larger strike.
-ISIS won’t really be seriously impacted by JJs death. He is just a facilitator, he can be replaced, as can just about everyone in the organization.
-We need sudden, overwhelming, and relentless strikes with a backstop to get the squirters. This almost definitely means lots of conventional forces on the ground- not local militia, but trained Soldiers
-ISIS declared war on us and I believe them. They are great terrorists but poor soldiers
You make some valid points, Red, but what about all the high level leadership that could be taken out with the building? Sure they can find another location for their headquarters fairly quickly but what about replacing all those western-educated administrators working there?
That’s more of a task for them don’t you think? And perhaps operationally disruptive?
It’s not so much the facility as the node- the people in it. Assuming that this is really the ISIS HQ (and that may not be a good assumption), taking it out could cost us some good Intel.
Killing the people in it may garner some short term gains, but they would all be quickly replaced and ISIS would drive on.
We would have to be very sure that we would get a good number of the top 10 bad guys all at once, or all we did was help further the ambitions of some of the tier 2 or 3 bad guys with no discernible effect on the organization
Jihadi John may have been a tempting target of opportunity in a tactical sense, but a mistake in a strategic one. The reason I say this relates to GDContractor’s quote from Putin in the truck thread about Chechens in the shithouse. You can’t corner the rats if you blow up the shithouse first.
Personally, I don’t see carpet bombing as being an effective strategy yet. Putting out leaflets to warn truck drivers can also make sense, depending on available intel, if you consider reports that the trucks were hauling black market oil out of Syria to provide ISIS with a $4 million per day cash flow. If the drivers are Turks coming in to get the oil, there’s a logic to firing an initial warning shot.
At this point, at least it seems to me, we want to be taking out strategic targets. We want ISIS to be hungry, thirsty, out of ammo, with no ability to move or communicate, and with the idea of pushing them into concentrated “safe space” strong points. Once that happens, we Arc Light their jihadi asses and put boots on the ground to eliminate anything left with a pulse.
But I’m from California, and we tend to be more peaceful than some of the TAH crew in the rest of the country. So feel free to disagree…
Excellent plan. Shame that no-one around NCA knows anything about how to actually USE the military for a purpose other than scoring points with the media.
Going to drop this here. It’s a rant by author Larry Correia about what happened in Paris and the dumbasses on the left. I’ll only quote this one paragraph:
“For the pacifistic anti-gun dumb asses on the internet who always crop up in the aftermath of any violent event, bitching about imaginary crossfires, or how fighting back would just make things worse. Just shut up already. You’re children, with a child’s grasp of the subject. When people are being mass butchered, barring tossing hand grenades at the bad guy, it is pretty damned hard to make it worse.”
http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/11/16/thoughts-on-paris/
Oh, and if you haven’t read Monster Hunter International, I highly recommend it. Gun Porn at it’s finest with zombies, vampires and the elder gods thrown in for good measure.