U.S. Military: Airstrikes Against ISIS Won't Save Key City Of Kobani

[Purveyor]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- U.S. airstrikes "are not going to save" the key Syrian city of Kobani from being overtaken by ISIS, said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby.

"I think we all should be steeling ourselves for that eventuality," he told reporters in a daily briefing Wednesday.

"We are doing everything we can to halt" ISIS' progress against the town, but airstrikes alone cannot stop the Islamist militants, Kirby added.

"We've been very honest about the limits of air power here. The ground forces that matter the most are indigenous ground forces, and we don't have a willing, capable, effective partner on the ground inside Syria right now -- it's just a fact," he said.

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/08/world/meast/isis-threat/?sr=google_news&google_editors_picks=true

[humbled_opinion]

1. Media Drum Beat for NEOCONS

Boots on the ground, Boots on the ground trying to force Obama to put boots on the ground.... The question is will he fold?

[TomCADem]

2. Bush Set The Stage For Maliki Who Set The Stage for ISIL

Maliki's efforts to disenfranchise Iraq's Sunni population helped feed ISIL. Of course, Republicans respond by attacking President Obama for not "controlling" Maliki. Of course, who helped Maliki get to power in the first place? Bush. Also, who happily applauded as Maliki disarmed other competing militias, including the Kurds, in the interest of developing a strong central government? The Bush Neocons. Yet, the right wing happily attacks President Obama for not controlling a situation that was created by Bush by essentially taking action against a Premiere that Bush put in power.

[hedgehog]

3. I saw that report last night and was left wondering - is this a case

of someone in the Pentagon trying to push the White House to bring in troops?

[TwilightGardener]

4. I doubt it. With Kobani, the fighters there are affiliated with the PKK group that's on

our terror list and Turkey's, so we can't really collaborate with them too much, or arm them. That town is basically surrounded by ISIS, cut off and doomed, and offers us nothing strategically, and ISIS would still be contained by Turkey's border if they win. I think the Pentagon doesn't like having to use up a ton of resources and effort in beating back an inevitable ISIS takeover there to save a group of people who are otherwise allowed to go into Turkey for refuge, when we're trying to prevent Anbar in Iraq from getting overrun among other concerns. We don't want a humanitarian disaster either, but we're kind of alone in helping them.

[daleo]

5. If only we could get stuck in a fresh decade long war

Is that too much to ask?

[canoeist52]

7. Well...our money's been spent. That's all that matters.

[blackspade]

8. Then the point of the bombing is?

[Nihil]

9. Stock rotation

+ keeping the fires burning (literally as well as metaphorically) so that there will *always* be
someone out there to be declared a "terrorist" who "hates us for our freedoms".

View it as a live ammo training exercise with realistic targets ...

[blackspade]

11. Tragically true.

[reorg]

10. Andrew Cockburn of the Independent

writes:

The capture of Kobani by Isis may be a turning point in the present crisis in Iraq and Syria because it marks the failure of the US plan to contain Isis using air power alone. President Obama promised less than a month ago “to degrade and destroy” the fundamentalists with air power, but Isis is still expanding and winning victories.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made very clear where he stood during a visit to a refugee camp at Gazantep, saying “Kobani is about to fall”. He explained that the Turkish price for rescuing Kobani and acting against Isis would have been three measures aimed, not at Isis, but at displacing President Bashar al-Assad. Mr Erdogan said: “We asked for three things: one, for a no-fly zone to be created; two for a secure zone parallel to the region to be declared; and for the moderate opposition in Syria and Iraq to be trained and equipped.” In effect, he was saying that given a choice between Isis and Assad, he would chose the former.

In a further sign of the Turkish government’s lack of sympathy for the Syrian Kurds, some 200 of whom fled from Kobani into Turkey this week and were detained and questioned about their links with the YPG, the Kurdish militia defending the town.

...

The Turks were not alone in abandoning Kobani to the Islamic militants. The US was careful not have any direct liaison with Kurdish fighters on the ground though local intelligence should have made their air strikes more effective and might have stopped the Isis advance. Over the past 24 hours, these strikes have increased in number but may come too late as Isis militants fight street to street.

The US campaign against Isis is weakened not so much by lack ‘boots on the ground’, but by seeking to hold at arm’s-length those who are actually fighting Isis while embracing those such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey who are not. There is a similar situation in Iraq, where most of the fighting against Isis is by the Shia militias from which the US keeps its distance. ...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/08/the-siege-of-kobani/

[LiberalLovinLug]

12. My heart goes out to the population of Kobani

What they have endured and now they will be put through unspeakable horrors once the city has fallen and the retribution that will follow. Child rape, crucifixions, beheadings...

I don't even believe they couldn't prevent it. If the western world all contributed, and had 10 x the number of fighter jets, bombers and using satellite technology, anytime ISIS moved towards the city, fucking napalm them! I'm usually a pacifist, but they have to rid the world of these organized psychopaths.