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US Can Only Watch as Disaster Looms in Ramadi
June 3, 2015 | http://www.Zachary Fillingham
The Obama administration’s strategy of arming and training the Iraqi armed forces to stabilize the country is a failure, and an expensive one at that having cost US taxpayers around $26 billion in aid. If some were willing to reserve judgement after the fall of Mosul – it was, after all, a shocking turn of events – the fall of Ramadi removed any shred doubt from rational minds. The Iraqi Army does not have what it takes to reverse the tide of Islamic State’s advance.
The US-led air campaign has also disappointed. After nearly a year of air strikes and, again, a hefty price tag for US taxpayers (around $8 million per day), ISIS is still as big a threat now as it was before the campaign began – maybe more so having franchised into new theaters such as Afghanistan, Libya, and Nigeria in the meantime. Once more we are seeing the limits of a military-centric strategic focused on air power; it can help halt an enemy advance, but it won’t guarantee retaking lost territory, especially without a dependable partner on the ground to ‘mop up’ and after the strikes.
These failures bring us to ISIS occupation of Ramadi, which is just 70 km from Baghdad, and a city that US soldiers fought for seven brutal months to reclaim in 2006. Ramadi’s proximity to the capital and the worrying prospect of linking up with the longstanding ISIS redoubt in Fallujah gives the matter a lot of strategic weight. Islamic State cannot be allowed to entrench itself near the heart of the Iraqi state – but what to do about it?
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