Why does every analysis of the battle to re-take Mosul assume victory? This post at Hurriyet Daily News by Tolga Taniş is no exception:
ISIL may also play the Turkey card and try to draw Ankara into the clashes by staging attacks at risky and critical locations in the region.
They will lose Mosul sooner or later, but they will not finish; because then, they will turn to their “classic terror acts†of assassinations, bombings and suicide attacks. They will continue with their idea of territorial control in Syria. However, even though in Iraq all anti-government armed forces have been consolidated, in Syria there are several different radical groups, whom some of them are fighting ISIL. This too will constitute another difficulty for ISIL.
Losing Mosul will strike a major blow to ISIL in terms of financing. They made $500 million in 2015 from oil sales. They sold their oil to the people living in the region they were in control of. They also made $360 million from tax revenues. When they lose the largest city they are controlling, these figures will decline; thus lessening their operational power.
I’m not even sure what victory in the conflict would be. If you remove DAESH’s control over Mosul but destroy the city in the process, would that be a victory? Or if a substantial chunk of the city’s population flees? Or if most of DAESH’s operational strength remains undegraded?
It might be a better idea to figure out what the objective is before declaring victory. And many hazards remain. If DAESH harasses the Kurds enough they might withdraw to defend their own territory. There’s no guarantee that the Iraqi military will retain force cohesion. The Turks might just decide to occupy the territory between their borders and Mosul. There are all sorts of things that could go wrong.
Victory would look like this: Mosul destroyed, it’s Sunni population transported to Red America to run over women & children with trunks and kill a bunch of Hispanic gays so we can blame whitey for intolerance, and the US rebuilding Mosul to be populated by Iranian supporting Shia.
We’re well on our way to victory!
Seemed like victory when it was Berlin.
Ditto.
Their strength is already degraded. They’ve lost territory, they’ve lost the initiative on the ground, they are seeing fewer recruits. The caliphate is a bad joke now, and even their followers know it.
In Syria they face a reborn Assad, his Russian masters, the Kurds, the Turks, and whatever rabble the CIA has put together.
Will we get some terrorism in the west? Sure. But ISIS never positioned themselves as just another, less-hierarchical Al Qaeda, which is all they’ll be after their caliphate dreams are all gone.
It’s not despair that makes people dangerous, it’s hope. The nonsense about a caliphate motivated a lot of people. When that hope dies – which I’d guess is in about six months – it will be the end of that fantasy.
So you’re saying that we’re at war with the people of Iraq? Good to know.
Frankly, I doubt it. There are enough people who like that particular song that another singer is bound to come along.
Dave, I agree, i wish I knew the solution, but it always goes back to, War is War, don’t get in there if you are not totally totally serious, Yes , to stop messing around, and actually achieve a Victory, which would mean a non secular government in Iraq, could easily mean killing half a million people, , we won’t do it, we’ll fuck around, show ground gains, which will mean death to the people we liberated.
And, by the way, why isn’t this war in the news, like when W was President? Give you one guess , Obama has instructed his media to stay this, and report Trump’s potty mouth. Full Force
Meanwhile, in other assumption checking news, Obamacare premiums look set to jump 25% next year. Woo and hoo. Thank God they lowered premiums by $2500 a family per year before prices started climbing again!
The good news is that we now know Hillary wants Obamacare to fail, and she’s going to be there to fix it! Good times for all!
That’s a cheap shot given that we spend enormous sums of money developing precise weapons, and risk lives to ensure that those weapons are properly deployed on military targets. No one is trying to slaughter Iraqis, we could slaughter them overnight and for chump change. We could do to Mosul what we and the RAF did to Dresden.
All through WW2 the American propaganda position was that we were not at war with the German (or Italian) people, just the regimes. I’m not as familiar with the Pacific theater but I imagine we took that same stance publicly. Since then we have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons systems designed to avoid civilian casualties. Before moving on Mosul we did all we could to get civilians to leave, and we have established camps for those that do get out.
Contrast that with what your good friends the Russians are up to in Aleppo – replaying Leningrad with themselves as the Wehrmacht, deliberately trying to starve the civilian population, targeting the civilian population.
Ah, but Russia is geographically closer, and Aleppo is their ‘near abroad,’ so I guess that changes everything.
No, it’s an on-point answer to your facile remark analogizing the retaking of Mosul to the assault on Berlin. The comparison should not be to Berlin or Dresden but to Paris. Would we have considered it a victory if we had liberated Paris while reducing it to rubble? I don’t think so.
And we’re not the only ones flying above Mosul, indeed, we’re not doing most of the flying. The Iraqis and Turks are both carrying out air missions in this campaign, too, as are the Brits. The Iraqi government’s view of victory in the battle for Mosul may not be the same as ours.
Also, you seem to be confusing my explaining the Russian view with my supporting it. The problem is that there is propaganda coming from both sides and ours is just as incredible as theirs if not more so. You, apparently, swallow our propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
I would guess they assume victory because of all the short term advantages aligned against ISIS. As long as Iran continues to support the effort i have a hard time seeing ISIS holding on, but that is just the short run. In the longer run, I can see ISIS or ISIS 2.0 coming back. Iraq has shown no ability, and interest I would say, in having inclusive government.
Steve