The Cost of Kobane

While you’re rejoicing about the Kurds, supported by U. S. air power, having wrested the small Syrian border town of Kobane away from DAESH, keep in mind the cost of the victory. We’ve spent a couple of billion dollars and five months to re-take a town of 40,000 people (used to be). Three=quarters of the sorties we’ve flown since the campaign against DAESH began have been in the re-taking of Kobane. There are hundreds of such towns.

During that period DAESH has moved into Iraq, expanded their control of territory in what used to be Syria, and they probably have more fighters, money, and materiel than they did when the campaign started.

And Kobane was a best case situation. The Kurdish peshmerga are the only fighters worth a darn who’ve been willing to face DAESH on the ground. We won’t get that kind of boots-on-the-ground support with Sunni Arab towns.

4 comments… add one
  • ... Link

    So this means we’re winning, right?

  • ... Link

    Now that a sneak attack on Kirkuk has killed a top Kurdish commander, I believe we can definitively state that we’re winning. (I keep thinking of the conversation “Little Joe” Goebbels & Hitler have in Springtime for Hitler, for some reason.)

  • TastyBits Link

    1st Base: Who
    2nd Base: What
    3rd Base: I Don’t Know
    Left Fielder: Why
    Center Fielder: Because
    Pitcher: Tomorrow
    Catcher: Today
    Shortstop: I Don’t Give a Darn

    Walter Mead can be the announcer. Even better, give him a straight man and change the names according to world location. This could be fun.

    Somebody could start one of those fund things to buy him some floppy shoes and a rubber nose, and if there were enough money, he could get a rubber chicken. (No chickenhawk crap, but chicken crap is OK.)

  • Darrell maynard Link

    No wonder isis acknowledges the defeat

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