{"id":71175,"date":"2017-03-29T11:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T15:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=71175"},"modified":"2017-03-29T10:49:37","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T14:49:37","slug":"la-times-trump-may-actually-win-the-war-against-islamic-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=71175","title":{"rendered":"LA Times: Trump may actually win the war against Islamic State"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The LA Times seems surprised that there might actually be light at the end of the ISIS tunnel and Trump might take us there with their column; Trump may actually win the war against Islamic State<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Under Obama, who waged a \u201clight footprint\u201d strategy with minimal U.S. troops, Islamic State lost most of the territory it once held in Iraq and almost a third of what it held in Syria.<\/p>\n

But taking the extremist group\u2019s most important strongholds, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqah in Syria, was taking longer.<\/p>\n

Enter Trump. The new president, after claiming he had a secret plan to win the war, told his generals to give him one in 30 days. They responded with an outline \u2014 a \u201cskeleton plan,\u201d in the words of Defense Secretary James N. Mattis \u2013 that could be described as Obama Plus: more bombing, more troops, fewer restrictions on commanders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Obama strategy wasn\u2019t failing, but it was slow,\u201d James F. Jeffrey, a former ambassador (and former Army officer) who\u2019s advising the administration, told me. \u201cThis is more \u2014 not only more troops, but more willingness to use them. It\u2019s a change of maybe 20%, but it\u2019s an important 20%.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Light footprint” is an understatement. Obama was kicking the can down the road so he could keep his Nobel Peace Prize and he was hoping to hand off the war against ISIS to Hillary so she could tough on terrorism, too, without really doing anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The LA Times seems surprised that there might actually be light at the end of the … LA Times: Trump may actually win the war against Islamic State<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}