The Unites States has begun to increase their attack and surveilance on ISIS with more aircrafts and attack planes. A dozen A-10 ground attack planes were moved from Afghanistan to Kuwait, and the nation of Morocco has also contributed to the effort by sending F-16's to fight as well. These planes will begin some time this week with flying missions to support Iraqi ground troops. In addition, missile-firing Reaper drones are being redeployed in Afghanistan. A huge concern of the new wave of increased firepower that the US is implementing is the fact that the decision makers of the attacks and targets are based in control centers. For example, in the South Carolina and at the Central Command base the staff members review a list targets in such an order: just completed, about to happen, and future strikes. ISIS is a target that is not easy; they are a "conventional army and a terrorist network who can be in one place, and then a week later they're gone."So with these centers making the majority of the decsions, it calls to question how the US will actually physicall seek out where ISIS is moving to and from rather than just heavily targeting fixed ISIS sites such as military headquarters, communication centers, oil refineries and training camps. Furthermore, only a quarter of missions sent to attack pop-up targets have actually dropped bombs, and of the 450 strikes in Syria up to last week, only a quarter of them were actually planned. With that said, the US has to find a way to conduct better research and narrow down where ISIS is and where they are heading, which obviously cannot be done strictly from a control center. This has lead some Americans to comment that this is like the Vietnam War all over again except politicians and staff members are making the decisions.
How should the US go forward with the airstrikes?
Does Obama need to get more involved in directly locating ISIS networks?
How deep should the US be involved in eliminating ISIS and is the increased aircraft and surveilance
a step in the right direction?
For more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/us/us-adds-air-power-but-isis-presents-elusive-target.html?ref=politics
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4 comments:
It seems that all wars in the middle east are impossible to win and this is further proving the point. First of all I would like to state that I don't think any bombing is wise in the fact of the mass amounts of innocent casualties that occur. The fact that we are killing families is appalling and can even add to even more anti-american sentiments felt not only by the terrorist group but all people of the nation.
In addition as mentioned in the article this is feeling just like Vietnam again. We have learned that air superiority does not ensure victories in the Vietnam war and I am sure it will be shown again in this one. We do not know simply enough information about the location and times that the terrorist organization will be and to be simply making attacks based off of educated guesses is not only possibly a waste of life as stated previously but a waste of resources and money that is being put into war funds.
In my opinion we should pull out all armed forces before we are in a worse situation than we are already in. We should work on negotiating with countries that have direct contact with ISIS and that can have a more direct impact on calming ISIS down such as trying to calm the hostilities between the Sunni and Shiite Muslims down. The most direct action we should be taking is surveillance and gathering information on the group but not any armed engagements.
I agree with the decision to use more planes to try and defeat ISIS. At this point, the American public wants to minimize risk by not sending out ground troops. Airplane bombing has a minimal risk to American lives. The greatest advantage that we have over ISIS is our intelligence. We need to use this rather than our troop’s blood.
I agree with what Catherine has said. The US needs to do everything possible to stay away from sending out troops and putting lives at risk. Plus, these airstrikes are direct attacks on ISIS territory which is better than putting troops at risk on the ground in my opinion. Why not incorporate more drones and surveilance too? Just don't put American lives at risk Obama. With all of our resources, I agree that we should use them to their best capability and we have to know for sure where ISIS is before we go ahead and attack from the air. I also agree with what David was saying about how we don't know enough about where ISIS is, because everyday ISIS is changing their location and is on the move and the US has to be on top of that.
In regard to bombing I agree with David. Continuing these air strikes will cause many civilian casualties for the few ISIS members an air strike can actually find. Continued air strikes may also cause ISIS to escalate violence. Since ISIS is very hard to locate and change locations very fast, sending in troops or other resources to find the terrorist organization may not be fruitful. Instead we should be focusing resources on stopping ISIS itself rather than its members.
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