Hopefully congress will not abort ISIS defeat

CAPITAL OF ISIS CALIPHATE FALLS

ANNIHILATION IS THE GOAL

In the last week we saw the fall of Raqqa the capital of  ISIS"s self proclaimed Caliphate. While this is a major victory in the war against radical Islamic Terrorism, it is not the end of the war. This victory was accomplished by a coalition of Iraqis and Kurdish forces supported by U.S. advisers and air support. ISIS has one last stronghold in Syria that is near collapse from the efforts of Syrian and Iranian forces with Russian air support. 

This effort was started in the last days of the Obama administration, but was ramped up under the Trump administration. the biggest difference has been the removal of most rules of engagement from Washington and the deferring to the military to get the job done. The goal, that  has been publicly stated,  is the annihilation of Islamic terrorism from around the world. It is not the containment, not the rehabilitation, not gentile persuasion, it is utter annihilation.

It has been reported that there are huge mass graves in Iraq of former ISIS fighters containing nearly 80,000 dead. Also as many as 20,000 have been killed in Syria. I haven't heard of any report of prisoners or of detainees in Guantanamo. 

This has been accomplished by Arab and Kurdish forces without major use of U.S. forces. Maybe they will now be able to control the reestablishment of radicals in their territory.

The next step is the elimination of all such radical groups in Africa and Asia. We saw this week that the Philippine government has defeated a Isis supported group. We see that we have lost 4 U.S. advisers in Niger. The plan is to help local governments eliminate the spread of Islamic terrorists before they can gain a foothold anywhere.

So far, this strategy has been working, but we now see that congress is now concerned with the scope of the U.S. involvement around the world. We should be concerned about this issue. We have troops in over 100 counties around the world. Many have been opposed to the U.S. being the policemen of the world. It is time we re-examine this policy, but it is not time to put congressional limits on the war of terror that is now for the first time seeing positive results. Hopefully the time will come when we will be able to withdraw much of our military from around the world, but it is not the time to abort a winning strategy against Islamic Terrorism.