According to the US Defense Department’s Special Report on Operation Inherent Resolve has cost the United States 4.75 Billion so far this year (as of 10/8/2015), with a likely expenditure for the entire year in excess of $5 Billion. I know, chump change in view of the overall “declared” US Military Budget, which exceeds $601 Billion, but it’s not an insignificant amount. And with the announcement today that the Obama administration is going to insert more US Special Forces personnel into the Northern Syria as “military advisers,” I think it is safe to say that Operation Inherent Resolve will continue for the indefinite future.
So what exactly have we gained from the cost of this military operation to eliminate the terrorist group ISIL and the threat they pose to Iraq, the region and the wider international community? The Department of Defense is glad you asked. You want to know what our military has accomplished this year against Daesh/ISIS/ISIL/The Bad Guys? The answer is:
We’ve damaged or destroyed roughly 14,000 targets, that’s what! Really, that’s what they are touting. Targets – damaged or destroyed. Sort of like the infamous body count metric employed by the Pentagon to measure success in Vietnam, but a lot more vague, and less specifically gruesome. Here’s a handy graphic prepared by CENTCOM (the US military command in charge of Operation Inherent Resolve) which breaks it all down for you by category.
It’s not clear if they are counting alleged airstrikes on civilian noncombatants or not in that “target” count. My guess is their focus on “things” (tanks, tents, staging areas, buildings, etc.) may mean they aren’t, but then again, that “Other” category could mean human beings, even if the US military has refused to acknowledge all but a few non-combatant deaths.
The air campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has killed more than 450 civilians, according to a new report, even though the US-led coalition has so far acknowledged just two non-combatant deaths.
More than 5,700 air strikes have been launched in the campaign, which nears its first anniversary this Saturday, with its impact on civilians largely unknown.
Now Airwars, a project by a team of independent journalists, is publishing details of 52 strikes with what it believes are credible reports of at least 459 non-combatant deaths, including those of more than 100 children.
At one time, Pentagon spokespeople claimed that the US led coalition” had killed an estimated 20,000 terrorist fighters, but you won’t find that figure on the Defense Department’s website which provided the above graphic. Maybe because no one really has a clue how many ISIL fighters have been killed or how many are still operating in the region. Estimates are all over the map (pardon the pun).
What the Department of Defense will not tell you is how many people have been made homeless by US airstrikes, how many have died, or how many have contributed to the flood of refugees seeking sanctuary in Europe. Nor will it tell you whether our continuing military operations in the region contributed to Russia’s decision to join the party, as it were, making a complex and dangerous situation even more, well, complex and dangerous. And of course, the Department of Defense says nothing about whether the destruction/damage of all those “targets” has done anything to accomplish the the primary goal of Operation Inherent Resolve – eliminating the threat of these Islamic End Time crazies to our allies in the Middle East and beyond. The obvious answer to that question, of course, is that if the Department of Defense feels it needs to tout the number of targets coalition airstrikes have destroyed, than no, we haven’t eliminated the threat of ISIS much at all.
Indeed, what this little sleight of hand by the DoD does make clear is that ISIS is still out there, still operating, still providing a “target rich environment” for military airstrikes. Which means more money for armament manufacturers and defense contractors. So, I guess we will continue bombing those “targets” for years to come. Unless that is, the next American President wants to send significant numbers of US ground troops into the region, again. Because that’s worked out so well for us in the past.
One thing we ought to be asking all the presidential candidates every chance we get is whether they favor continuing to spend billions of taxpayer dollars bombing “targets” in Syria and Iraq. Because, like Fareed Zakaria, I don’t see the upside in continuing to go down this road. Do you?
