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?
“Other Targets” = “Wedding parties” ?
Other targets = hospitals
Intolerant religious crazies who want to shoot and kill anyone who doesn’t think like them.
Maybe we should ask them if they want to join the Tea Party.
Effective branding means that those that buy brand X can’t see that brand Y is the the same thing and vice versa. Brand Xers are always in competition with brand Yers except for their time-outs to battles with other brands and worst of all those that shun all brands.
Very true! And I hadn’t thought of it in those terms.
So, 3,940 “fighting positions” damaged or destroyed, but only a total of 1,041 tanks, HMMWVs, and staging areas damaged or destroyed. What is a “fighting position?” A guy with a slingshot? We’re dropping bombs on lone individual that could possibly possibly be head for an ISIS encampment?
And if US bonbs have destroyed almost 4,000 buildings, shouldn’t selected buildings be limited to those that are ISIS staging areas?
That’s the problem with the US MIC — it has an inexaustible supply of bombs and thus, everything in a designated battle field looks like a nail.
Those statistics DO look suspiciously like Vietnam body counts.
Because, like Fareed Zakaria, I don’t see the upside in continuing to go down this road. Do you?
Does Zakaria admit to changing his position of 2 years ago?
“I don’t see the upside in continuing to go down this road. Do you?”
I never saw the upside of going down the road in the first place.
To borrow a line from the old Laurel and Hardy shorts of the early 30’s “well Dubya, this certainly is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into this time!” Also, this sounds a lot like 1961-62 Laos and Nam to me, and dare I mention a lot like Revelations if you happen to be into that.
From the beginning the US has had an “entangling alliance” problem in Syria and in Iraq. The issue in Syria is that US policy (why? what part or the deep state?) insists of arming al Quaeda to topple Assad. But restoring stability requires at least for the moment restoring Assad to power. In Iraq, the entangling alliance are the Kurds, which complicate relations both with Turkey and Iraq even as they provide the only major force that has displaced ISIL/ISIS/Daesh from any ground are the Kurdish YPG.
Putting out numbers of targets hit and numbers of missions means little outside of a geographical context in terms of the battlefield. What we do know is that US aircraft helped break the ISIL/ISIS/Daesh siege of Kobane and that the YPG have rolled back ISIL to the east of Kobane and pressed towards Alleppo. And that the Kurdish unified objective is to seal the border between Aleppo and Iraqi Kurdistan, a goal that Turkey does not want to see fulfilled. And that sealing the border slows the export of oil by ISIL/ISIS/Daesh through Turkey. A lot of the aircraft missions are in support of this Kurdish-run area of operations. And that ISIL/ISIS/Daesh has been rolled back in this area.
In Iraq, the difficulty is the unwillingness of the US to coordinate with Iraqi Shiite militias and Iranian support forces. That has complicated the areas in which ISIL/ISIS/Daesh has been cleared and rolled back. That front is now north of Tikrit and working on clearing Saluddin province.
The US royally screwed up the defense of Ramadi and then blamed the Iraqi troops; that was a failure of well-timed air support. Likely it is one of those “shit happens” moments in the war. Although the US brass seems as strangely incompetent as in the Vietnam War; counterinsurgency fantasy derangement is my diagnosis. Or “the Yanks have to do it” syndrome. The Shiite, Iraqi army and Iranian support finally took Tikrit and a few settlements northward.
Ramadi, Raqqa, and Mosul are the big cities in ISIL/ISIS/Daesh hands. Lots of families have bought passage out of these cities but there are still approaching a million civilians in the region.
For now, Baghdad is more secure and Basra has shut down the terror campaign.
And that was before the diplomatic efforts bore fruit. And Russia intervened on behalf of its client Assad. And the US and Iran ratified the nuclear agreement. And the US got the major external players to the conference table in Vienna. The results could be as significant as Sykes-Picot (which was not openly arrived at) in 1916. Russia-Iran-Turkey-Iraq-Syria, Egypt-GCC-Saudi Arabia-Iran-Iraq, the US fronting for Israel and the Kurds. That is the possibility out of these talks. If John Kerry pulls it off, he will have two major agreements to his name. Watch the diplomacy.
The diplomatic settlement sets the frame of the politics. The politics sets the frame of the military cooperation between the nation-states to bring to an end non-state proxies as tools and the suppression of free lances like ISIL/ISIS/Daesh. The key events will be the liberation of Raqqa, Mosul, and Ramadi.
The announcement of closer engagement does not equal the actual closer engagement. The main event for the moment is Russia hardening its position in Latakia and Tartus and strengthening the Syrian military’s hold on the central populated corridor that runs from Idlib and Aleppo through Homs and Hamaa to Damascus. That means that whatever the US (and Kurds/YPG) are doing likely has to do with Mosul and possible Raqqa.
Russian will have the task of rolling back ISIL/ISIS/Daesh from Idlib and Aleppo toward Raqqa as soon as other opposition to Assad’s regime is suppressed.
The question on the table is whether this all can be accomplished before January 2017. Because a Republican president can blow the whole resolution of the war up in order to continue military expenditures. But 14 months is a long time in diplomacy as well as in politics.
As long as the direct cost is held to the current money burn rate or less, it might turn out to be better spent than the trillions of dollars in sunk costs that greeted President Obama when he took office.
The Vienna conferences also provides a vehicle for Kerry to work out a number of other issues with Lavrov and the Iranian foreign ministry team. Just as long as he can keep the momentum from this two-day meeting continuing.
And then there is the defusing of Binyamin Netanyahu to take care of.
Afghanistan, however is a different matter. But if you see a meeting of Kerry, Lavrov, the Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, possibly the Iranians, and one or more of the other -stans, that diplomacy might be under way as well.
Will the Dulles cult in the national security state allow this to happen? That is in fact the biggest risk.
Just a little point. The Syrian government has never invited the US into its country, either to bomb ISIS or to send in soldiers on the ground. I don’t believe that the UN has ever given the nod to American adventurism there either.
Plus, the US has been funding and arming the “good rebels” who always seem to park their Toyota trucks where ISIS can steal them. It’s such a ludicrous plotline which is becoming exposed with Russia’s entrance into the war.
Putting fifty men on the ground in harm’s way is merely a method for the US to have a Gulf of Tonkin incident with the Russians. Remember, the State Department is run by the same people who decided it was a good idea to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine and put a bunch of plutocrats and fascists to lord over the mess.
The US has a real clusterf*ck on its hands. Now its ally Turkey is attacking US allies (the Kurds) as Erdogan tries to manage a makeover from democracy to dictatorship.
Don’t be surprised if the future Kurdistan extends into eastern Turkey, that a Shia Iraq and a Shia Iran are pumping oil and gas to the Syrian coast. Don’t be surprised if the House of Saud comes crashing down one of these days.
Of course, a war between the US and Russia pretty much eliminates the current problems around the world.
It would interest me to know what the divisions are in the US national security apparatus. Fifty troops does not sound like a commitment but instead a news item to shut up some critic. My guess is in support of the Kurds and that puts some diplomatic pressure on Turkey right around the election in Turkey. Therefore, I’m not guessing a tripwire for Russia (unless Brezinzski or Nuland are influential in the policy) but a deterrent for Turkish suppression of the YPG, which Turkey’s air force have bombed instead of ISIL/ISIS/Daesh….If there are actually troops in Syria at all.
The main even is in Vienna. The US can either play it straight or play it crooked, but any sort of return to normal life will come out of a political agreement of the outside players that will provide space for the internal politics to work. This week all the parties involved in the negotiations struck their first pose. I find it interesting and not necessarily aimed at Russia that the US made the announcement of troops on the ground in Syria during the negotiations.
I like your version better.
“Bah, I want ears.”
—– something G. Gordon Liddy would say.