‘We have to end it’: Trump takes over Islamic State fight, vowing to finish it
THE HANDOFF | The foreign policy challenges President-elect Donald Trump will inherit and how he might approach them.
Members of the Iraqi rapid response forces inspect a hospital damaged by clashes during a battle between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in the Wahda district of eastern Mosul, Iraq, Jan. 8. (Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters)
By Missy Ryan January 17 at 12:28 PM
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, the Islamic State is on the defensive in three countries and has been all but wiped out in another. Two and a half years after the extremists rolled across northern Iraq, Pentagon and diplomatic officials say a military victory, at least in their major strongholds, is within sight.
But tens of thousands of fighters remain, and the militants are showing signs of reinventing themselves as a dispersed terrorist movement — a threat that the incoming commander in chief says has been given too much time to grow.
“This should have been over with quickly,” Trump told CNN last year. “We’re not fighting strongly enough. We have to end it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/we-have-to-end-it-trump-takes-over-islamic-state-fight-vowing-to-finish-it/2017/01/17/25d1fda0-d3ae-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?utm_term=.a51e612e98f1
