Pentagon Is Also Waiting for Islamic State Strategy From the White House
Military has been adapting plans as threat changes, Pentagon says, but interagency team isn’t yet ready to pull the trigger.
By Paul D. Shinkman
Aug. 29, 2014 | 3:11 p.m. EDT
Westerners woke up Friday to news that the British government had upgraded its terrorist threat alert to “severe,” indicating that a domestic attack is highly likely.
[READ: Obama: 'We Don't Have a Strategy Yet' for Islamic State]
Meanwhile, the White House is still reeling from comments President Barack Obama made Thursday evening indicating that the U.S. does not yet have a strategy for defeating the Islamic State in Iraq or in Syria, the war zone turned terrorist safe haven that Obama has so far kept at arms length from direct U.S. involvement.
The clock is ticking for Obama and the bill is mounting: The Pentagon revealed Friday that the U.S. presence in Iraq has so far cost an average of $7.5 million per day since beginning in mid-June. The Department of Defense has not yet figured out how it will fund the mission when the next fiscal year begins in the fall -- nor will it know how much it needs until it is given its marching orders.
Focus now rests on Obama, who must determine how he will act next against an enemy that all sides agree will require more than mere airstrikes to defeat.
Defense officials conceded Friday that while American jets, bombers and drones helped Iraqi security forces retake the strategic Mosul dam from Islamic State extremists, the fight there continues.
Security forces on the ground at the dam are under attack almost every day, said Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman. U.S. Central Command said Friday American warplanes have conducted 106 airstrikes within Iraq since they began on Aug. 8.
The process for offering further options to the president is ongoing, Kirby said, adding the fluid nature of the Islamic State threat forces military planners to adapt and alter plans. The military’s thought process for action in Syria is “a relatively new one,” he said.
Kirby indicated the Pentagon is prepared to create a strategy as soon as senior-level administration officials are ready to discuss it.
“We continue to refine and work on options, that’s our job,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean while you have planners doing it on the low level that you’re ready at the high level to
sit down and examine them in great detail. We just aren’t there yet, as an interagency team.”
“The way this works here, is the commander-in-chief gets to make the decisions. He’s the one who sets the policy, he’s the one who determines how and when a military option will be pursued,” Kirby added.
[OPINION: There Can Be No 'Victory' Over the Islamic State in Iraq]
The U.S. and its Western allies must act quickly to address the Islamic State threat, which as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stated last week is unlike any seen before. Kirby clarified Friday the secretary meant they don’t behave like any other group.
“They’re not simply killing, murdering and maiming. They’re grabbing ground and infrastructure and developing streams of revenue,” he said.
Terrorism analysts believe this assessment, combined with the ramped up threats facing the U.K. and other European partners, should force Obama to make a strong, public and clear decision very soon.
“[The Islamic State] has been gaining strength not for days, or weeks, but years. An admission that there is not strategy in place -- even a bad one -- to respond to this is remarkable,” says Robin Simcox, a terrorism expert with the London-based think tank the Henry Jackson Society.
“The airstrikes have halted [the Islamic State’s] charge but in their current, limited form they can only ever be a very partial fix,” he says. “Groups like [the Islamic State] need disrupting constantly, not when they get so powerful they can declare their own state.”
Obama must appear absolutely committed to defeating this group, Simcox says, and that includes openly considering wider action, to include special operations troops on the ground in Syria or Iraq and airstrikes in Syria.
[ALSO: U.S. Military vs. the Islamic State]
“There has been an ‘ostrich mentality’ in the West, of hiding one's head in the sand and believing that if we pretend the problem does not exist, it will go away,” says M.J. Gohel, executive director of the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London and an expert in Islamic extremism. “The reality is that the cancer of global jihad has been growing in Iraq and Syria for four years and today the Islamic State is a much more dangerous terror group -- a terror state in fact -- than al-Qaida was or is.”
“The complacency by some politicians in the West is unbelievable,” Gohel says.
Airstrikes against the Islamic State are essential, but too little, too late, Gohel adds. The West abandoned Iraq prematurely, did not remain engaged with Baghdad and ignored supporting the moderate opposition fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, he says. As a result, the Islamic State was given a tacit free pass to lay siege to the region. And now the problem is spreading.
“The U.S., U.K., Europe, Australia and Canada should all be concerned because some of their young Muslim nationals have been recruited by the Islamic State and these individuals will learn the art of terrorism. With their Western passports, they can easily return back and launch attacks.”
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