The White House said Thursday that its fundamental approach to fighing the Islamic State wouldn’t change, even as President Obama and his advisers continue to recalibrate its approach to leading the anti-Islamic State coalition.
“I do not envision a scenario anytime soon where that basic strategy is going to change,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
That strategy will rely mostly on an air campaign, augmented by deploying Special Forces when merited and aiding moderate forces within Syria.
“There have been previous situations where the president has ordered U.S. military personnel to conduct operations on the ground inside of Syria,” Earnest said, responding to reports that U.S. ground troops moving into Syria could be in the offing. He added that he had no announcements to make in terms of unveiling a new strategy.
“Our approach to this all along has been to implement a strategy against ISIL that is focused on building the capacity of local forces to take the fight on the ground to ISIL in their own country,” Earnest said, using the Obama administration’s preferred acronym for the terrorist group.
“And there are a variety of ways where we’ve tried to build up the capacity of those local forces,” Earnest said, referring to the administration’s original train-and-equip program in which anti-Islamic State forces were to be trained outside of Syria. Acknowledging that plan’s failure, Earnest said the Pentagon has employed more successful approaches as well.
“But there have been at least a couple of situations where the United States has taken military action to resupply and reinforce those fighters on the ground to give them greater capability to take the fight to ISIL,” he said. “Some of those American military pilots have carried out airstrikes in support of ongoing operations on the ground. And I think that’s an indication of how central this is to our strategy and this has been a difficult part of our strategy.”
Obama is looking for “ways that we can redouble our efforts in those areas where our strategy is yielding some progress,” Earnest said.
Progress in Syria is hard to measure, Earnest said, adding that the conflict there does not lend itself to “play-by-play” sports-like analysis.
“These kinds of military situations don’t lend themselves to that very well, primarily because, as the president himself has acknowledged, there will be periods of progress and there will be times of setback and we’ve certainly experienced both as recently as the last couple of months,” Earnest said.
After ticking off some examples of success, such as the raid that led to the death of the Islamic State’s top financier, Earnest said the administration is not declaring mission accomplished.
“But we’re not ready to unfurl any banners as a result of that progress,” Earnest said, taking a jab at President George W. Bush, who infamously declared the Iraq War over in 2003 while aboard an aircraft carrier with a “mission accomplished” banner behind him.
