ISIS launches counterattack after US withdrawal announcement - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/22/isil-launches-fierce-counterattack-deir-ezzor-trumps-withdrawal/ Islamic State (Isil) fighters have been waging a fierce counterattack with suicide bombers and armoured vehicles in the days since Donald Trump declared the jihadist group was “defeated” in Syria. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said Isil fighters were emboldened by the news of the US withdrawal and were fighting to retake the town of Hajin in Deir Ezzor just days after they were driven out. “They got high morale from US decision to withdraw from Syria,” said Mustafa Bali, an SDF spokesman. “Isil is still strong in the region.” The SDF said Saturday it was facing “a fierce and intense attack” by Isil fighters, who launched a wave of at least 17 suicide bombers at their lines followed by shelling and a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades. Kurdish forces held the line and said they killed “dozens” of jihadist fighters with support by US airstrikes. General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said shortly before Mr Trump’s surprise withdrawal announcement that there was “a long way to go” to train local forces to hold territory taken from Isil. After Isil were initially driven out of Hajin on December 14, the SDF estimated there were about 5,000 Isil fighters holed up in their remaining pocket of territory and that they had decided to fight to the death. This includes some 2,000 foreign fighters, mostly Arabs and Europeans along with their families.

tired of winning

Yep, look at that, they've clearly been defeated.

List of people surprised:

Kurds holding the line once again.

Where as I don't think ISIL will ever get back to the power it had 3 years ago, the US withdrawing is setting up for them to be a painful thorn in Syria for years to come now.

Not for long, I doubt the Kurds will get far through the rest of the daesh pocket before Turkey launches a massive offensive in the north, the fucking roaches.

Call them dogs instead, I've heard that's one of the worst insults one can give in the islamic world. Citation needed, of course.

Or shoes.

The idea that we were going to "defeat ISIS" with our current foreign policy strategy is laughable, and a resurgence like this was going to happen whether we left now or in 5 years.

Anything unclean works I guess. Turkey deserves all of it and more.

Wait, I thought we won and they were defeated?

this is like if the allies had gone home before the battle of the bulge.

Yep, no fucking surprise here. American presidents seem to really enjoy fucking with some poor country and then just leaving them to deal with the consequences themselves. Bush & Iraq, Obama & Afghanistan and now Trump & Syria. What a despicable government, I hope one day the USA will be tried for all the war-crimes and atrocities they have committed over all these years, but I know that's never gonna happen because they already have too much power, money and influence. I still find it incredible that, even with Trump in power, we still consider the US as our ally and some countries like Australia and the UK still insist on following the lumbering, american death machine into every conflict it feels like starting.

We really pissed people off in Mogadishu flying UH60's over their cities with our legs were hanging outside the helicopters. USA is pretty good at pissing people off, eh?

I don't even understand where he got this idea from, they were literally in the middle of a campaign to remove them from their remaining towns but have been having trouble with them. Somehow that's victory maybe if you squint.

He got the idea from Erdogan over a phone-call apparently. Trump seems to relish the opinions of dangerous authoritarian despots over the counsel of his own advisors.

The problem is that this was inevitable, because they'll just pop up somewhere else in an endless game of whack-a-mole.

The game of "whack-a-mole" will continue because the US refuses to fix the fucking messes they create.

We've been "fixing" it for almost two decades now, I don't think we can fix it. I think the people that actually live in those countries need to figure out how to fix it.

Promising local authorities more resources, aid and training to combat the insurgencies all while bombing the local area almost indiscriminately before getting the fuck out without giving any kind of long term structure or plan for the local military doesn't really sound like "fixing it" to me.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/205174/60d810eb-71ba-4221-a259-0ce90e8840ae/image.png (It's actually a lot worse. Bush never actually claimed our job was finished during that speech. Never underestimate Trump's ability to make W look like a fucking genius in comparison.)

https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/images/photos/politics/graphics/bushbillboard.jpg?resize=499,374 Trump has made some of us say yes

Most presidents up to this point understood the meaning of "technically correct statements".

I don't think American presidents "enjoy" it. Seems more like the country's warfare interests are rooted deeper than their presidents, or their democracy as a whole

The Pentagon is the 4th branch of government and the most unknown one.

The US / West / NATO has been taking half-measures to try and solve the problem instead of making a reasonable commitment. What annoys me with this is that if Trump fails the next election (which is likely, but not altogether certain) and whoever succeeds him is forced to re-commit resources to the Middle East they will be blamed for undoing his legacy by the opposition regardless of whether or not we should've pulled out in the first place.

Y'know this really raises the question of what possible win state there is for the US, under which they could actually successfully leave the middle east without consequences. So long as there's one extremist band of quaranic literalists, there's going to be ISIS or some other equivalent, and if we left them alone tomorrow, it will take a century of distance for them to even begin to not view the west as something to be destroyed or conquered in the name of the global caliphate. So how could you possibly leave that before you have a literal absolute annihilation of every possible extremist there is, and any and all tendrils of extremist fostering groups, like all those Whahhabist networks the saudis curate for exactly that purpose. Short of a scorched earth genocide campaign, i don't think the US can leave the middle east without effectively abandoning it to 6th century style feudalistic war for at least 100 years, which will inevitibly bleed out into the surrounding areas like Beruit, lebanon, iran, kazikhstan, northern india etc, and perhaps even up against europe through turkey's newly found theocracy. Setting up a japan style cultural/political reformation won't work either, since that's essentially what we did in the wake of Hussein in iraq, and that first democratically elected goverement essentially collapsed in the face of a Sunni uprising, and abaonded their arms and state structures to the group, which is what turned into ISIS. So that's out of the picture for sure. It's a true no win situation, and i don't know what the best option is, but i know the US simply cannot continue pouring money and men into this fucking 20 year long (30 if you count desert storm) kakfha trap. But nor could they possibly leave without abandoning it to fuedalistic sumerian style barbarism, which will inevitibly leak out into the rest of the world. Shit's fucked man.

This is neo-con myth making. Don't fall for the bait. The only people who have ever benefited from prolonged campaigns in the middle east are arms and security companies, who are making a killing. Moreover, US interference is what got you into this mess in the first place. Bin Laden's goal wasn't to scare the average american citizen, it was to force what was/is by far the most ridiculously powerful military on the planet into an economic and political drain by getting it to engage in an endless campaign that would stretch its resources over ridiculously large areas. It worked, to some degree. What OBL perhaps didn't forsee is that many in the american government would welcome it and even encourage it - it lines their pockets and its not their children's blood on the dirt.

There is something the US could do, but it's something the American people are more hesitant to do than send a million American soldiers in to their potential deaths - fund money into the region. The US needs a "Marshal Plan" of sorts for these Middle Eastern countries they knock the despot out of. We need to build roads, power plants, schools and buildings for these people. Grant them education and funnel huge amounts of cash into their country to stimulate job growth and the economy. Well-off people, regardless of faith, tend not to start beheading and killing people. Going in with threatening soldiers, destroying half the buildings, then setting up shitty polling stations for a political system the people have zero experience working with and telling them "you're free now" is not going to do any good. They're just going to vote in the same despots that we spent defense money and American lives with trying to uproot. But when America can't be bothered to help their own poor with its wealth, it would never permit using money for somewhere outside. It's happy to uproot weeds, but never plants anything in place of it.