What the Failure of ISIS to Take Kobani Means
Coming back after two weeks away, it's surprising that the Syrian town of Kobani hasn't fallen to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria. Pentagon officials were predicting earlier this month that ISIS fighters would overrun the town, near the Turkish border, by mid-October, followed by widespread slaughters among the conquered population. That hasn't happened. And while that's obviously good news in the short term for the city's 200,000 largely-Kurdish residents, it's tougher to handicap what it means for the long-term U.S.-led effort to "degrade and destroy" ISIS. Earlier this month, U.S. military officers were speaking of ISIS's "momentum," and how its string of military successes over the past year meant that quickly halting its advance would likely prove difficult if not impossible. Yet, as far as Kobani is concerned, that seems to be what is taking place. But that raises the stakes for the U.S. and its allies. Having smothered ISIS's momentum, an eventual ISIS victory in the battle for Kobani would be a more devastating defeat for the U.S. military than an earlier collapse of the town. There are concerns that the focus on saving Kobani is giving ISIS free reign elsewhere in its self-declared caliphatethat the U.S. in essence, could end up winning the battle while losing the war. "The U.S. air campaign has turned into an unfocused mess," Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote Friday. "The U.S. has shifted limited air strike resources to focus on Syria and a militarily meaningless and isolated small Syrian Kurdish enclave at Kobani at the expense of supporting Iraqi forces in Anbar and intensifying the air campaign against other Islamic State targets in Syria.", Senator Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. expressed frustration that the Obama Administration believes its latest fight against ISIS will yield success when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't. "We understand the definition of insanity continue to do the same thing and expect something different to happen," he said Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation. "If we can contain them there, leave them there, I don't know what else to do. They're intent on destroying each other, and they've been doing it for 1,400 years.", The chattering classes are likewise not impressed by the fight for Kobani and the overall U.S. strategy against ISIS. "The town, once dismissed as inconsequential by American commanders, has become not only a focus of the American operation against the Islamic State, known as ISIS, but also a test of the administration's strategy, which is based on airstrikes on ISIS-controlled areas in Syria and reliance on local ground forces to defeat the militants," the New York Times said in a Friday editorial. "A setback in Kobani would show the fragility of the American plan and hand the Islamic State an important victory.", On Sunday, the Washington Post declared Obama's strategy "unworkable," and said "the United States will have to broaden its aims and increase its military commitment if the terrorists are to be defeated" the Posts advocacy for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq should be kept in mind while listening to such drumbeats.