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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17749
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2020 10:52 am Post subject: ISIS |
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If there was any mental discipline involved, these would not be posted on the coronavirus thread:
| Quote: | How many women or children were raped, crucified, beheaded or buried alive by ISIS this year? How about last year? Or the year before? How many terrorist attacks were there in major capitals this year? How about last year or the year before? Just a coincidence.
How silly of me. Of course, Trump had nothing to do with ISIS being neutered after their reign of terror during the previous Administration. It was just another coincidence. |
If there was any honesty, a more nuanced and perhaps sourced post would have been made. But if your diet is peanuts right from Trump's ass, I guess this is how you roll.
But wait!
From politifact checking Trump's claims:
| Quote: | Bill McCarthy
By Bill McCarthy
October 8, 2019
Miriam Valverde
By Miriam Valverde
October 8, 2019
President Donald Trump shocked lawmakers from both parties recently when he announced the United States would be withdrawing troops from the Syrian border with Turkey.
Political leaders and military officials said the U.S. troop presence in northeast Syria helps keep Islamic State terrorists in check and prevents Iranian and Russian aggression. And they worried about the Turkish military retaliating against Kurdish U.S. allies in the region.
Facing a bipartisan backlash, Trump defended his thinking on Twitter and at an Oct. 7 press conference. He made a number of claims that needed a fact-check.
The Trump campaign referred our inquiries to the White House and Defense Department, neither of which responded to our questions by deadline.
"The United States was supposed to be in Syria for 30 days, that was many years ago. We stayed and got deeper and deeper into battle with no aim in sight."
Trump’s claim about an early timeline is wrong.
Multiple experts told us that they had never heard of a specific timeline for the U.S. involvement in Syria, which started in late 2015 under former President Barack Obama. And Brett McGurk, Trump’s former special envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, responded to Trump on Twitter, saying "none of this is true."
"I’m not aware of a commitment to only have U.S. troops in Syria for 30 days that was made ‘many years ago,’" said Will Todman, associate fellow in the Middle East program and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Trump could have been referring back to when he first ordered the removal of U.S. troops from Syria in December 2018. He gave the Defense Department a 30-day timeline for withdrawal. Trump backtracked shortly after, saying the military could take a few months to get out of Syria.
"When I arrived in Washington, ISIS was running rampant in the area. We quickly defeated 100% of the ISIS Caliphate."
This claim is misleading. While ISIS’s land holdings have been depleted, the group still poses a legitimate threat.
According to data we have analyzed, ISIS controlled about 89% less territory at the start of 2018 as compared with the beginning of Trump’s presidency. This map from the Congressional Research Service shows the extent of lost ISIS territory through August 2018.
But it’s a far cry to say ISIS has been defeated — even if its physical land holdings have been largely dismantled. Experts told us ISIS is still capable of carrying out attacks across the globe. The New York Times reported that as many as 18,000 fighters remain in Iraq and Syria. |
More recently, and also from politifact:
| Quote: | By Samantha Putterman
July 15, 2020
Experts say Trump deserves some credit for ISIS decline, but it’s not completely defeated
In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump vowed to defeat ISIS, the Islamic militant group that seized control of territory in Syria and Iraq starting in 2014.
During a campaign rally, Trump said, if elected, his generals would have "30 days to submit to the Oval Office a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS."
Trump did issue a presidential memorandum in January 2017 requesting such a plan, and his first defense secretary, James Mattis, met with the president about a month later to discuss options.
Fast forward to October 2019: Trump says his administration is responsible for defeating "100%" of the ISIS caliphate. Weeks later, when he announced the death of Islamic State leader Abu al-Baghdadi, he walked that back and said the figure is closer to 70%.
Now, near the end of Trump's term, ISIS appears to have largely fizzled out. But has it really been "soundly" defeated? And is it because of Trump's plan?
It's complicated.
Experts told us that ISIS is significantly weaker, but not gone. They also said that Trump largely built on President Obama's strategy to fight the group — and they acknowledged that it took Obama a long time to devise and implement a strategy.
"Trump more fully resourced the strategy and deserves a fair share of the credit for its ultimate success — but he did not invent it," said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign-policy specialist at the Brookings Institution. "As for ISIS, it no longer has significant territorial holdings, and its top leader has been killed. It is weaker than when Trump came to office, organizationally and ideologically and territorially. Trump again deserves some credit. But again, that was mostly due to the implementation of a strategy that he inherited."
Will Todman, an associate fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that although ISIS is significantly weaker than it once was, it hasn't been defeated and probably never will be.
He told us that the group continues to operate as an insurgency in Iraq and Syria, where it conducted at least 600 attacks from January to May 2020, showing that it remains a serious threat.
"Many of the economic, political and social factors that motivated the rise of the terrorist group remain or have even worsened. ISIS has also expanded its influence in other areas, including in Africa and Central Asia, and so the focus is shifting," Todman wrote in an email. "However, ISIS controls no territory in Iraq or Syria, and its capabilities are nothing in comparison to what they were at the height of their 'caliphate' or when President Trump took office."
Trump, he wrote, continued Obama's strategy and accelerated it "in part by loosening the rules of engagement. That led to greater levels of destruction, particularly in urban spaces, and greater numbers of civilian deaths were recorded as a result."
ISIS is much weaker now than when Trump came into office, and experts tell us he deserves some credit for applying more resources to the fight. But the strategy he used was largely inherited from the Obama administration, and ISIS is still operating in some areas. We rate this promise a Compromise.
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But when your object is diversion... |
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vientomas
Joined: 25 Apr 2000
Posts: 2343
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17749
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2020 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting post. It doesn't fit the Virginia spinner's narrative arc.
But the bigger questions are:
1. How does terrorism compare to COVID in global fatalities and American fatalities?
2. How effective have we been against terrorism?
You can look at the statistics on terrorism here: https://www.statista.com/topics/2267/terrorism/
I'll simplify it for you. all terrorist attacks in 2018 totaled 32,836 killed. Terrible indeed. But COVID world-wide totals for 7 months of 2020 are 775,000 plus deaths and nearly 175,000 US deaths. No wonder those who compared COVID to the flu, and bemoaned the run on toilet paper want to change the subject. (Of course, firearms killed nearly 40,000 people in the US in 2017, but I guess we don't talk about that.)
I would venture that the US efforts at stemming terrorism can not be described as a resounding success, no matter who was president. From the disaster in Somalia while Clinton was president through Trump, terrorism persists, and after 18 years of US efforts in Afghanistan, it is now the hotspot of terrorism for the world. |
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vientomas
Joined: 25 Apr 2000
Posts: 2343
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| Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2020 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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| mac wrote: | Interesting post. It doesn't fit the Virginia spinner's narrative arc.
But the bigger questions are:
1. How does terrorism compare to COVID in global fatalities and American fatalities?
2. How effective have we been against terrorism?
You can look at the statistics on terrorism here: https://www.statista.com/topics/2267/terrorism/
I'll simplify it for you. all terrorist attacks in 2018 totaled 32,836 killed. Terrible indeed. But COVID world-wide totals for 7 months of 2020 are 775,000 plus deaths and nearly 175,000 US deaths. No wonder those who compared COVID to the flu, and bemoaned the run on toilet paper want to change the subject. (Of course, firearms killed nearly 40,000 people in the US in 2017, but I guess we don't talk about that.)
I would venture that the US efforts at stemming terrorism can not be described as a resounding success, no matter who was president. From the disaster in Somalia while Clinton was president through Trump, terrorism persists, and after 18 years of US efforts in Afghanistan, it is now the hotspot of terrorism for the world. |
If ISIS is not blowing up any WASPS in the Americas or Western Europe, then they have been defeated!  |
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