Iraqi troops drop weapons and flee as ISIS takes Ramadi

Even as U.S. Special Forces had just taken out a major ISIS commander in Syria, the people of Ramadi have now become the latest witnesses to what happens when the United States fights a battle in a half-hearted manner. We lose, and when the enemy is a sadistic group of monsters like ISIS, our allies pay a horrifically high price. Reports overnight are that Ramadi, a crucial city in the Anbar province and a strategic part of the gateway to Baghdad, has now fallen to ISIS:

Muhannad Haimour, a spokesman for the provincial governor of Anbar, said Monday that around 500 civilians and Iraqi soldiers are estimated to have been killed over the last few days, while approximately 8,000 had fled the city. He said the figure is in addition to the enormous exodus in April, when the U.N. said as many as 114,000 residents fled from Ramadi and surrounding villages at the height of the violence. "Ramadi has fallen," Haimour had told AP Sunday. "The city was completely taken. ... The military is fleeing." "Ramadi has been contested since last summer and ISIL now has the advantage," Navy Commander Elissa Smith, using another acronym for ISIS, said late Sunday. "We have always known the fight would be long and difficult, particularly in Anbar [province]." Smith said that the U.S. would continue to support Iraqi forces with airstrikes and added, "The loss of Ramadi does not mean the tide of the campaign has turned, and we have long said that there would be ebbs and flows on the battlefield. If lost, that just means the coalition will have to support Iraqi forces to take it back later." Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in South Korea, called Ramadi a "target of opportunity" for extremists, but said he was confident that ISIS' gains could be reversed in the coming days. Kerry also said that he's long said the fight against the militant group would be a long one, and that it would be tough in the Anbar province of western Iraq where Iraqi security forces are not built up.

---

The U.S.-led coalition said Sunday it had conducted seven airstrikes in Ramadi in the last 24 hours. "It is a fluid and contested battlefield," said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. "We are supporting (the Iraqis) with air power." Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered security forces not to abandon their posts across Anbar province, apparently fearing the extremists could capture the entirety of the vast Sunni province that saw intense fighting after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of the country to topple dictator Saddam Hussein. Sunday's retreat recalled the collapse of Iraqi security forces last summer in the face of the Islamic State group's blitz into Iraq that saw it capture a third of the country, where it has declared a caliphate, or Islamic State. It also calls into question the Obama administration's hopes of relying solely on airstrikes to support the Iraqi forces in expelling the extremists. John Kerry, on a trip in Southeast Asia, offered the usual blather about how the situation is fluid and so forth, and how they've always said this will be a long battle ya ya ya . . . but why should anyone think Ramadi is in for a better fate than Mosul, which has now been under the control of ISIS for a year? U.S. air power surely helps in given situations, but it goes only so far when ISIS knows full well that the Iraqis will not - under any circumstances - get support from U.S. ground troops. Barack Obama announced the strategy of U.S. air power supporting allied troops on the ground not because that is the best strategic approach to achieve victory, but because Obama saw it as the most politically plausible policy given his longstanding campaign promises (and ideological commitment) to avoid serious military commitments overseas. The videos of ISIS beheading people and burning people alive have not been as much in the news lately, maybe because the media got bored with it and moved on to their cherished race riots. But these practices have certainly not stopped, and the prospect of ISIS controlling most or all of Iraq is just as horrifying now as it was back when Obama was smugly dismissing ISIS as Al Qaeda's JV team. The strategic and geopolitical consequences of the ISIS rampage across the Middle East impact America's economy, national security and energy independence. It seems incomprehensible that we would have a president who refuses to do everything possible to protect those interests, but that's the president you elected America. Twice. Nice job.