IS is on its heels, but fighting to the death
The New York Times
ABOARD THE USS NIMITZ, in the Persian Gulf — A few days ago, Capt. Mike Spencer of the Marines rocketed off the flight deck of an aircraft carrier in his F-18 to provide air support for Iraqi troops advancing on the dusty city of Tal Afar, one of the Islamic State group’s last strongholds.
A busy six hours followed in the skies over Iraq. As IS fighters fired on Iraqi forces from a building, Capt. Spencer dropped precision-guided munitions on them, destroying the structure and presumably killing the men inside. A short while later, he was ordered to take out another IS fighting position nearby. He did so, and then eliminated another.
When he ran out of bombs, he headed back to the Nimitz.far slower to abandon entrenched fighting positions. They stay in the territory they have taken until they are, literally, blown out.
The Risk board that is the map of Iraq may show almost certain defeat for IS as its territory continues to shrink, but U.S. officials say the pace of the fight is not slowing. The aircraft carrier Nimitz, where Capt. Spencer commands a Marine squadron, is launching as many sorties and strikes against IS targets in Iraq and Syria as other U.S. aircraft carriers were doing three years ago, after President Barack Obama opened the bombing campaign.
The militants have lost a long list of cities and towns in Iraq — Baqouba, Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit, Mosul and, now, Tal Afar, which the Iraqi prime minister declared liberated Aug. 31 — and are under attack from all sides in a desperate fight over Raqqa, their self-proclaimed capital in Syria. But one would never know it from the way the extremists have continued to fight, U.S. soldiers and Marines say.
“We definitely have the offensive,” Capt. Spencer said. But, he added, “they have resigned themselves that they’re going to fight to the bitter end, and they are going to take as many of us with them as possible.”
From Raqqa to Mosul to Nangarhar province in Afghanistan, the presumed victors in the war against IS paint a picture of an insurgency that has not yet seemed to realize that it is on its heels. The Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, last month cast the fight in stark terms. “Wherever you are, we are coming for liberation, and you have no option but to surrender or die,” he said.