US troops may join Iraqi security forces to combat ISIL, says Pentagon

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The US defense secretary told senators on Tuesday that America is “at war” with the Islamic State (Isis), while the senior US military officer suggested US ground troops might directly join Iraqis in combat.

Stripping away an earlier reluctance by the Obama administration to declare its airstrikes against Isis a full-blown war, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said Isis will “directly threaten our homeland and our allies” unless the US confronts the jihadist army militarily.

“This will not be an easy or brief effort,” Hagel said, who defined victory as “when we complete the mission of degrading, destroying and defeating” Isis.

A day after US warplanes expanded the war south-west of Baghdad, Hagel and General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended Barack Obama’s newest war before the Senate armed services committee, many of whose members have wanted Obama to take the US into war in Syria even before the rise of Isis.

On Wednesday, Hagel said, General Lloyd Austin, the commanding officer of US Central Command, will brief Obama on upcoming “targeted actions against [Isis] safe havens in Syria”, the clearest signal yet of an imminent expansion of an air war Hagel said would “not be restrained by a border in name only”. On the targeting list is Isis “command and control, logistics capabilities, and infrastructure”.

Dempsey, who has long been reluctant to re-introduce US forces into Middle Eastern wars, signaled that some of the 1,600 US military “advisers” Obama deployed to Iraq since June may directly fight Isis, despite Obama’s frequent public assurances that US ground troops will not engage in combat.

“If we reach the point where I believe our advisors should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific [Isis] targets, I will recommend that to the president,” Dempsey said, preferring the term “close combat advising”.

Dempsey said the air war in Iraq and Syria “won’t look like a shock and awe campaign”, but will instead be “persistent and sustainable”. He envisaged no end for it, but said Isis’ ultimate defeat will be a “generational” effort during which “moderate” Muslims abandon its ideology – raising questions about what the US military’s actual endpoint will be in pursuing the goal of “degrading and ultimately defeating” Isis, Obama’s stated goal. /End/