Media Falls In Line When Trump Sticks To The Script

Multiple pundits said he spoke from the heart, because that was the talking point fed to them by the Trump Administration. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, discuss. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"It’s likely the president will discuss terrorism in general. But when it comes to the most significant ongoing front in the war on terrorism, the military campaign against ISIS, it’s unclear what he’ll have to add.

The war on ISIS is at a crucial inflection point. The group’s time as a state-like entity controlling territory in Iraq and Syria may be rapidly coming to a close. Last Friday, Iraqi troops moved into the western half of Mosul, the Islamic State’s last major holding in the country. US allies in Syria are prepping for an assault on Raqqa, ISIS’s de facto capital city. ISIS’s caliphate may soon be a thing of the past

“The fall of the Islamic State is going to happen, and it’s going to happen on this president’s watch,” Andrew Exum, a former Obama administration Pentagon official who helped plan the ISIS war, writes at the Atlantic. He also notes, however, that this won’t end America’s war with the Islamic State.

The group is already re-forming as an insurgent organization, hiding among Iraqi civilians and taking advantage of Iraq’s weak institutions to avoid detection. Reporters on the front lines have seen this process firsthand, with ISIS members infiltrating areas that had (according to the Iraqi government) been freed of their presence.

“The Islamic State is nearing defeat on the battlefield, but away from the front lines its members are seeping back into areas the group once controlled, taking advantage of rampant corruption in Iraq’s security forces and institutions,” the Washington Post’s Loveday Morris writes. Basically, America will soon be shifting to a different kind of war on ISIS — one centering on the slow and painstaking work of counterinsurgency and institution building, rather than bombing raids.

There are various ideas in government now for adjusting the war effort. The Pentagon has given Trump a proposal that would, for the first time, put regular (meaning not special forces) US troops on the ground in Syria. The White House is reportedly considering loosening the military’s rules of engagement, regulations that limit the military’s use of force in order to, among other things, minimize civilian casualties when fighting in populated areas.

Whether the president commits to one of these proposals, or demonstrates any understanding of the new nature of America’s war with ISIS, will shape America’s spending on the ISIS fight. Any one of these could be a big deal.”*

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Hosts: Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola

Cast: Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola

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Young Turk (n), 1. Young progressive or insurgent member of an institution, movement, or political party. 2. Young person who rebels against authority or societal expectations. (American Heritage Dictionary)

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