Why Aren't We Hitting the Islamic State Harder

By Byron York
WashingtonExaminer.com

President Obama says U.S. airstrikes are making solid progress in the fight to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State.

"We're destroying their fighting positions, their tanks, their vehicles, their barracks, their training camps and the oil and gas facilities and infrastructure that fund their operations," Obama said in February when he asked Congress for authorization to use force. "We're taking out their commanders, their fighters, and their leaders."

The president has made clear he does not want Congress or anyone else to tie his or her hands as he does battle. "We believe it's important that there aren't overly burdensome constraints that are placed on the commander-in-chief," spokesman Josh Earnest said in February, stressing that Obama needs "the flexibility to be able to respond to contingencies that emerge in a chaotic military conflict."

But it appears the president is putting overly burdensome constraints on himself. As of the third week in March, the U.S. had flown about 12,000 strike sorties against the Islamic State — that is, fighter and bomber missions intended to drop bombs or fire missiles against Islamic State targets. Of those, about one in four — just 25 percent — actually dropped bombs or fired missiles. The rest returned to base without attacking any targets.

In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in late March, Republican Sen. John McCain grilled Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of U.S. Central Command, about the numbers.

"Right now, in our airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, of the 12,000 sorties, 3,000 of them actually drop weapons," McCain said. "Is that true?"

"I think that's about right, sir," said Austin.

"Don't we put our pilots in great danger if they're not going to drop weapons?" McCain asked. "And isn't it the argument that we really need [U.S. controllers on the ground] if we're going to be effective? Or are you going to have three out of four fighter sorties fly around in circles, and then return?"

Austin explained, or tried to explain, that the nature of the fight against the Islamic State has changed in the last several months. "The type of enemy that we're facing currently started out as an extremist element that wanted to behave like an army," Austin said. "And because of that, we were able to attack his mass formations early on. But he very quickly resorted to behaving like an irregular force, where he began to blend in with the population. As he did that, he became more difficult to — "

"Which should have surprised no one," said McCain.

"It didn't surprise us, sir," Austin continued. "But the nature of this fight is such that we need to be able to support the — "

"So we're satisfied with a situation where we launched 12,000 sorties, when only one out of four actually dropped weapons?" McCain said incredulously.

The question is why that is happening. Why do the vast majority of strike missions against the Islamic State end with no strike?

To some experts, the problem is that U.S. pilots are not being allowed to take the fight to the enemy. "The primary reason why ordnance is not being dropped 75 percent of the time is because the rules of engagement are so restrictive on our pilots that they have to avoid targets that normally we would be striking under similar conditions in Afghanistan or in the previous war we were fighting in Iraq," says Jack Keane, a retired Army four-star general who now chairs the Institute for the Study of War. "These are the most restrictive rules of engagement our pilots have ever been asked to execute."

The larger problem, as Keane sees it, is that the commander-in-chief has ordered that civilian casualties — unavoidable in a bombing campaign — be kept to such an absolute minimum that military commanders have had to stay away from significant Islamic State targets. "That has produced these very restrictive rules of engagement where we have targets available but we're not shooting those targets," says Keane.

It's conventional wisdom that the fight against the Islamic State cannot be won by air power alone. But it's becoming clear U.S. pilots could make more progress than is being made now — if they were allowed to do their jobs.