United States’s strategy in the campaign against ISIL, particularly in Syria, is reaching a crisis point. On the ground, the limitations of the current approach are becoming clear. And politically in Washington, the issue appears to be ripening as a potential wedge that Republicans, now in control of the Senate, could use to attack the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
Many, including incoming Senate armed services committee chair John McCain, see the growing controversy over Syria policy as a more effective critique than the failed efforts to exploit the tragedy at the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Both American military and independent assessments emphasise that, despite almost 800 air strikes against it in Syria, ISIL is continuing to consolidate and expand control over territory in that country. Critics point out that any campaign in which enemy forces are acknowledged to be intensifying control over key territories cannot be judged a success. And once that is acknowledged, the questions can only be these: what is going wrong and what can be changed to correct it. The voices in Washington that are demanding to know how policy is going to be adjusted to fix what’s broken are growing louder and more numerous by the day.