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The Next US President Can Expect Weakened, But Still Lethal ISIS

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10.22.2016 at 08:06pm

The Next US President Can Expect Weakened, But Still Lethal ISIS by Philip Ewing, National Public Radio

President Obama's two-year-old campaign against the Islamic State is clearly weakening the extremist group. But he's unlikely to finish the job during his final months, leaving it to his successor, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, to figure out how to keep ISIS on the run.

U.S.-backed Iraqi troops are on the march against the ISIS stronghold of Mosul in northern Iraq. In neighboring Syria, ISIS recently lost the symbolically important town of Dabiq.

After a string setbacks over the past year, ISIS is on its heels across its self-proclaimed caliphate. The Pentagon says it's only a matter of time before Mosul is back in Iraqi government hands, and most analysts would agree. With greater optimism, the Pentagon also says the Islamic State "capital" of Raqqa, Syria, will fall soon.

The question is, if that all goes as planned, then what?

"What we expect to see in the coming months is success in Mosul, success in Raqqa," said Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "But we also know there will be second- and third-order effects from our operations in Iraq and Syria."

Dunford convened a meeting of defense chiefs from dozens of countries this week at Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington, to begin to discuss the nature of those "effects." Some 50 military leaders attended, and the focus was on "countering violent extremism" centered in the Middle East.

Dunford and other military leaders have called that a "generational problem," one they privately concede the U.S. may never resolve. More pressing is the immediate challenge that will follow the deflation of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the aftermath of which could be as complicated as its emergence in 2014…

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