ISIS Gains Big Ground, U.S. Strategy Shifts, Former Obama CIA Chief Predicts 30-Year War

As the Obama
administration hashes out its plans for war against the Islamic
State (ISIS), it’s becoming clear that the depth and duration of
America’s involvement will be much larger than anticipated. The
president estimated that it could take three years to win the war.
His former CIA director says it will be ten times as long.

“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war,” Leon Panetta

predicted yesterday. As head of the CIA, he oversaw the
operation to kill Osama bin Laden. Panetta also served two years as
Secretary of Defense for President Barack Obama.

According to USA Today, Panetta anticipates that
America’s latest iteration of the war on terror “will have to
extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria,
Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.” The former CIA chief is
promoting a memoir that takes a somewhat critical look at Obama’s
leadership, and the book is already under fire from the State
Department and Vice President Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, ISIS is gaining major ground on its Syrian front. The
terrorist organization, operating tanks and heavy artillery, has
apparently already raised its flags over a town called Kobani. CNN
reports:

The fall of the city would carry huge symbolic and strategic
weight, giving ISIS sway over an uninterrupted swatch of land
between the Turkish border and its self-declared capital in Raqqa,
Syria, 62 miles away. …

ISIS managed to close in on Kobani despite airstrikes by the
United States and allied forces over the weekend and on Monday.

In related news, the U.S. announced that Apache helicopters are
now part of the fight against the Islamic State. Stars and
Stripes
explains the significance:

Until Sunday, U.S. airstrikes in Iraq have been limited to
fast-moving Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft and drones. But the
use of the relatively slow-flying helicopters represents an
escalation of American military involvement and is a sign that the
security situation in Iraq’s Anbar province is deteriorating.
…

“It’s definitely boots in the air. This is combat, assuming U.S.
Army guys were flying the helicopters,” said White, a defense
fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a
center-right policy institute. “Using helicopter gunships in combat
operations means those forces are in combat.”

Moreover, the Obama administration’s decision to authorize the
use of U.S. helicopter gunships indicates that nearly two months of
U.S.-led airstrikes by fixed-wing fighters and bombers have failed
to stop the Islamic State from massing ground troops and launching
offensive operations, he said.

Read more Reason coverage of ISIS here.