US Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Sunday said that the US had “accelerated” its tactics against the Islamic State group, moving from a policy of “attrition” to one of “annihilation.
The retired US Marine Corps general also said “civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation,” adding: “We’re not the perfect guys, but we are the good guys, and so we’re doing what we can.”
Speaking on CBS television’s Face the Nation, Mattis said: “Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against ISIS [the Islamic State group]. It is a threat to all civilized nations. And the bottom line is we are going to move in an accelerated and reinforced manner, throw them on their back foot.”
“We have already shifted from attrition tactics, where we shove them from one position to another in Iraq and Syria, to annihilation tactics where we surround them. Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa... We’re going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate,” he said.
Mattis also said efforts against the Islamic State group would be “a long fight” and “a fight about ideas.”
“We’re going to shatter their sense of invincibility there in the physical caliphate,” he said. “That’s only one phase of this. Then we have the virtual caliphate, that they use the Internet.”
“We have got to dry up their recruiting,” he said. “We have got to dry up their fundraising. The way we intend to do it is to humiliate them, to divorce them from any nation giving them protection, and humiliating their message of hatred, of violence. Anyone who kills women and children is not devout. They … cannot dress themselves up in false religious garb and say that somehow this message has dignity.”
Asked if he was concerned by the prospect of civilian casualties caused by such aggressive action, Mattis said: “Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation. We do everything humanly possible consistent with military necessity, taking many chances to avoid civilian casualties at all costs.”
Heavy fighting against Islamic State militants continues in Mosul, Iraq, with local forces supported by a US-led air campaign. In March, a US airstrike in the city triggered a massive explosion, killing more than 100 people.
“The American people and the American military will never get used to civilian casualties,” Mattis said. “And we will — we will fight against that every way we can possibly bring our intelligence and our tactics to bear.”
“We believe we found residue that was not consistent with our bomb. So we believe that what happened there [in Mosul] was that ISIS had stored munitions in a residential location. Showing, once again, the callous disregard that has characterized every operation they have run,” he said.
The allied coalition has acknowledged responsibility for more than 450 civilian deaths since its bombing campaign began in 2014, including 105 in Mosul on March 17, but Airwars — a collective of journalists and researchers based in London that tracks civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria — reports that coalition strikes have killed at least 3,681 people.
Additional reporting by AFP
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