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This senior French artillery officer says from inside the Coalition what many of us have been saying from outside: the destruction of ISIS didn't have to mean the rubblization of eastern Syria and northern Iraq. /thread thenational.ae/world/mena/top…
Here are some choice quotes: "Yes, the Battle of Hajin was won, at least on the ground but by refusing ground engagement, we unnecessarily prolonged the conflict and thus contributed to increasing the number of casualties in the population." 2/
Also: "We have massively destroyed the infrastructure and given the population a disgusting image of what may be a Western-style liberation leaving behind the seeds of an imminent resurgence of a new adversary." 3/
And the coup de grace: "This refusal raises a question: why have an army that we don't dare use?"
This is the whole point - how to fight the war against ISIS was not a pre-ordained inevitability. It was a CHOICE. 4/
This is the whole point - how to fight the war against ISIS was not a pre-ordained inevitability. It was a CHOICE. 4/
There is an old adage - the enemy gets a vote. This is true. But the Coalition had a vote too, and overwhelming resources as well. The resources it chose to use were airpower and artillery and local forces that required lots of support from both. This was a choice. 5/
There's a reason my colleagues @DRovera and @benwalsby named their Raqqa report "War of Annihilation." Raqqa is still in ruins. This was a choice. raqqa-syria.amnesty.org
ISIS chose to hide among the civilian population and use them as human shields. The Coalition chose to address this problem by using more artillery than they had in decades, enough to burn out barrels. marinecorpstimes.com/flashpoints/20…
.@MENA_Conflict, no hippie peacenik, just had a great thread on the effect of so much artillery/MLRS, what it was designed for (massed infantry), and what it wasn't (urban ops among civilians).
General Townsend, the former commander of the Coalition, asked for bigger bombs and flamethrowers, because all this airpower and artillery still wasn't sufficient. This is a choice. telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/2…
Point is, the Coalition chose to fight ISIS in a way that killed thousands and thousands of civilians. They could have fought in a way that killed fewer. They didn't. Least they could do is publicly admit this, to the world & families of victims, and begin to rebuild. /rant over
