WASHINGTON— The military offensive ordered by President Obama against marauding Islamic State militants barely resembles the grinding ground war that the United States waged in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 — but may prove just as tough to win. Rather than U.S. combat troops fighting street by street in Iraqi cities and towns, the new strategy is based on an escalation in U.S. bombing and on at least 1,600 American military advisers and others working with Iraqi Army, Kurdish fighters, sectarian militias to drive the jihadists from Iraq, and eventually defeat them in neighboring Syria. In his primetime speech Wednesday night, Obama compared his plan to U.S. counter-terrorism operations...
↧