Abu Ibrahim was not even entirely acknowledged as a legitimate Isis leader. Yes, he once knew Baghdadi and became his close confidant. But a purist in terms of an Islamic terrorist, he was not. He had served in his earlier years as an officer in Saddam’s Baathist party and military only turning Al Qaeda once Saddam’s service was no longer available—post 2003 US invasion. He was quickly rounded up and imprisoned beginning in 2004 and would eventually be released sometime after 2008 but had spent his imprisoned years as a turncoat and informer, helping the US round up others, providing organizational details to his captors—particularly informing on non-Iraqis. He was well known as a canary and even carried a “canary” nickname with him the rest of his life. Combine that with questionable birth qualifications to be an official caliph and you have a picture of an individual without rooting standing.
Where he did appear to have success was in his ability to organize the massacre large amounts of people…particularly unarmed women and children as he oversaw with the killing of thousands of Yazidis around Mosul at least in part due to having been further radicalized by Baghdadi while in prison.
So what is of real interest here?
1) This is a successful operation, nothing should take much away from that. A bad man is gone. A killer of women and children no longer threatens others. Further confusion and pressure is placed on what remains of Isis. Destroy, degrade. Its a successful operation approved by President Biden. Such opportunities to take the fight to those what would kill us and others should be taken and he did. Good.
2) What this wasn’t was an operation remotely on the level of impact of killing Baghdadi during a point in time where Isis was much stronger and Baghdadi was a known figurehead worldwide. Killing Baghdadi is like killing JFK…killing Abu Ibrahim is like killing Garfield (who?…yeah…that’s my point)
3) The SOF lost another helicopter in this operation. In an shockingly similar incident to what was seen in the killing of Bin Laden, there was a helicopter that suffered “mechanical” issues during the op and had to be landed a short distance away and destroyed in order to try and limit any info gleaned from it. As we say from the Abbottabad operation, such “destruction” of a helicopter doesn’t always complete the job and I hope the bulk of this helo doesn’t end up back in Russia (more likely here than China who swooped in after the UBL mission and bundled up the significantly intact stealth helicopter to reverse engineer). This provides a reason why it might be better to obliterate the location from orbit vs. putting man and equipment at risk. Also should drive a continued examination of our helicopters. If every time they go in they are a disaster in the making—as they have shown to be in virtually every hostile environment encountered in the past 30 years (operation Redwings??). Yes, I know helos are likely the best worst way to get men in and out quickly but…it still needs to be reassessed.
4) Interesting that Biden was completely against any operation to take out Bin Laden and particularly against using men in a direct action method to perform the operation in a far less contested space in Pakistan vs. his decision here with Russia, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Isis, Al Qaeda, etc. all having major elements at play in this area. Did Biden learn? I don’t think so. He even stated today that “The decision to launch a raid rather than an air strike was made after intelligence suggested civilians were living in the building”. So the risk to our men was weighed and their lives were viewed as being worth less than that of Ibrahim and his retinue. Putting men and material at risk here doesn’t meet the “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” test here while UBL certainly did, that is a failure in strategic and tactical thinking. If you knew where he was and didn’t want civilian casualties, just wait…you have enough drones to watch him till he goes to take a piss or journey across town…you’ve shown the ability to track vehicles and blow them up en route as you did (mistakenly in Afghanistan)…either nuke the site or wait….Or…send the men with a clear and direct mission like you did with UBL. And this brings us to the final point…
5) While the US suffered no casualties, it was a near complete cluster and I’m betting the guys on the ground are surprised they escaped with their head between their ears. Publicly available flight tracking had numerous drones over the town and social media was peppered with reports of US helicopters and firing in the area…EVERYONE knew what was going on. Further and most unbelievably, the operation lasted HOURS. Not a matter of break a door down, kill some guys, grab a laptop and scoot. Nope…they parked the helicopters in the middle of the village, got out, broke out the translator, put him on a megaphone and started announcing to the world that we would “like” Mr. Ibrahim to give himself up and come out peacefully with all his surrounding family and friends…and we’d give him time in order to wrap up his situation and walk on out. This went on for HOURS before any action was taken and he finally killed himself. Then our forces were attacked on the way out by a group that arrived on scene due to us having announced our presence and playing nicey nice. This put our men at an unconscionable risk due to a fear of acting forcefully and directly putting the entire mission at risk, let alone the lives of our best and brightest. This has all the hallmarks of high level string pulling and politics for optics purposes. Gross. And in fact…its not at all clear that our soldiers did any soldiering (killing people and breaking shit) until AFTER Ibrahim blew himself up. The sequence of events as recounted by officials is that we called up and asked time and time again for Ibrahim to come out…he didn’t…at some point after that there was a large explosion in the building and THEN our forces went into the building, shot dead one of Ibrahim’s “lieutenants” and then worked to evacuate some of the injured. Nowhere in there is any recounting of any direct action by our soldiers to eliminate or control the target. Stunning.
I think we need to go back to Top Gun for an appropriate quote here “The encounter was a victory, but we show it as an example of what not to do.”
