The President has spoken, and a decision regarding the Islamic State came down like a hammer – “annihilate” ISIS, according to a report.
President Donald Trump instructed the Pentagon to do just that to ISIS in Syria, in order to prevent escaped foreign fighters from returning home, according to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Rather than target the jihadists as they try and escape a city, the President said to encircle and kill as many at once as possible, “rather than letting them exit a city and targeting them as they flee,” according to a report from Friday.
Mattis said the President has “directed a tactical shift from shoving ISIS out of safe locations in an attrition fight to surrounding the enemy in their strongholds so we can annihilate” them, according to the report. “The intent is to prevent the return home of escaped foreign fighters.”
Trump campaigned on a pledge to defeat ISIS. Soon after being sworn in, the President signed an executive order that told his generals they had 30 days to come up with a new plan to eliminate the jihadists; this “annihilation campaign” is the result of that.
“Mattis called foreign fighters a ‘strategic threat’ should they return home and said the annihilation effort would prevent the problem from being transplanted from one location to another,” according to the report.
[revad2]
