War on terror

How Defeated Is The Islamic State?

President Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops stationed in Syria was predicated on a seemingly simple argument: The Islamic State, the extremist group that once controlled large swatches of that country and Iraq, had been defeated.

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” the president tweeted on Dec. 19, using an acronym to refer to the group. The White House later released a video in which Trump said “we have won against ISIS.” He later appeared to modify his language — but only slightly. “ISIS is mostly gone,” he tweeted on Dec 31.

Vice President Pence reiterated that message Wednesday. “The caliphate has crumbled, and ISIS has been defeated,” he told a group of U.S. ambassadors gathered at the State Department in Washington.

Just hours earlier, a suicide bomb had killed four American military members and wounded three more in Manbij, a Syrian city patrolled by U.S. troops. The supposedly defeated Islamic State claimed responsibility.

Though the group’s involvement has not been confirmed, critics linked the attack to Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria. “Trump’s order was reckless and driven far more by domestic political concerns than it was by facts on the ground,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.