AP, Washington :
US President Donald Trump on Monday promised to reveal details of his long-awaited plan for fighting the ISIS group, saying a press conference will come within weeks.
“We have had tremendous success against ISIS,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting at the White House.
“We are going to be having a news conference in two weeks on that fight and you’ll see numbers that you would not have believed.”
Tackling the group-which still controls swaths of Syria and Iraq-was among Trump’s most often repeated campaign promises.
Then candidate Trump went as far as to promise to “bomb the hell” out of them and have a military plan on his desk within 30 days of moving into the White House.
Six months after taking office, Trump has yet to sketch out his strategy.
Meanwhile efforts to retake Mosul in Iraq and Raqa in Syria-the capital of the self-styled caliphate-have continued apace.
The Pentagon has already taken the decision to arm Kurdish fighters in the assault on Raqa, a move that upset US ally Turkey.
Officials warn that the fight against the ISIS, while simple on its face, is made more complex by competing interests in Syria.
The United States would like to improve the humanitarian situation, keep Turkey onside, ease the possibilities of clashes with Russia, hasten the transition away from President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, limit Iranian influence and keep Syria and Iraq’s borders intact.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s proposed cuts to the State Department and U.S. development aid would endanger American troops and make the country “less safe” from terrorism, a group of senior retired military officers are warning Congress, urging lawmakers to reject the sharp spending reductions.
“Cutting the international affairs budget unilaterally will have the effect of disarming our country’s capability to stop new conflicts from forming, and will place our interests, values and the lives of our men and women in uniform at risk,” the former commanders said in the testimony, which was obtained by Yahoo News.
The signers included retired Adm. William McRaven, who headed U.S. special operations; retired Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded U.S. forces in Iran and Afghanistan before becoming CIA director; retired Adm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan; five former NATO supreme commanders; and past heads of the combatant commands in Africa and Europe.
“The severe cuts to the State Department and USAID that the administration has proposed will make America less safe, and Congress should reject them,” the group said. The testimony was to be provided on Tuesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee and other panels with jurisdiction over foreign affairs funding.
The retired officers noted that terrorist groups like ISIS, al Qaida, al-Shabab and Boko Haram have taken root in areas prone to poverty, corruption and poor governance – the kinds of things U.S. aid can often address.
The former officers in part echoed Trump’s stated priorities by endorsing expanded military spending, but they cautioned that “in the 21st century, weapons and warfighters alone are insufficient to keep America secure.”
They argued that “kinetic activities alone cannot prevent radicalization, nor can they, by themselves, prevent despair from turning to anger and increasing outbursts of violence and instability. This has been our national experience of the last 15 years in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the Middle East and now in Africa.”
The testimony came as Congress engaged in an annual debate over government spending for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Many lawmakers, including Republicans, have balked at Trump’s call for deep cuts to the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Trump’s budget, delivered in March, would slash the State Department and USAID spending by about 31 percent, according to some estimates.
