Top Army general: US making progress against ISIS, but ‘not yet winning’

The top general in the Army thought the United States was losing the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as recently as September, but he thinks progress has been made in recent months.

“Things are moving in the right direction,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. “There is progress. But progress is not yet winning. No one should think this is over. It is not. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

{mosads}Milley, who took over as Army chief of staff in August, visited Iraq in September shortly after his appointment. During that visit, he said, he thought the United States was losing.

“I was absolutely convinced of it,” he said. “The enemy had strategic momentum.”

But in recent months, after another visit to Iraq in December, he said he thinks the momentum of the campaign is heading in the right direction. He attributed the progress to shifts in strategy made in October.

Among the achievements cited, Milley said the Iraqis have taken back Ramadi, ISIS’s line of the communication between Mosul and Raqqa has been cut off, conditions to retake Mosul are being set, senior ISIS leaders have been killed and the terror group’s finances have been tightened.

Those successes are important, Milley said. But he cautioned the United States is not quite winning yet.

“All that’s to the good, but that is not exactly winning yet,” he said. “The caliphate has to be destroyed. ISIS has to be destroyed. And they’ve also chosen to displace some of their forces in Libya and elsewhere, and they’ve counterattacked into Europe. This is a tough fight, and it’s by no means over yet, and no one should be dancing in the end zone yet. There’s a long way to go here.”