PERSIAN GULF—Two senior Canadian generals have defended the current strategy for defeating the ISIS terrorist group in Iraq and Syria, which U.S. officials have put under review following scathing criticism by President Donald Trump.
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis was in Iraq this week after Trump gave the retired marine general until the end of the month to come up with a plan for speeding up the campaign.
During last year’s presidential election, Trump repeatedly criticized the slow pace of progress and promised to introduce a new approach that would hasten ISIS’s defeat.
But Canadian brigadier-generals David Anderson and Stephen Kelsey say they are hard pressed to think of ways to improve the existing strategy, which they have watched unfold first-hand for the better part of a year.
And they worry that rushing to destroy ISIS could in fact undermine the progress that has been made in dealing with the root causes that led to the terrorist group’s rise in the first place.
“I can’t think of a different way to do this that doesn’t create all the problems that have been there from the past,” Anderson said on Feb. 20, before Mattis’s unannounced arrival in Iraq. “I think we’ve got it right.”
Anderson and Kelsey are both based in Baghdad. And while they’re Canadian, each holds a key position within the larger international coalition for defeating ISIS.
Since last spring, Anderson has led a multinational team of military advisers posted inside the Iraqi defence ministry in Baghdad, where they have helped formulate and implement the current campaign strategy.
