But ISIS’s rise in Iraq and Syria has confronted this vision with shocking reality. The unmitigated slaughter of Syrian civilians has provoked heavy, if not quite universal, condemnation of Obama’s and other Western governments. It angered an American electorate tired of wars in the Middle East but increasingly fearful of Islamic extremist terrorism reaching Europe and America. And it fueled perceptions that Obama was keeping the mighty U.S. military on the sidelines, instead of just taking out what looked like nothing more than a savage band of pickup-driving psychopathic murderers. (One frustrated 2016 presidential candidate made the ridiculous suggestion of “carpet-bombing” Iraq.) Obama and U.S. generals have vowed to “destroy ISIS”—but he will this week be replaced in office by a candidate who said he could do it more quickly.

    But what does the military want? In dozens of interviews with U.S. officials and coalition military commanders—from the White House to America’s war room in Tampa, the command in Baghdad, forward control centers and training grounds in Kurdistan, defense minister meetings in Paris, and NATO headquarters in Brussels—one thing was clear and consistent. On the whole, America’s military leaders do not want to be here any longer than they must. It is also clear that they wanted to “accelerate” the campaign against ISIS, as Obama has been doing already for more than a year with success, but they do not want America to own this fight. They do want Iraqis to fight and a functioning Iraqi government to take control when the Islamic State is gone. They don’t want to defeat ISIS only to become an occupying force of sitting ducks.

    What they want is what Obama wants: patience. It’s a word I hear over and over, talking with special operators tasked to train local forces to fight terrorism and with the faraway policy makers they support. Like the outgoing president, they believe an enduring effort and a long view are key to winning the conflicts in the Middle East and halting the spread of global terrorism. But will Trump have the same patience as Obama? Will Trump have the same patience as his generals?

    *

    Due to the sensitive nature of special operations, operational security, and the policy decisions of civilian or higher-ranking officials, I spoke with officials and troops under a wide range of interview rules, ranging from on-the-record to on background, deep background, and off-the-record. Without fail, they were eager to tell how their strategy of training and fighting “by, with, and through” local forces is working, and not just in the Middle East but all over the world in places Americans rarely hear about, like Yemen, Africa, and Southeast Asia. They all agreed: It is a slower, yet far more effective, less costly, and less deadly way to victory. And they all expressed frustration, a little or a lot, with the press, politicians, and even the public who don’t see the wisdom of that approach.

    “Could we do it better ourselves? Could we do it different ourselves? We’ve done it ourselves, and everybody knows where the results are now,” Colonel J.R. Treharne, commander of the Joint Coalition Coordination Center at the Erbil airport in northern Iraq, said in September.




posted 2651 days ago