President Donald Trump exalted Secretary of Defense James Mattis for the near-complete decimation of ISIS in Iraq and Syria on Wednesday, giving himself a pat on the back in the process for lending the Pentagon chief support.
‘He’s knocked the hell out of them,’ Trump said during a cabinet meeting where Mattis was his left-hand man. ‘Of course I’ve made it possible with what I’ve let you do, I think. Wouldn’t you say?’
Laughter from Trump’s secretaries and staff ensured as Trump reiterated that Mattis ‘has done a fantastic job’ hollowing out the terrorist group.
Iraqi officials declared the last ISIS-held town, Rawah, located 175 miles northwest of Baghdad, liberated in mid-November. Coalition forces aided in the blitz, providing intelligence, airstrikes and assistance from advisers, a spokesman for the U.S.-led group said.
Since the retaking of Raqqa, ISIS’ capital in Syria, in October, the U.S. had claimed it was only a matter of time for the terror group to totally fall.
‘Once purported as fierce, now pathetic and a lost cause, said special presidential envoy Brett McGurk.
At the White House on Wednesday, Trump celebrated the terror group’s defeat before he issued a warning that ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ was still a serious threat to national security as he talked about his desire to build a border wall.
‘I want to thank General Mattis for doing such a great job with respect to ISIS,’ Trump said. ‘He and the military have done a fantastic job with ISIS. They’re essentially knocked out of Syria, knocked out of Iraq. That’s the good news.’
Trump said the U.S. must be ever vigilant against ISIS and its affiliates.
‘They go all over the place. And I’ll tell you where we don’t want them: We don’t want them here. We don’t want them in our country,’ he said. ‘Tell them to stay wherever the hell they are. We don’t want them coming back into our country.
The president said, ‘They do go back into some countries. We don’t want them going into our country. So we’re watching that closely.’
At the end of November, the Associated Press reported on ‘a trickle’ of ISIS fighters returning to Europe following the erosion of the caliphate.
The European Union’s counter-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, said a massive flow had been feared but most fighters were retreating to areas with ‘weak governance,’ namely Libya and Afghanistan, where the U.S. already has a contingent of forces, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
‘With no physical ‘caliphate’ anymore, it will be much more difficult for the organization to repeat what they have done and attract so many people,’ de Kerchove said. ‘That does not mean that the game is over.’