Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Force to space an issue on Syria Iraq border

Sabrina Tavernise:

American marines climbed atop the collapsed roof of the final house to be searched this week in an operation to clear this desert town of foreign militants and declared victory. Almost one hour later, they left.

When asked if the foreign fighters would be back, Sgt. Wayne O'Donnell of Company K, the unit that made the final push to the tip of the town, replied in a tired voice as he walked away, "Oh, definitely."

So goes the war in Iraq in this windswept swath of desert along the Syrian border, where marine commanders move their thinly stretched troops from village to village to quash insurgents, only to see them resurface a short time later. The problem is all too familiar. American troops farther north on the Syrian border had to beat back insurgents twice in nine months, after leaving only 500 troops to control thousands of square miles.

The issue of troop levels is so delicate that the commanding officer here, Col. Stephen W. Davis, refuses to allow their true numbers to be publicly released. If insurgents learned the figure, he says, it would pose a safety risk for his marines. He does acknowledge what is widely known - that most of the 300-mile border with Syria, a major entry point for foreign militants, is unguarded, and the most important crossing point, in Husayba, a town near the Euphrates River, has been closed for seven months because troops simply cannot control the flow.

"They will come from wherever we are not," Colonel Davis said of foreign fighters.

The area is important because it contains a large portion of the Euphrates corridor, a crucial route for insurgents bound for central Iraq and Baghdad. It is in Anbar, a troubled Sunni Arab province where opposition to the American military has been staunch since the invasion in 2003.

...

Marine commanders argue that fighting in the same place is not backtracking. Success, they say, cannot be measured in the amount of territory seized and occupied, but instead in punching holes into the web of insurgent networks.

"If they come back, they're going to come back clumsy," said Capt. Chris Ieva, commander of Company K, which helped lead the offensive. He compared the effect to that of a Mafia group being forced to move and find new police officers to bribe.

Tavernise does another good job of reporting. See also my take (posted on 6-25) on stopping the flow of people from Syria before they get to the border. The choke point for the jihadis is in Damascus, not on the border.