https://youtube.com/watch?v=0ZWBvi3ZybA
As some American officials claim the fall of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani to the Islamic State would “not be a big concern,” an exasperated Pentagon spokesman explained on Wednesday that there’s nothing the United States can do to save the city anyway.
Rear Admiral John Kirby appeared frustrated over yet another question on the Syrian border city, which experts warns could see a massacre of Kurdish civilians at the hands of radical jihadists.
“Air strikes alone are not going to do this, not going fix this, not going to save the town of Kobani,” he said. “We know that, and we’ve been saying that over and over again. And yet we continue to get questions of, ‘Well, why aren’t you doing more? And why aren’t they more effective?’”
Kirby claimed the Pentagon has been “really honest about the limits of airpower” and that there’s no “indigenous ground force” capable of following up on American strikes.
Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State house-to-house have been bitterly critical of the U.S.-led coalition’s failure to strike forcefully against the jihadists as they advanced on the town over open ground last week. But on Wednesday they claimed that stepped-up strikes within and just outside the city have halted the Islamic State’s advance — for the moment, at least.