On the first day Trump's new Def-Sec was in office (January 22) US Air Force carried out 31 airstrikes against ISIS including 25 in Syria.
This embarrassingly had second tier conservative media jump with excitement at the supposed decisiveness of 'Mad Dog' who unlike the weak Obama is going to give ISIS hell:
This is a beyond cringeworthy. It is a nice narrative that fits their confirmation biases except for the small problem this does not show what they think it does.
First of all, in what degenerate society is bombing bedouins from 5,000 feet a sign of decisiveness and courage??
If Mattis was serious about ISIS he would be flying a brigade of armored cavalry to Syrian Kurdistan right now and relieve Deir ez-Zor. (Albeit given his criminal proclivities it's probably better for Syrians that he is not.)
Secondly, airstrikes generally take some preparation. It is extremely unlikely that Mattis on his first day in the job had anything to do with the 31 strikes. Instead they were almost certainly set in motion days before.
Finally, the US has been carrying out these strikes since September 2014. This is absolutely nothing new. Instead it is an old Obama policy that continues on autopilot.
So yeah, exactly one day before Mattis walked in US carried out the slightly smaller number of 26 airstrikes vs ISIS without any brouhaha from brain-dead conservatives eager to tell and a believe a story.
So actually the last day of Obama and Ash Carter was actually far bloodier than the next day under Mattis.
But hey, what else to expect from people who worship US generals -- ie pencil pushers whose job is as dangerous as being a clerk at the DMV, and in one of the most pussified militaries in the world whose soldiers will literally machinegun children at the slightest hint that they may not be entirely and completely safe.
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