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US lacks political will to fight Daesh in Mideast: Commentator

Sunday, 10 April 2016 8:47 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 10 April 2016 8:46 AM ]

A US Air Force B-52 bomber performs during the Australian International Airshow at the Avalon Airfield southwest of Melbourne on February 27, 2015. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV has conducted an interview with James Jatras, a former US Senate foreign policy analyst from Washington, about the deployment of US B-52 atomic bombers to an airbase in Qatar under the pretext of fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Are we witnessing some sort of a shift in America’s strategies on Daesh here?

Jatras: Not really, it would be nice that we had a strategy but I don’t think bringing of the B-52s signals much of any change one way or the other. I think this is mainly because in February a number of B-1s stationed in Qatar were taken back to the United States for maintenance purposes.

Now the B1s which are flying seven percent of the missions were dropping 40 percent of the ordinance. That’s a significant loss of operational capability. So, I believe the B-52s have simply been brought in to replace them for however long they’re necessary. These are very old airplanes. They’re more than half a century old.

In many cases, you have the air-cruises that are flying literally the same planes that their fathers and even grandfathers flew. But nonetheless, they are capable aircrafts and I think it’s simply a rotation of equipment really and doesn’t change the mission at all.

Press TV: Some people say or might be saying that since the US-led coalition has been widely criticized and named as being ineffectual, this just might be a shift in that regard in order to perhaps make up for that weakness.

Jatras: Perhaps in the sense of appearances, because people will pay some notice to it. I think the problem with our strategy and with the anti-Daesh mission being flown by the US and our supposed coalition partners is largely political, that we have coalition partners like the Saudis and the Turks who are really supporting Daesh with supplying weapons to jihadists.

In fact, there was a new story out recently about US equipment falling into the hands of al-Qaeda in Syria. The big problem with the American policy in Syria and Iraq isn’t whether our aircraft are capable of doing this or that, it’s that we don’t have a strategy, we don’t have sound political goals and changing one plane or another is not going to remedy that deficit.

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