Military officers across the US are warning of an impending terror wave that they say is only about to become even more intense.
A growing number of senior American military officers have expressed alarm that the military is on the verge of losing its ability to fight a new war.
As the Pentagon faces unprecedented threats from the Islamic State group (ISIS), they say the only way to deal with it is by creating a new battlefield, a phrase that many in the military use when describing the battle against the group.
In a series of tweets on Friday, General Mark Milley, the head of US military operations, warned that the Pentagon has lost its ability “to fight ISIS.”
In a video released on Friday morning, Milley said that he’s “sickened by the thought of losing the ability to defend the United States, the world, and our allies.”
In addition to the ISIS threat, Milleys remarks come as US military officials have said that the U.S. is facing a new wave of threats.ISIS is gaining ground in Iraq and Syria, the Pentagon is facing increasing threats from a resurgent al-Qaida-linked group, and the number of Americans killed in action in the Iraq War has increased by more than 2,500 percent.
Milley’s tweet is just the latest warning of a growing fear among American military leaders that the US is losing its war on terrorism.
The Trump administration, however, is not giving up on the war on ISIS, and on Friday said that its new strategy for the fight against the terrorist group will be based on the military’s expertise and resources.
“We are making progress in defeating ISIS, but we cannot defeat the enemy we are fighting.
And the enemy is gaining more and more strength every day,” Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said during a press briefing.
Mattis said the strategy will involve deploying troops and intelligence assets to the front lines of the fight, training local forces, and coordinating with local partners to defeat ISIS.
Mattes said that it would also focus on “making sure we do everything we can to defeat and defeat ISIS in the region, and ultimately in the world.”
In the past, US forces have been able to destroy ISIS forces in Iraq, but that mission is being replaced by a much larger task: taking out ISIS’s “command and control centers” and other infrastructure in Syria and Iraq.
Mattys statement came just days after US President Donald Trump told a group of military leaders in the Rose Garden of the White House that the United State is “going to be the greatest military power on Earth.”
Trump said that his administration is “taking the fight to the enemy on a global scale.”