On Monday, Iraqi military and police forces, alongside Kurdish fighters and various militias, began their slog into the Islamic State’s last Iraqi stronghold of Mosul.
Since the official start of the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014, U.S. military officials have stressed that American troops would not be in a combat role, and instead relegated to “advising and assisting” their Iraqi counterparts from behind the front lines. Coupled with air and artillery support, the strategy has paid off, albeit more slowly than some military campaigns in the past.
