Recent developments suggest ISIS is under siege on three fronts from three different opponents, all receiving US military support and none reliant upon US ground forces.

The Iraqi military, supported by US airstrikes (and so far without assistance from the Shia-militias), have entered southern Fallujah and appear to be pushing forward despite ISIS counter-attacks that previously resulted in full-out retreat.  The Kurdish Peshmerga, in concert with US Special Forces, has overtaken strategic positions in the north and appears poised to move on Mosul.  It even appears that the US has been able to muster and lead a disparate group of Syrian rebels to battle ISIS in and around their de facto capital Raqqa.  Sensing an opening, and playing the percentages, Turkey has posited the notion of a joint military campaign with the US to finally seize this ISIS stronghold, at long last.

Adding to the Islamic State’s woes, what serves as a semblance of government in Libya has made military gains against the nascent ISIS forces in that country.  As the US-led coalition begins to imperil ISIS territorial occupation in Iraq, Syria and Libya, what had emerged as the Islamic State now more closely resembles heavily-armed, homicidal looters on the run.   They remain a lethal threat to the civilian population in all these places.  Worldwide, their global jihad against the West appears no less potent as a result of these setbacks.  But, what fed their mystique, what gave them legitimacy, and what propelled them to the global threat they still are, was the taking, holding, and governance of territory.   That chapter is apparently on the wane.

Flashback to September 2014 when President Obama was promising action in a White House address to degrade and destroy ISIL.  Fast forward to December 2015 when the President sought to reassure the country post- San Bernandino that there was a strategy in place that would ultimately prevail.  Prior to, and In between those speeches, the administration floated a slew of faltering, contradictory, half-measures that inflamed critics and sowed doubt among the hopeful.  This conflict looked unwinnable, largely due to Obama’s unwillingness to call the enemy what it was, militarily interdict the ISIS’ flow of oil and revenue, loosen its restrictive rules of engagement for airstrikes, and commit the needed troop levels to dislodge ISIS from its occupied territories.  He espoused what detractors called an imaginary coalition of Arab and western partners.

Well now.  Look what we have here.  Could it be that the President stoically weathered the piled-on denunciation of his “inaction”, worked tirelessly behind the scenes with disciplined discretion to forge workable alliances, and has prevailed in his ambition to at least degrade, and is perhaps on his way to destroying, this regional blight, all without the deployment of the 35,000 US troops some political opponents insisted had to happen?

Or did he just get lucky that ISIS wore out its welcome, was never built for the long-term, that other countries came around to seeing their national interest served in the destruction of this regional cancer, and decided to up their game while the US could still be counted on for support?

It’s probably somewhere in the middle.  But what is fortunate is that the tide is turning with minimal US casualties.  Granted, the civilian death toll and atrocities are reprehensible, but sadly, that is commonplace in regions where Sharia Law is implemented by religious fanatics.

That more Americans are not among the lives lost is a blessing.  And the credit for that may indeed belong at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.