Telling the president , weve had enough. We dont believe in your coalition. They have their own priorities. They think that this white house is naive. Shot and reported over the course of twoandahalf years. Smith whats the situation there . Russian and syrian warplanes. Smith so this whole idea of a coalition is a myth. Youre not going to get the buyin of the region when you dont have any solution for the day after you destroy isis. This is the story of escalating global tensions, enemies and allies, and the ultimate cost of americas war on isis. Frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontliis provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john and Helen Glessner family trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. The wyncote foundation. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. And Additional Support from koo and Patricia Yuen through the yuen foundation. Iraqi forces have been movg closer to retake that key Northern City of mosul. Its an isis stronghold. This is a major prize in this effort to unseat isis from iraq. Martin smith i have been covering the middle east for 15 years. For the last few, i have followed isis closely. Earlier this year, i was in northern iraq, headed toward the frontline. This road takes you to mosul. Oh, it does . Yeah, it goes straight to it. I mean, you can tell there are no cars coming. Smith this trip was part of a much larger journey across the region. On this day, i was traveling with Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers to an area that had seen heavy fighting. The kurds are considered americas best fighters both here and in nearby syria. Smith whoa, thats really destroyed down in there. And how was this village destroyed . Mostly air strikes and booby traps. Smith when was the battle . The kurds drove isis out of this town, tal al reem, in february 2015. They had a lot of help from u. S. Led Coalition Air forces. How many Coalition Airstrikes hit this area here . Dozens. Smith dozens. Smith so you pushed them out of this town. How far are they from here now . Smith how far . Like 1,500 meters. Smith like a mile. He says, do you want to go talk to them . Smith you gonna go with me . Transport the weapons to Kurdish Forces fighting against Islamic State militants in syria. Smith i was taken to a nearby bunker which overlooked the isisheld town of qayarah. Smith when is the last time youve had mortars fall here . Smith one mortar fell while we were there. So how many fighters does isis have out there . Smith qayarah and its airbase were among the first targets isis hit in june of 2014. Theres a truck moving on this side of the river. men talking on radio smith i could hear isis fighters chatter on the base radio. Smith since my visit here, Iraqi Security forces, with coalition support, attacked and seized qayarah. The peshmerga are now awaiting orders to advance up the tigris to the main isis stronghold of mosul, about 40 miles to the north. It promises to be a hard fight. Smith the push to retake mosul is now thought to be imminent. What i want to understand is why has the fight against isis taken so long . Who are americas allies here . This is the middle east. There are no simple answers. Smith our story begins more than two years ago when isis seized mosul, iraqs second largest city. This is a home video made by an isis supporter. Smith at the time, many mosul residents welcomed them. Smith meanwhile, broadcasters around the world expressed shock. The Iraqi Military tried and failed to fend off isis. Smith american officials were hard pressed to explain what had happened. It wasnt that we were blind in that area. We had drones, we had satellites, we had intelligence monitoring these groups. But when two divisions of iraqi regular forces drop their weapons and run, and leave then barren the cities and the banks and the territory, im not sure how you predict that. Smith americans had spent eight years, many lives, and 25 billion training and equipping the iraqi army. Now hundreds of u. S. Made Armored Vehicles and weapons were in isis hands. rapid gunfire the situation was dire. Isis leaders were making claims baghdad, we are coming. It is becoming a matter of some urgency to push isis back. The country is in serious danger of being overtaken by these fundamentalist, extremist isis, who will kill everybody who will not convert to their religion. The Iraqi Governments begging for the americans to help. Smith but the president didnt want to launch a fullsce military campaign. Given the recent u. S. History there, are you reluctant to get involved again in iraq . I think that we should look at the situation carefully. We have an interest in making sure. Smith before he would act, president obama wanted a new iraqi Prime Minister. I mean, the president was clear. He didnt want to launch that campaign until there was something to defend that we were willing to defend, and that wasnt maliki. The administration has signaled theyd like to see a change in iraq. Smith Prime MinisterNouri Almaliki, an iraqi shiite, had been a deeply divisive politician. They dont have confidence in maliki because hes shunned the sunni. Smith he had excluded iraqi sunnis from government jobs, purged them from iraqs military and police forces. He jailed and tortured sunni dissidents. His sectarian policies fueled the rise of the sunni extremists of isis. explosion shouting smith president obama insisted maliki had to go. And to that effect, we thought that was an Impossible Task of us. And even if we can get it right, we cant get it in time to deal with this immediate threat. Things are changing here rapidly as militants from isis are approaching baghdad. Isis fighters now just eigt miles outside the city. Smith u. S. Deputy assistant secretary of state brett mcgurk was at the u. S. Embassy in baghdad at the time. The entire apparatus around baghdad was potentially disintegrating and fraying. And potentially, you know, baghdad itself falling. Smith maliki continued to resist calls for his resignation. Mcgurk argued time was running short. Theres a political component to everything. But without a military response to what is an army, we couldnt possibly succeed. Yesterday the state department announced plans to partially evacuate the American Embassy in baghdad. You know, im a civilian in baghdad. I was advocating as aggressive a response as possible just given how dire the situation was. So those who were responding, as some were at the time, that this needs a political solution i just thought were completely out of their minds. Smith brett was calling from baghdad and saying, we need to respond militarily, wasnt he . Brett certainly was, i think, an advocate for military action at that time. Smith so why couldnt they have been struck at that time . Because in our view, it doesnt work. There is a limit to how effective we can be in our own military action absent the right conditions, political conditions inside of a country. Smith why couldnt there have been a simultaneous military response while continuing to pressure maliki to step out of office . I think that would have allowed maliki to sort of have his cake and eat it, too. To be able to stay in power and still have the United States fight his battle for him. Smith it seemed pretty clear that they were moving openly across open countryside, that it wouldnt have been hard to knock them out in those early days. Its certainly true that in those early days, should the policy have been different, we would have had targets to go after. Smith i was in baghdad just a few weeks after the fall of mosul. I found the situation extremely tense. There were checkpoints everywhere. Isis was on the citys outskirts. The police were nervous. Isis was sending in suicide bombers nearly every day. men chanting smith in baghdads firdos square, malikis supporters clung to the Prime Minister as their best defense. Smith iraqis i interviewed at that time warned about the consequences of removing maliki. If maliki is forced down, i can assure you an open civil war will take place in iraq. Even i will carry a gun and go and fight. This is the will of a Million People in baghdad. chanting Nouri Almaliki this is the people talking. They will protect their Prime Minister. gunfire allahu akbar smith isis continued to take more ground. woman singing smith and they began releasing slickly produced videos on youtube. explosion man singing from the mujahideen came the believers who would rebuild the caliphate. Smith with an apocalyptic appeal, they recruited fighters from all over the world. The few of the few from all corners of the world who answered the call of the prophet. Smith and they had a thirst for extreme violence. Then, isis directly targeted america. This is james wright foley, an american citizen of your country. As a government, you have been at the forefront. Smith two days after the video of james foleys execution was released. Good afternoon, everybody. Smith . Secretary hagel held a press conference. He was questioned as to whether the administration needed to reassess the threat of isis. Is it the calculation that isil presents a 9 11 level threat to the United States . Jim, isil is as sophisticated and wellfunded as any group that we have seen. Theyre beyond just a terrorist group. Smith up to then, the white house had been more measured. Hagel was going off message. Oh, this is beyond anything that weve seen, so we must prepare for everything. Smith were you asked to tamp down that speech . Oh, i think the white house was not particularly pleased with that speech. They were uncomfortable, the white house, with me maybe overstating the threat. I didnt think i overstated it; i think i said it exactly right. arabic radio broadcast in baghdad, the political deadlock over who will be the countrys next Prime Minister is finally over. Nouri almaliki has agreed to step down. Smith finally, three months after the fall of mosul, a new Iraqi Government was formed. The new man in charge wille Haider Alabadi. The challenges he faces are huge. Smith it was then that president obama issued his pledge. President barack obama is gearing up to give a highly anticipated primetime speech tonight. President obama will lay ot his plan to address the isis threat in a televised speech tonight. Obama has been criticized for having a timid response thus far to dealing with isis. My fellow americans, tonight i want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as isil. Smith to degrade and ultimately destroy. The words have been repeated over and over again. Degrade and ultimately destroy. His policy is to destroy isis. No, no, no, its to degrade and ultimately destroy there was a big debate about those terms defeat, destroy, degrade. Professionals wanted to argue for containing it initially and then degrading its capability and ultimately defeating it. They understood that the odds of being able to simply wipe away isis were pretty minimal. So degrade became a way of saying, look, were gonna knock em back into the point where theyre not really a big threat. We cant promise to make em go away altogether. Destroy is, you know, sort of an ultimate, wouldnt it be nice if. . Smith who came up with ultimately . I dont know. There were a lot of discussions about whether it should be contain, defeat, destroy, degrade, you know, ultimately, and it gets more nuanced as it goes along. The recognition was this was a group that was going to be around for some time. The initial strategy looked at a 36month timetable to degrade and ultimately destroy isis. Smith immediately, the u. S. Moved to stop isis from advancing on baghdad. At the same time, u. S. Warplanes struck at isis sanctuaries over the border in syria. Strike after strike after strike, and of course the vast majority is american. But it wasnt just the United States, it wasnt just the west; it was regional powers right there in the middle east that were taking those strikes. The overriding imperative was to limit u. S. Engagement in this and to try to get countries in the region and actors in the region to deal with this threat. Military Officials Say more than two dozen airstrikes have been carried out in both syria and iraq. The pentagon says it appeas these strikes were very successful. President obama said help from arab allies is proof that the world is united to defeat isis. Smith over 60 nations around the world signed onto the fight. And there were ten regional partners, including oman, the uae, qatar, bahrain, kuwait, saudi arabia, jordan, lebanon, and turkey. The problem they faced was considerable. Isis held sway over large parts of iraq and syria. In iraq, the u. S. Hoped to resuscitate the iraqi armed forces. In syria, they faced a much bigger challenge. In iraq, i think there was a fairly coherent strategy crafted by the administration. But the big, gaping hole in the strategy that was debated vociferously inside was syria. Smith this is raqqa, a city of over 200,000 people. Seized months before mosul, raqqa was capital of the Islamic States selfdeclared caliphate. Smith it was clear that routing isis from here would require a large ground force. Bombing alone would not work. man shouting smith isis was intermingled with the local population and was attempting to build a state. Smith they fixed roads, collected garbage, repaired phone lines, ran the banks, and carried out justice. Smith the question was who would fight them here. So then do you do an iraqstyle invasion, or afghanistan invasion . President obama was not going to do that. The congress wouldve never gone along with that. The American Public wouldve run away. Weve never been in this spot before. Everyone knew that we needed to have boots on the ground. The question was always whose boots would they be . No one wanted large numbers of american boots. There werent many europeans who wanted their boots on the ground, and nor did any of our gulf arab partners want their boots on the ground. So the only answer therefore is to build up an indigenous force. President Obama Meeting with his National Security team about isis. The terror group has continued their march in syria and iraq. Smith in washington, they met to discuss what to do. President obama will meet today with his National Security team to discuss isis strategy. Smith the president was cautious. He didnt want any more americans to die in another messy middle eastern war. I was elected to end wars, not start them. Smith and there was nothing messier than syria. In syria certainly, president obama is a second and thirdorder thinker. He keeps saying to his staff, okay, then what . You want to put troops in. Then what . You want to make a nofly zone. Then what . Syria is probably the most complicated issue that anyone in government has faced. I recall one situation room meeting where one experienced Government Official said, you know, this is the hardest problem weve faced. And then somebody else piped in, ever. Smith the syrian war was in its fourth year by the fall of 2014, and syrian president Bashar Al Assads relentless air campaign had already killed around 200,000 civilians. explosions car alarm blaring people shouting smith his use of barrel bombs and chemical weapons had devastated whole communities. In all of the chaos, isis had benefited, flourishing in syrias ungoverned spaces and drawing recruits who were motivated to join the fight. Assad provided isis with a cause. Smith for this reason, many people in the region had been urging the United States to do more to bring the war to an end. A lot of people in the middle east will tell you that there is no dealing with isis without dealing with president assad. That is a view that many people in the region hold very strongly. Were all talking about fighting terrorism. Who is the biggest terrorist in syria . Who has killed more than 300,000 syrians . Who has dislocated millions of syrians to leave and become refugees and create a situation in europe and in other places of receiving these refugees . It is assad. For us to defeat isis, assad has to go. Smith president obama had approved a very small cia Program Backing some antiassad rebels in 2013. But obama opposed launching a major new overt military campaign in syria. Our policy has been very clear that Bashar Alassad needs to leave power, but that we are not going to militarily remove assad because in fact, doing so would draw the United States in in a significant way, and because we cannot impose a change on these countries militarily from the outside. I will not hesitate to take action against isil in syria. Smith the president wanted to focus much more narrowly. To train and equip these fighters. Smith he asked the pentagon to train and equip a force to fight only isis. We must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like isil. Smith they would be recruited from antiassad rebel groups like the Free Syrian Army. Many, including the president , had doubts. Some lawmakers sounding off abo