President Donald Trump's national security adviser, Army Gen. H.R. McMaster, could offer valuable advice about fighting in Iraq, but Trump appears to be focusing on defeating "radical Islamic terrorism," according to Yahoo.
Meanwhile in February, McMaster rejected the use of the term "radical Islamic terrorism," saying that terrorists are "un-Islamic."
McMaster's experience fighting in Iraq led to bipartisan praise for Trump in choosing him as adviser. McMaster captained a tank unit in Iraq in 1991, when the unit defeated a larger Republican Guard force. He defeated al-Qaida insurgents in Tal Afar in northern Iraq in 2005, by working to unite Iraqi tribal leaders and religious groups, Yahoo's report said.
In the current war, soldiers use civilians as shields and shoot refugees.
"The most difficult thing we are facing is the human crisis here … we are fighting for families,” Sheikh Maitham Zain, one of the commanders of the Popular Mobilization Force, the group fighting against ISIS, told Yahoo.
The battle for Tal Afar is critical because of its importance to Islamic State leaders: “The most important leaders from ISIS are from Tal Afar, and it’s made the battle for Tal Afar more difficult,” Zain said.
Trump and McMaster may be of different minds on Iraq.
"These two are set up for conflict and failure. McMaster is so antithetically opposed to the approach to Islam and the war on ISIS that Trump has proposed that I don’t see him accepting it,” Jeremy Shapiro, Brookings Institution fellow, said in Yahoo’s report.
Trump is only focused on "killing terrorists" and "going home," Shapiro added.
The Iraq war will be a focus for Trump on Monday, as Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will meet with the president at the White House, according to CNN.
"We are in the last chapter, the final stages to eliminate ISIS militarily in Iraq," Abadi said.
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