Can president-elect Trump follow through on ISIS?
In two months, President-elect Donald Trump will be commanding troops in combat for the first time.
With U.S. forces fighting and advising in Syria and Iraq, CBS News is comparing the Trump campaign rhetoric with the campaign against ISIS.
A new ISIS propaganda video shows the treacherous urban battlefield in the fight for Mosul. Narrow streets that ISIS car bombs can slip down unnoticed, surprising the Iraqi army with deadly blasts.
Mr. Trump has threatened to “bomb the hell out of ISIS,” but with around a million civilians in Mosul, indiscriminate airstrikes are impossible.
“I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me,” Mr. Trump said at a rally during the campaign.
During his campaign, Mr. Trump said he would send in up to 30,000 U.S. troops to take on ISIS -- before back-tracking and saying he would pressure other countries to fight instead.
“I’d hit them so hard your head would spin. There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am,” he said.
But on the ground in Iraq, the U.S. has spent two years of careful diplomacy, building a fragile coalition to fight ISIS -- which the Trump administration will now inherit.
Across the border in Syria, Aleppo is again being bombarded by airstrikes on rebel-held areas, killing civilians and damaging hospitals.
Russia said it’s now launching strikes from its aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea.
Despite international condemnation of Russia’s actions, the president-elect has suggested he’ll work together with Moscow -- and would end American support for Syrian rebels.
In the Syria multi-sided conflict, that could ultimate benefit Russia’s ally, the Syria regime, that has been bombings its own people efor nearly four years.
