No ‘indiscriminate bombing’ in Syria, Iraq, US commander claims

Combined Joint Task Force Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland told reporters on Monday that such a move would be against US “values,” tacitly blasting GOP presidential candidates who have called for carpet-bombing the militants.
 
“We are bound by the laws of armed conflict and at the end of the day it doesn’t only matter whether or not you win, it matters how you win,” MacFarland told reporters in Arlington, Virginia, via a teleconference from the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
 
His remarks came at a time that Republican and Democratic candidates were bracing themselves for the Iowa caucuses.
 
In their campaigns, the GOPers have been calling for a heavy-handed war against the terrorists.
 
Republican front-runner Donald Trump has said he would “bomb the sh*t out of ’em … there would be nothing left,” while his main opponent, Ted Cruz, has pledged to “carpet-bomb [Daesh] into oblivion.”
 
MacFarland likened the viewpoint to “what the Russians have been accused of doing in parts of north-west Syria.”
 
He declined to comment on how the war was about to change, saying, “I’d like the enemy to find out for the first time when the area around them is going up in smoke.”
 
Since 2014, the US along with some of its allies has been conducting airstrikes purportedly against Daesh inside Syria and Iraq.
 
Russia has also been conducting airstrikes on the positions of Daesh and other militant groups in Syria but based on a request by the government in Damascus.