U.S. President Barack Obama will make a rare visit to the Pentagon Monday to confer with national security advisers about refining their strategy to defeat Islamic State militants wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria.

Obama, who has conceded the U.S. lacks a “complete strategy,” is scheduled to meet with Defense Secretary Ash Carter at 2:20 p.m. local time.

The meeting comes after a weekend of intensified airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition against the militants, who have taken control of large swaths of northern and western Iraq and eastern Syria. The coalition conducted 38 strikes over a 24-hour period beginning Saturday, with nearly half directed around the self-proclaimed IS capital of Raqqa.

The strikes began in Iraq last August and in Syria a month later. Warplanes have conducted at least 4,800 combined airstrikes, according to Pentagon data, in missions that officials say have helped Iraqi troops and fighters in Syria reclaim some territory from the militants.

“We believe that we have an impact on [Islamic State],” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren recently told reporters in Washington. Despite the loss of a quarter of the land the group seized in Syria and Iraq, he said, “they remain a potent force.”

Limited progress

But progress has been limited, with the Iraqi military still unable to achieve widespread success on the ground in reclaiming major northern and western cities. They have been aided by Iranian-backed militias and Kurdish fighters in operations such as the ongoing effort to take back Anbar province.

So far, Obama has resisted calls to send U.S. ground troops back to Iraq, instead deploying advisers and trainers to try to boost the Iraqi troops.

The United States also has fallen short of its goal of training Syrian rebels. The Associated Press reports it has trained fewer than 100 rebels to date, a fraction of the 5,400 intended fighters.

The Islamic State group aims to establish a “caliphate” to promote a narrow, harsh view of Islam. The group’s ideological focus has been to go after Shi’ites, whom they consider heretics and apostates, while also killing Coptic Christians in Egypt, Druze in Syria, and Yazidis in Iraq. Their claimed terror attacks include recent ones in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as others in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. [Read More]

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Source: VOA News: Disasters and Accidents