The session concluded with no major new announcements or shifts in strategy. Dempsey: ISIL's propaganda effective

The terrorists of the Islamic State have “tactical momentum on several fronts,” but the U.S. and its allies believe they have “strategic momentum,” the nations’ defense chiefs agreed Tuesday.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and 21 of his senior counterparts from the coalition fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant also agreed that ISIL has been dangerously effective in its propaganda war, a military official said, and the allies must do more to counter it.


“We must be more effective in using these avenues to communicate facts and create awareness of ISIL’s activities and atrocities,” the official said. “The Arab members of the coalition in particular understand this aspect and are taking action.”

These and other points were among the issues discussed by Dempsey and his colleagues at Andrews Air Force Base at a meeting that also included a visit from President Barack Obama.

The session concluded Tuesday evening with no major new announcements or shifts in strategy. In fact, Obama and the Pentagon both took care to continue managing expectations about the outlook for the military campaign.

“As with any military effort, there will be days of progress, and there are going to be periods of setback,” the president said.

But he emphasized, “This is not simply a military campaign. This is not a classic army in which we defeat them on the battlefield and then they ultimately surrender.”

“What we’re also fighting is an ideological strain of extremism that has taken root in too many parts of the region,” he went on. “We are dealing with sectarianism and political divisions that for too long have been a primary political, organizational rallying point in the region. We’re dealing with economic deprivation and lack of opportunity among too many young people in the region.”

So, he said, “we have to do a better job of communicating an alternative vision for those who are currently attracted to the fighting inside Iraq and Syria.”

The Pentagon offered its own cautious assessment.

“The participating leaders acknowledge that although the military dimension of the campaign alone will not be decisive, the coalition’s military effort will contribute to overall success,” the military official said.

Earlier in the day, Defense Department spokesman Col. Steve Warren reminded reporters at the Pentagon that it had been saying all along airpower alone would not destroy ISIL and that Americans have been warned the effort could take years.

He also acknowledged ISIL is apparently making gains in Iraq’s western Anbar province and elsewhere despite weeks of airstrikes by American and coalition aircraft. The operation, which the Pentagon may give a formal name this week, is costing about $7.6 million per day.

Most recently, the warplanes of the U.S. Central Command have focused their attacks on the embattled Syrian town of Kobani, near the Turkish border, which Dempsey has warned could fall to ISIL in spite of the American help. Dempsey and the White House say the focus, including daily coverage by CNN, is myopic in light of the wider regional war.

“The root of the struggle lies in the conditions of the region,” the military official said Dempsey and his colleagues concluded, including in “ethnic and religious tensions, exclusionary governance, intolerance and economic privation.”

The problem for the U.S. and its allies is that there is no easy solution to any of those problems nor even any reliable military force to try to exploit the opening created by the Air Force and Navy’s attacks.

The Iraqi army has some American advisers but has not yet recaptured any of the territory it lost this summer to ISIL. And although Congress has authorized the Pentagon to spend some $500 million to recruit and train about 5,000 Syrian resistance fighters, that effort has not yet begun and might not bear fruit for another year or more.