The Hell of Urban Warfare Is Not Unique to Gaza – Tablet Magazine
Rather than sending its own troops back into Iraq, the war-weary U.S. would seek to win by, with, and through its local proxies while leading from behind. In practice this meant funding, equipping, and providing U.S. air support to Iranian-backed Shia militia groups the same groups that had previously carried out attacks on U.S. soldiers which formed the backbone of Iraq s new Popular Mobilization Forces. At the same time, small groups of U.S. special operations soldiers began training elite Iraqi commando units in anticipation of an eventual push to drive ISIS out of Mosul. The approach meant that Iraqi and Kurdish forces would do all the fighting and dying while the U.S. provided logistical, intelligence, and most crucially air support. It was a strategy that would prove to be devastatingly effective.
Precedent.