General Bob Scales: The Importance of Kobani’s Future Lies in its Symbolism

"The importance of Kobani is that, first of all, it's completely in the news. There are people from all the networks standing on a hillside watching every bomb drop. And on the other side, ISIS is pumping out social media, that shows street fighting, house-to-house fighting, where they’re being victorious. So all of a sudden, this rather isolated and strategically unimportant place called Kobani has suddenly turned into sort of a global, the global spotlight is turned on it, and both sides believe they can’t lose the city ...

Both sides have learned that American air power decreases in its effectiveness as the insurgent force gets inside the city. So that makes two things important there. Number one, it is important for the -- for the allied airstrikes to hit the logistics areas and the assembly areas before the force crowds into a city. And from the other side obviously it is important to disperse, break apart, get away from tanks and artillery pieces and trucks and fight this battle basically one-on-one, street-to-street, door-to-door. And what that does to the evolution of the battle of course, it slows ISIS down as we’ve seen, but doesn’t necessarily mean that ISIS is going to lose."