“The Islamic Caliphate announced in 2014 by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, is approaching the end of its short and terrible life,” Matthew Continetti, writing at The Washington Free Beacon, says of the ongoing campaign by Iraqis, Syrians, Kurds, supported by U.S. troops, to beat back ISIS fighters.

ISIS wants to create an Islamic caliphate and considers Raqqa to be the capital of that effort.

The Syrian civil war, which began with protests against President Bashar al-Assad, has cost an estimated 400,000 lives since 2011, CNN has reported.

A fight to dislodge ISIS from Raqqa will be bloody and dangerous due to a dug-in enemy who will employ IEDs and kill the innocent, says Bob Maginnis, a retired U.S. Army colonel now at the Family Research Council.

“I think they’ll die doing exactly what they’ve done in the past,” he says.

Military.com reported this week that a U.S. Marine artillery unit quietly set up an artillery base weeks ago with 155 millimeter howitzers. They are there to support the push into Raqqa, the story said.

Citing the deployment of U.S. Marines, an analysis of U.S. involvement in Syria at The Washington Examiner predicts the U.S. is planning for a post-ISIS peace deal in the war-ravaged country.