On the Impossibility of Fighting ISIS

The Atlantic ^ | February 15, 2015 | James Fallows

[lbryce]

As I see it the Sunni minority in Iraq and the Sunni majority in Syria are under siege by Shia. ISIS is the one successful Sunni group opposing the Shia. A very large portion of Arab Sunnis at least passively support ISIS, not because they support its extreme ideology but because they want the Sunnis to emerge victorious. A subset of the pro ISIS Sunnis actually support their extreme ideology. What we call the Iraqi military is seen by almost all Arab Sunnis as a Shia army under the influence, if not the control, of Iran. This explains why Turkey maintains open borders, as well as the policy of Jordan, Saudi and the Emirates.

I simply do not understand our strategy, assuming we really have one. If our goal is defeating ISIS's ideology and its support of international terrorism this cannot be done by indirect fire, PERIOD! If [conclusive defeat] is our objective we have only have limited choices: either military control of 25 million Syrian/Iraqi Sunnis, which will require a sustained force of 500,000 for decades; or creating conditions whereby the majority of Sunni Arabs will see it in their self interest to subjugate the ideological minority.

[lbryce]

First of all, ISIS is our very worst mortal enemy whose eventual goal is to destroy the West, indubitably the United States of America and all non-believers of the Muslim faith.

ISIS, having spawned from the miasma of the worst military, political blunder in history that was the US invasion of Iraq has achieved a global notoriety more detestable, diabolical than Nazi Germany having demonstrated a barbaric ruthlessness that should give everyone pause to the fate that awaits us all as the ultimate objective of their genocidal aims. One of the most fundamental, important lessons ISIS has learned from the victorious battles of Islam versus the West within the confines of the Crusades, is the secret to its war strategy against the West. Historians point to the unmitigated brutality and cruelty of Islam's Jihad for the winning ways of its military forces in being able to extend its reach and influence as far and wide as it did. ISIS's cruelty is not so much a characteristic of its leaders and the manner in which battles its enemies as much as a potent military strategy that emboldens their fighting force and weakens, terrifies its adversaries to achieve the goals they relentlessly pursue until attained.

In the history of military confrontation I have never heard of any military, political leader make the statement that their assumed enemy was impossible to engage in war and emerge victorious. Never. If your very life, your very way of life is in jeopardy or eventually come under siege, your fight to win within the very margins of life and not bray that destroying your enemy is impossible. What utter garbage.

First, the person quoted in this article makes the claim that defeating ISIS can not be done by indirect fire.

I simply do not understand our strategy, assuming we really have one. If our goal is defeating ISIS's ideology and its support of international terrorism this cannot be done by indirect fire, PERIOD!

Then he finishes his military analysis to say even the largest military force by us could not defeat ISIS.

So, we just sit back and invite them to our shores.

The underlying catastrophe that is most troublesome for the West, Th United States is the leadership in the form of President Obama, who espouses similar ideology to the goals and objectives sought by ISIS, and who by lack of any action will usher in what eventually will be the fate of us all at the hands of Islamic State.

[struggle]

1. Carpet bomb Raqqa and Mosul.
2. Repeat.

[DesertRhino]

They could be utterly devastated from the air. But our government dances like a monkey on a stick for the Saudis. The Saudis want a sunni victory over Assad.
The Sunnis love having us fight Shiites for them.

But if we wanted to get real serious, we could bomb their oil production and transport in an afternoon. That would hit the pocketbook hard.
Then we could force Turkey to cut off its clandestine support of ISIS.
But of course, that risks Turks pointing out how much we helped ISIS in the beginning with the Obama nonsense of supporting the “moderate” al qeida Syrian opposition. We gave them money, non lethal aid, and by all appearances, lethal aid through the Benghazi-Turkey-northern Syria ratline.

We are now in a pickle.

[Aetius]

Of course western militaries could crush and defeat ISIS if allowed to do so.

But the true danger for the United States and Europe is what you get at by saying we invite them to our shores. Without our insane immigration/refugee/asylum policies, there wouldn’t be much to fear. The best defense against Islam is not stop allowing muslim immigration. If we didn’t let them in, then their ability to hurt us would be greatly diminished.

[ClearCase_guy]

The Empire of Japan? -- It took us less than 4 years to get an unconditional surrender.
The Third Reich? -- It took even less time.

The Middle East? Which has almost no industry? Which has large percentages of their population without education? It's beyond our power to make beat these guys?

My suggestion: Give it a try.

[Billthedrill]

The article is a wrapper for a more informed piece by Kenneth Brower, whose bottom line is that if we have a strategy in that part of the Middle East, he can't see it. Frankly, neither can I, but the upshot is a repudiation of the Sykes-Picot plan of 1916, which, for all its naivete, at least recognized the tribal breakdown of what is now known as Iraq. What Brower is suggesting if I understand it correctly is that Iraq is irretrievably fractured along those old fault lines, and that the popularity of the grotesquely vicious ISIS movement is overlaid upon existing tribal and religious sectarianism. That makes a good deal of sense, IMHO. ISIS is rich from conquest and romantic to foreign Islamic youth who think the thing is a martial fantasy, and who are being used with as much cynicism as Zarkawi ever did to a generation before. But it is, itself, too small to accomplish what is currently being displayed before a horrified world audience.

That is to be explained through the lens of the bizarrely complicated Iraqi political fabric: we have Arab versus Persian, Shi'a versus Sunni, town versus town, clan versus clan, and absolutely none of this breaks down along a simple framework. Their best hope as a nation was to view Iraq as something greater, which was, if I understand it correctly, the view of what has been called the neocon strategy. That is "nation-building", and despite my negative predictions it very nearly succeeded.

But it was made to fail at a critical moment by the 0bama withdrawal, which made terrific domestic press but disastrous foreign results. And we're stuck with the same dilemma of a generation ago: let it be and risk the victory of some truly evil and avowedly enemy actors, or spend unconscionable amounts of money and lives attempting to shape the outcome to something less hazardous. We needn't not be here except for the fumbling and self-aggrandizing of the same administration that is now going to have to make the decision. It isn't very confidence-inspiring.

[Billthedrill]

Ugh. “Needn’t not” should be “Needn’t”. I blame my editor.

[okie01]

I simply do not understand our strategy, assuming we really have one. If our goal is defeating ISIS's ideology and its support of international terrorism this cannot be done by indirect fire, PERIOD!

Ah, but there is a strategy: Appease Iran.

Note that Obama does nothing to arm the Sunni tribes in the west of Iraq, nor the Kurds in the north. These are the only two effective fighting forces facing ISIS. Instead, the Obama administration insists on supporting the Shia-dominated Iraqi regime, which has become a satellite of Teheran.

Further, Jordan cannot sustain their tempo of action because the necessary fuel and ordinance is not forthcoming from the Obama administration. And the most effective air force in the Middle East, the UAE, has left the field due to inadequate support from the US.

With regard to ISIS, the USA is not "leading from behind", but following Iran's lead.

[Oztrich Boy]

The Middle East? Which has almost no industry? Which has large percentages of their population without education? It's beyond our power to make beat these guys?

It is the Middle East

Normally the patterns of history are reassuring. To hear of Tsarist Russia pressing for warm-water ports or 18th century England fighting hegemony on the continent or Ming China clashing with Japan over the fate of Korea is to feel a continuity, a comprehensibility, in human affairs. But in "The Jewish War" ( a History of the Jewish Revolt in AD 60 ) the shock of recognition is just a shock. Here, sixty generations ago, is nearly the same cast of characters engaged in exactly the same obsessive, vicious and fatal behaviour for the same terrifying reasons on the same cursed, reeking, ugly chunk of land. - PJ O' Rourke The 2000 Year Old US Middle East Policy Expert

[Hoosier-Daddy]

Unfortunately there is no quarter with Islam. It will have to be destroyed.

[Republican Wildcat]

Yes - there are those willing to take the fight to them with their own troops if we would just supply support...but Obama won’t.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

The author of this article was Jimmy Carter's speech writer for ~2 years. Whereas I don't doubt his sincerity in thinking what he wrote, this seems to me to be coming from the same place as all those ‘thoughtful’ people who thought Reagan was too inflammatory with regards the USSR, and that we had to just learn how to live with them. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

The reality is that ISIS is doomed, just like the Nazis were doomed, and like the USSR was doomed, etc. etc. The problem is that they can hurt a lot of people before their inevitable fall. That's what we have to prevent. The fact is that the same people on the left who will proclaim to the world that what we should all be doing to be fair and just and to protect the downtrodden are sitting back and letting innocent people - including women and children - get tortured and killed. They will fight for a $2/hour wage increase at McDonald's, but when it comes to stopping the wholesale slaughter of defenseless people, they are cowards.

[lbryce]

From your mouth to God’s ears, as they say.

[DB]

ISIS is far more doomed than the Nazis or Imperialist Japan.

ISIS has no industry and therefore no real war machine. They can only go on as long as the world powers do nothing and/or as long as they are used as proxies against the west by countries like Iran, Pakistan and perhaps Russia.

With any real resistance they would spread for cover like cockroaches.

This is Obama's legacy.

[GeronL]

But we are fighting cockroaches with a hammer instead of fumigating them

[DB]

I wouldn’t say Obama is even using hammer - or much of anything else. He only does what is minimally necessary to show that he’s “doing something” and no more. “Peace” to him is not resisting.

[odds]

“The author of this article was Jimmy Carter’s speech writer for ~2 years.”

That explains a lot :)

[mosesdapoet]

It’s interesting the way socialists approach theological concepts but when it comes to Islam they are not the only ones who refuse to approach the issue. That even includes leading Christian clergy including Pope Francis.

To only way to defeat it is by confronting, and condeming its theological assertions.

Followers of Mohammed not only claim, but truly believe that God has authorized them to kill those who refuse to submit to their version of God’s will. That is a basic tenet of that religion. A claim which goes unchallanged. While it’s understandable for atheists which most socialists are, not to approach that claim on a theological basis. Because simply eliminatimg those who believe in its execution will not end its practice. Islam must be discredited and condemed.

It’s bewildering why many Christian clergy concerned about “political correctness “ refuse to address what an insult to God it is and worse yet are unable to condem then convince and convert its advocates and adhearants they are followers of an evil creed .

The Koran which was not given to Mohammed by God but by some angel .Demanding enforcement of sharia law which draws heavily from the Torah. Became a pseudo religious concoction using monotheistic selected texts, taken and misconstrued from the old .(bible) and new testaments. Both of which cite the Almighty has granted free will to accept or obey his laws and is the final judge not man. Sodom and Gormora , “Let he who is without sin cast the stone” are outstanding examples from both books. One deals with sin and God’s decision toward a group the other to an individual, neither is left to man.

Yet followers of Mohammed under the severest of penalties are forbidden to read either which would refute that assertion in a creed which institutionalizes disgusting arab tribal views,mores, observances,and customs. Claiming adhearants are authorized by our Creator to demand submission to it or suffer an ignominious death administered by followers of Islam simply because they answer the call to prayer 5 times a day.

http://www.theusmat.com/islamandfreewill.htm

[SunkenCiv]

The simpleminded author breaks it down in the same simpleminded dichotomy so often seen even here on FR:

I simply do not understand our strategy, assuming we really have one. If our goal is defeating ISIS's ideology and its support of international terrorism this cannot be done by indirect fire, PERIOD! If [conclusive defeat] is our objective we have only have limited choices: either military control of 25 million Syrian/Iraqi Sunnis, which will require a sustained force of 500,000 for decades; or creating conditions whereby the majority of Sunni Arabs will see it in their self interest to subjugate the ideological minority.

The only difference is, the shills around here usually support the Shiites. Oh, and like the author, bash Bush I and II.

Jihad is jihad. That's why ISIS is an indiscriminate mass-murdering organization -- they are true Mohammedans.

Islam has to be destroyed, PERIOD. Every practitioner has to be made to choose repudiation of Islam or death, PERIOD. Civilization won't survive another fourteen centuries of Islamic atrocities when nuclear weapons are available.

[bakeneko]

Not impossible. Not complicated.

Shortly after the formation of the US we declared war and went to war against the “Barbary Pirates”. Not a nation state, as far as I know.

Obama wants a blankcheck authorization? We should go him one better and have a Declaration of War against ISIS, ISIL whatever, and any organization or state that provides them with material support. As CIC he works for Congress and the people.