By Col. Gary Anderson, USMC (Ret.)
Best Defense guest columnist
Our current strategy against ISIS is undoable because the president’s articulated end state of destroying the Islamic State is simply impossible to achieve; you cannot destroy a movement.
What we could do is destroy the military power of the Islamic State; that is what is threatening our allies in the Gulf region, and eventually could provide a sanctuary that could pose an existential threat to the American homeland. However, President Obama’s current strategy will not accomplish even that. American air power alone may be able to help our friends in the region contain the army of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but it will not root them out of the cities and towns that they currently occupy in Syria and Iraq. The fact that it has crafted an alliance with the Khorasan Group, which is actively trying to attack the American homeland, makes the Islamic State even more problematical.
The liberation of the populations subject to Islamic State rule will require a combined arms assault of integrated ground and air power to conduct the kind of offensive urban combat needed to get the job done. The Kurds, Iraqis and moderate Syrian rebels lack the skill, training, leadership, and will to conduct these kind of operations in the foreseeable future.
After the debacle of the 1993 Battle of the Black Sea Market (Black Hawk Down) in Mogadishu, Somalia, where we saw the asymmetric tactic of armed fighters deliberately using the civilian population as shields, the American military realized it was unprepared for such combat. Beginning in 1995, the United States Marine Corps undertook a deliberate effort to overcome this challenge. It was a major undertaking.
Read the Remainder at Foreign Policy
Reblogged this on Brittius and commented:
Typo: Should read, “Feeble Containment Strategy”.
Yes you are correct, but since I did not write it, I included the title..oh don’t worry I will be posting my position paper on my ideals on how to deal with ISIS soon…..