The limits of air strikes in Iraq

[Valin]

Power Line:

Paul Mirengoff

August 14, 2014

 

Robert Scales, a retired Army major general and former commandant of the U.S. Army War College, argues that an air campaign against ISIS is destined to fail. At first, it will probably set ISIS back, but before long the fighters will adapt. They will make targets more difficult to locate from the air and hide them (and themselves) in populated areas.

 

(Snip)

 

Scales may well be right about the diminishing returns of a bombing campaign. But if, as Scales suggests, a bombing campaign makes ISIS more cautious and drives its fighters back into towns they already hold, the blitzkrieg will have been halted.

 

(Snip)

 

According to the Washington Post, “regional experts” say that getting Sunnis to take up arms against ISIS fighters on behalf of a central government still dominated by Shiites “could take years.” It seems to me that without a substantial number of U.S. troops fighting alongside the Iraqis — as during the 2007 surge — it may never happen.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

How to Defeat ISIL

U.S. policymakers must commit themselves clearly to containing, disrupting, and defeating it.

Bing West

August 14, 2014

 

By pulling our forces out of Iraq in 2011, Mr. Obama claimed, he ended the war. Three years later, the winner of that war is a barbarous Islamist army that has seized the northern half of Iraq, threatening both Kurdistan and Baghdad. An alarmed Iraqi parliament has just elected a new prime minister, opening the door for American assistance.

 

So what should we do? The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey, has suggested that we initially contain, eventually disrupt, and finally defeat [the Islamists] over time. Notice that the general used the word defeat.

 

What is necessary to put flesh on Dempseys objectives? First, both parties in Congress must agree that this Islamist army is a mortal threat to Americas core values and must be destroyed. General James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, has testified that ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, poses a potential threat to the homeland. The phrase potential threat is fraught with ambiguity. Until catastrophe occurs, many will argue that ISIL is a murderous religious cult confined within regional geographic boundaries. That was how Mr. Clinton viewed Osama bin Laden before 9/11. If the commander-in-chief does not perceive a mortal threat and if the press grossly underreports the persecution of Christians and other minorities, then the public will see no reason for our military to become heavily involved.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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That great military strategist Patrick J Buchanan disagrees but then this is a clown who thinks (and I use that word in its loosest sense) we should not have gone to war with Hitler.