How to Put ISIS on the Run

[Valin]

National Review:

Robert H. Scales

December 22, 2015

 

During the last Republican debate, nearly every candidate promised, if elected, to defeat, crush, and destroy ISIS, though none offered any suggestion about how that might be accomplished. Perhaps this newfound bellicosity reflects the growing sentiment among the American people that the ISIS scourge should be confronted decisively even if “boots on the ground” are necessary.

 

If the United States goes back to the Middle East in force, how will it do so? Certainly no one hears any thoughts on the subject from the active military. Just the mention of a ground plan — or a Plan B, as it’s secretly termed inside the Pentagon — is a sure ticket to Diego Garcia.

 

But as politicians will learn, the gods of war are a perfidious lot. In the end, what soldiers call “ground truth” will prevail over politics, hope, wishful thinking, and the punditry of Republican candidates. If ISIS continues to grow and prosper, and if (God forbid) it continues to kill Westerners in their homelands, then inevitably the call to respond decisively will become too shrill and demanding to ignore.

 

(Snip)

 

Would the campaign destroy ISIS? Of course not. But like al-Qaeda and al-Nusra, fractured terror groups denied sovereignty, ISIS would become a stateless enterprise on the run, more concerned with survival than with fomenting terror in the West. A victory? No. But a decisive blow that would transform the ISIS threat from a global menace to a police problem.

 

That’s about as much as any military operation can hope to achieve in this new era of long wars against radical Islamic enemies.