How Do You Fight ISIS?

by Jack Lee

The battlefield in Syria is a confusing place with dozens of factions, including ISIS and al Qaeda, battling the Syrian Army.   It’s become so complicated that it’s hard tell the difference between moderate and radical Muslims, at war both in Syria and Iraq.

We’ve been fighting in the region for 25 years and it’s got us nowhere.   Despite all our sacrifices we have few friends in that region and we’ve managed to create a whole lot of new enemies.   And it’s confusing who is our friend and who is our enemy because this switches from time to time.   The large militia of the radical Imam al-Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr was thought to be a threat to peace when we occupied Iraq, now we support them?  Obama just reversed himself and now he wants to give them weapons because  they are opposed to ISIS.   Personally, I don’t think that is good enough because some day this war will be over and we’ll have to deal with them once again as a radicalized and very experienced enemy.   The same could be said for a number of rebel groups fighting in Syria; many of them were previously at war with America.

Obama wants the President Bashir Assad to leave or be taken out, but not too many years ago we thought of him as a moderate.  He was considered one of the more liberal leaders in the area along with Saddam Hussein.   Now he’s a tyrant who must go.  Russia says he’s fighting terrorism and Iran supports him too.

Saddam Hussein was a true tyrant, but when we left Iraq suddenly the place started to fall apart.  Deaths in Iraq were never higher because of terrible sectarian violence.   Iraqi’s used their vote and the first guy(Maliki) they elected was a bum and an errand boy for Tehran.  President Bush flatly called him a SOB.   President Maliki was too bent on revenge when it came to representing the interests of Shiites at the expense of Sunni’s and revenge always ends poorly.   This too paved the way for ISIS because many Iraqi Sunni welcomed them as Maliki’s forced fled.

Obama says, “No boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria,” but this seems like a plan guaranteed to fail.  Many of Obama’s top advisers have tried to walk this back, but they’ve not had much luck.   Nobody believes Obama’s air power plan will work unless it’s supported by military ground force.   He has boxed himself in to an untenable position that has no end and threatens only to widen this war with ISIS.

ISIS almost overran all of Iraq in a matter of weeks and this has caused President Obama to try and build a coalition nations to do the ground fighting to reduce ISIS to a “manageable” level, when destroying them is what is needed.   So how is our coalition coming along?  Let’s see:

Turkey has vehemently declined to help us and they warned us not do any bombing from our Incirlik base or they will kick us out.   Iran has mocked Obama saying he’s afraid to send troops, no help there.  Yemen is already in a civil war, no help there either.   Egypt… ha, they’ve had enough of cooperation with us.    France, Germany and other European nations - not interested in Obama’s plan.  Not much left except Qatar or UAE.    Except for Australia’s offer of 600 soldiers, Obama  has rallied exactly zero nations willing to help fight on the ground.   This is understandable, because if the US isn’t going to send in troops, why should anyone else?  This is what happens when there is a confusing foreign policy, no leadership in Washington and all Obama wants to do is disengage.

The lack of decisive action has left Americans more than a little war weary.   11 years in Iraq, 13 years in Afghanistan, Gulf I and Gulf II and the Great Recession.   The US public is hardly in the mood to send soldiers back to Iraq and open a new front in Syria.  Too many in the US see these current mid east struggles as just a continuation of 700 years of Islamic sectarian wars.

ISIS is reported to have an income of about $6M a day and over 40k soldiers.  Their open defiance against Obama and threats to America has been a great recruiting tool and for young Muslims in many nations, even the US.   Despite the revulsion that we feel about the beheadings of Americans it has galvanized even more support for ISIS.    It’s reported that ISIS now commands 60 Abrams tanks and many sophisticated weapons abandoned on the battlefield paid for by the US taxpayers, left behind by fearful Iraqi army.   Most of these battlefield acquisition occurred when barely 500 ISIS forces routed 30,000 Iraqi home guard soldiers who fled  Mosul.

There was a time when 60 Abram tanks could have wiped out all of Saddam’s T-72’s and T-55 tanks, now ISIS is sitting in them, ready to roll on Baghdad.

Obama says we’re in for a long, drawn-out, and expensive fight with ISIS, but without a coalition of Arab countries and with our current feelings about being more involved in the Middle East this bold commitment will never get off the drawing board and if it does, it last about as long as his administration.   His war fighting plans are in a word…stupid.  His alliances in the Middle East are non-existent, and worse, this whole region is in either in civil war or chaos.   Moderates in the Muslim world are coming under increasing pressure to choose a side.   This is what the last two decades of failed American foreign policy has done for us.

Prior to the meteoric rise of ISIS, and two years ago, President Obama was told by his top military advisors to back the then easily identifiable Muslim moderates fighting in Syria.  He refused, but had he done it then ISIS may never have been created or so says Leon Panetta, one of his top advisors.

So, let the bombing begin, I hope we get a lot of them, but it won’t end their jihad.