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Ramadi: The Cemetery of Americans
On the one hand, I hate to write about this on Memorial Day. On the other, it seems all the more an obligation precisely because it’s Memorial Day.
Michael Fumento just sent me a link to his latest column about Ramadi. He’s as baffled as I am that the coalition stood by and watched idly as ISIS captured it. He makes the points I’ve been making and many more, but does so with more authority, given that he was embedded in Ramadi in 2006.
Ramadi is a city of vast importance, both strategic and symbolic. It’s the city that al-Qaida in Iraq chose as its headquarters, and it became the most fiercely contested area in the country. It’s why SEAL Team 3 of “American Sniper” fame was stationed there and became the most decorated SEAL unit since Vietnam.
Many experts consider the Battle of Ramadi and the “Anbar Awakening,” engineered by Capt. Travis Patriquin, the actual turning point of the war. Patriquin — who a few months after briefing me on his brilliant plan was killed in Ramadi — got the Sunni chieftains to join the Americans and Iraqi security forces to defeat al-Qaida.
Yet, bizarrely, the Obama administration wrote off Ramadi last month, declaring that defense of an oil refinery took precedence — as if we couldn’t do both. (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey claimed, “It has no symbolic meaning.” Now Dempsey says Islamic State “gains in Ramadi are a serious setback for its long-suffering inhabitants.”)
In any event, within days the refinery was out of danger. Yet, the administration still refused to defend Ramadi.
Refused? Strong words! But true.
Military officials claimed a sandstorm prevented good air support during a major IS push. The Times devoted a story to supporting this, but don’t buy it. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), used by American aircraft for the past decade, can see through sandstorms.
Moreover, on no day previously did the U.S. launch more than a handful of sorties in defense of Ramadi, and on many days it flew none.
Yet, area assets include hundreds of strike aircraft, most of which can fly several sorties a day. These comprise F-16s, F-15s, F-22s, A-10s, B-1 heavy bombers, helicopters, and Reaper and Predator drones among U.S. forces, plus aircraft of 11 other coalition nations.
A single Reaper can carry a mix of 14 bombs and missiles, meaning it’s capable of that many airstrikes. Cruise missiles are also in theater, and the U.S. can hit with heavy B-52 and B-2 bombers from anywhere in the world.
Yet with this massive armada and with assets on the ground to help identify targets, the administration seems unable to find and strike more than a handful of targets daily. A machine gun here, a truck there. By comparison, during the 1968 siege of Khe Sanh, American aircraft dropped roughly 1,300 tons of bombs daily — five tons each day for every North Vietnamese soldier besieging the base.
But it’s not just Ramadi that Obama has neglected. Fact is, the so-called air war against IS is a fraud. Rarely are more than a couple of dozen targets struck in a day throughout both Iraq and Syria.
Obama is simply keeping U.S. air power grounded. And nobody in the mainstream media is pointing this out, even though the Defense Department provides regular reports at Defense.gov. In fact, the Times referred to “intensified American airstrikes in recent weeks in a bid to save the city.” (Emphasis added.) Sheer fabrication.
Why is there talk of the air war failing when it never even began?
Read the whole column. I can’t argue with a word of it. I’m every bit as bewildered as he is. He writes, “It’s time for Congress and the presidential candidates to make this an issue. Alas, for Ramadi it’s too late. IS has scored a huge coup and the slaughter of our allies already has begun.” And I would add that it’s time for the media to make this an issue. Above all, it’s time for the American people to make this an issue. I’m at a loss to understand why they aren’t already.
Surely we owe that much to our veterans, past and future? We can say we honor them until the words “We Honor our Veterans” are stamped on every hot dog and hamburger bun in the realm, but how can that be meaningful if, at the same time, we barely bat our eyes at the fall of Ramadi, and accept these transparently lunatic excuses about “sandstorms” and the like as if we were little children?
And what of honoring our future veterans? They’re the ones who will be sent to deal with this horror when finally it becomes something even Obama can no longer ignore. By that point, they will be fighting a vastly larger, more experienced, and better-armed enemy. And at this rate, that point is not far off. We would far better honor our veterans, past and future, by demanding an honest–or even a plausible–explanation for this debacle. They’re entitled to one. And so is every American.
Published in General
I know there’s some hyperbole in what you’re writing and that it’s not meant to be exactly literal, but the polling data actually doesn’t support that. Polls show Americans strongly in favor of the use of air power against ISIS (about 73-75 percent), and the numbers are also remarkably high on the use of ground troops–Rasmussen has it down to 35 percent now, but in February it was 52 percent. (I have no idea why the numbers are going down, and haven’t looked closely at the methodology.) So it doesn’t look to me as if no one cares.
But nation-building wasn’t our original goal when we went into Iraq, either. The goal was regime change. Iraq was a state with conventional forces that we easily destroyed — remember “mission accomplished?”
The problem was we didn’t have a good plan for what to do after we occupied the country. If we send ground forces in to destroy ISIS, we should not repeat that mistake: this time we need a plan for what comes next.
How “conventional” are they? Aren’t they basically the same sort of insurgents armed with AK-47s, RPGs, and IEDs that we battled in Iraq for years? They can hide in the hills or engage in house-to-house urban combat.
Yes they now have some armored vehicles captured from the Iraqi army, we could destroy those easily enough but they were doing well enough without them. Not sure they even know how to use them properly.
Except that they believe it’s an express elevator to Paradise and 72 virgins.
But it’s so much more important to ask Jeb what he would do if he had a time machine and could go back to 2003 knowing what we know now, and then become POTUS in some alternate reality timeline, rather than ask the actual sitting Commander In Chief what he plans to do about the actual crisis we’re facing today.
Claire, your unstated (and understandably so) assumption is that there would be some positive result to an Obama-led military adventure.
You moderates are moderate because you cannot conceive of the crackling hatred that fills the hearts of our progressive enemy. The people in Benghazi died because saving them would damage the narrative that AQ was dead in the run-up to an election. The Iraq SOFA was spiked because Iraq must burn to prove Bush wrong.
The administration is delivering what the Progressives require. What plausible course of action would you press for? An open-ended bloodletting? Just a trickle, to prove we are “doing something”? What answers would you seek of the administration with your question? You have all the answers you will get. Read them or don’t.
By the way Claire, thank you for writing about this, especially on Memorial Day. This is exactly the point. Ya done good.
Bolshii slovos. Talk is for losers. Winners don’t have to talk. They already have what they want.
I do not feel confused. The Islamic State fights the Shiites in Syria and Iraq. These Shiites in Syria and Iraq are intimately allied with Iran. Israel and Saudi Arabia identify Iran as problem number 1. American foreign policy follows. There is no plan to destroy the IS, only mildly contain it, allowing it the room it needs to drain Iranian blood and treasure.
“We would far better honor our veterans, past and future, by demanding an honest–or even a plausible–explanation for this debacle. They’re entitled to one. And so is every American.”
—
Of course, we do have as honest an explanation as we are ever going to get.
Imagine that Congress convenes a Blue-Ribbon panel with Lee Hamilton, James Baker, and a bunch of other Bushies whom we can never get away from. That’s the gold standard for “let’s get some answers around here” isn’t it? And what then? 9/11 Commission: “Establish DHS to overcome Gorelick wall”. Now the TSA frisks grandma, and Gorelick serves on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Council.
The questions have been asked and answered. The debate has been had and revised. The war has been fought, and lost. Oh, it was won, but that was unacceptable, and the American people threw it away.
Now why is it even remotely rational to propose sending more Americans to go die in Iraq so that the next communist administration can trash whatever gains may have been made, including any training or morale that might have accrued to our former, abandoned partners?
This push to re-engage in Iraq is just taking the bait once again. Caring about suffering abroad is a luxury we cannot afford when we are conquered here at home. We have already fought the war you want! Are we so stupid as to be led over “one more hill”?
“ISIS is a millenarian Islamic force such as we’ve never seen in the modern era.”
How so? How is ISIS not the manifest, the explicitly intended result of Al-Qaeda? This is exactly what AQ wanted. This is what bin Laden spoke of. This is also what we went to war to prevent — to drain the swamp. And look how that turned out. We have been defeated at home. If you think Vietnam era Veterans wound up bitter, wait five years.
This is not something new — this is exactly why those of us who spoke of all the separate terror wars as a ingle war, “the long war” were trying to prevent. We do not believe that there is any misunderstanding, just as a failure to communicate is not what maintains tension between Iran and America. We understand them, and they understand us, and there is a third party in the mix, which holds power in Washington, which may not like Iran, but definitely does not like us.
I’m not wrong — I’m just ahead of the curve.
I know enough about losing to know not all losses are permanent. We have lost, repeatedly. Much has to be done for our side to win again, much of it ugly. There is little I can do except talk about foreign policy. This will always be a necessity. Others can & should do other things, wherever competence & anger lead them.
Do you know the phrase–he nothing common did or mean upon that memorable scene? That’s close to where we are now. Some–many–were disgusted by the elections of 2012. They look at Washington & see something ineffably, legitimately vile, to borrow a phrase. I am not disgusted, just angry. I’ll keep talking-
Titus,
I agree with much that you have not said. Yet not all (did some homework).
There will be hard times ahead, and I know which side I am on. Yet the same sense of right and wrong which governs goals governs strategy and tactics as well.
I’m not disagreeing at all. The aspect of the national discussion that’s simply baffling me–and I was relieved to see Fumento point this out, because I was beginning to wonder if I was going insane–is that people seem to be asking whether air power has failed and whether it’s time to send ground troops. But we don’t seem to be using air power, either. And believe me, I understand the limits of air power–or at least, I understand the debate pretty well for a civilian, and know enough to think, “Mike, if I were you, I wouldn’t bring up Khe Sanh here.”
But there are things for which air power is more than adequate. Destroying enemy lines of communication, for example. Not controversial: that can be done by air, and either we’re able to do that or I want a tax rebate.
American citizens have been told that we’re stepping up our air campaign, and there’s overwhelming support for this. “You have to fight this for yourselves,” we’re saying reproachfully to Iraqis. “All we can do is provide intelligence and air cover.” This is what we’re saying, repeatedly.
Now, okay, let’s accept that Ramadi fell because there was a sandstorm, whether or not that makes sense.
Well, what’s the excuse for al-Tanf?
ISIS just seized al-Tanf and completely erased the border between Syria and Iraq. Now they can link their eastern positions with Anbar.
No sandstorm. I checked the weather report. You don’t need anyone on the ground to direct you to them, because they’re telling the whole world where they are. “Al-Tanf crossing is under the control of caliphate, praise God.”
Al-Tanf is right on the map. I can point to it, if people are having trouble finding it. I get a bit airsick, but just bring me up, I can help.
Doesn’t it just seem like basic prudence to bomb that border crossing? We wouldn’t need to put a single man on the ground to do that.
Sure. It has been.
Well, first, no, that’s not true–there are many people who take it seriously and are trying to solve it. But it happens that we’re the only ones who could. We could, as a point of principle, wait for Uruguay to solve it. But it won’t get solved that way.
Do I want the ugly consequences you detail as certainties and I’d call potentialities? Of course not, but that’s not the same as being able to stop them.
Let’s say that air power stops ISIS in its tracks, literally kills every one of them *currently* hoisting the black flag. What then?
And since we live in the real world, such goals if attainable are attainable only at cost — money, lives, time.
The most magnificent triumph of air power — atomic victory over Japan– was primed by years of bloody grueling war which was already proving victorious, but what cost was to be paid to complete the victory? It was also followed by decades of occupation and was achieved at the cost of a ridiculously far-fetched science project and the deaths of plenty of civilians — manifestly, directly, grit-your-teeth-and-give-the-order dead civilians.
Neither of these is going to happen. Which makes the rest of what might happen just another one-night stand in the traveling circus of war theater. Elections to be won, money to be made, progressive goals to be achieved, so watch the fearsome tiger battle the massive elephant. Now watch these dogs maul a bear. Here are some death-defying cuties and some kids playing with fire, menaced by lions, shot from a cannon, lashed to a rack, gassed in their homes, maimed by a building collapse, spattered against a wall.
Same thing tomorrow night, and the night after that, until America gets serious enough to kill until there’s no more killing to be done, without which there will be no victory.
I’m not sure I get what you mean–I do not mean to question which side you’re on or your sense of right & wrong. I assumed, we mostly stand for the same things, it’s only a matter of reminding ourselves & others of those stands we take.
But how does this ‘govern strategy & tactics as well’?
Claire – I think B-D-B gets it right at #75 and where you are disconnecting from he and I is in this: yes, as you suggest, we can gain a temporary tactical advantage through airpower at any number of points, like the border crossing you highlight. ISIS is adept at bouncing back from those setbacks, however. What you are not addressing is exactly what got us to the point of failure before the surge.
As Thomas Ricks, former Washington Post Pentagon correspondent and author said about that at the time is, “Good tactics without strategy are like a Ferrari without a steering wheel; it’s powerful but it doesn’t get you where you want to go.”
What’s essential for a strategy that yields victory is not simply episodic tactical interdiction by air. You need to control territory. That takes lots and lots of boots on the ground. As our recent history proves, it’s very costly in lives, treasure and political courage. And it’s fragile … troops go away, so does your control.
It’s not about polling data as you seem to indicate elsewhere—that’s the most fragile component of all. As per your very poll reference, basically 2/3rds are opposed now. When the first twenty body bags show up at Dover AFB, it will be single digits favoring. Every politician understands this. Which is why I keep harping on the lack of any realistic political way forward for this in an election season.
Claire Berlinski
There’s no accurate count yet of the number of Iraqis who fought to the death (and there may never be)….
My standards in this context are two: the defenders at the Alamo and the defenders on Iwo Jima. In the latter case, especially, the defenders had reason to understand the catastrophe of losing, and in the event, there were some 200 prisoners captured–generally because they’d been rendered unconscious or otherwise disabled–the rest of the 22k Japanese soldiers were KIA. That’s compared to this Iraqi official’s description of the Iraqi “army’s” performance in Ramadi:
The Iraqi army’s willingness to let Ramadi fall to ISIS “surprised all of us,” Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq told CNN on Monday.
“It’s not clear for us why such a unit, which was supposed to be trained by the Americans for years, and supposed to be one of the best units in the army, would withdraw from Ramadi in such a way.”
“This is not the army that we are willing to see or we are expecting to see.”
The image at the head of this NYT article seems typical.
Demonstrating that they are not capable of pulling off the impossible–they are not able to survive intense aerial bombardment and keep advancing….
First they have to be subjected to intense aerial bombardment. They’ve never faced it.
Deliver a blow to ISIS sufficient that it no longer looks as if nothing can stop them.
A blow won’t do it. They suffered such blows when the Kurds out-stubborned them in a Syrian village on the Turkish border, and again when the coalition, such as it is, retook Tikrit. But those setbacks don’t mean the same thing to Daesh and its recruits as they would mean to civilization. Death for the cause is a route to Heaven. Full stop. Too, a lot of the foreign fighters have the same motivation that foreign (Irish) fighters had in joining an earlier Scottish fight against England: win, lose, or draw, it’s a personal chance to kill a hated enemy.
Success is containing this Caliphate before it spreads any further and acquires even more lethal weapons. Ideally, it is destroying it completely, and yes, something else could rise up and take its place, but it would have to rebuild itself, and there would be widespread demoralization.
No, that would be continued failure. Containment won’t work with Daesh or its ilk. Also, the path to preventing Daesh or its ilk from getting even more lethal weapons includes stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Iran has two uses for them: one is to destroy Israel. The other is to give/sell them to terrorists for use elsewhere. And, yes, that will include Daesh and al Qaeda: the enemy of my enemy, and all that. Iran’s current kerfuffle with Daesh is not a permanent thing, or even very expensive, even from Iran’s perspective.
Ideally, it is destroying it completely, and yes, something else could rise up and take its place, but it would have to rebuild itself….
And be destroyed repeatedly. There is no other way. The last time the West faced this sort of threat was the 500 hundred years of the Crusades, and the West was entirely too desultory in its efforts.
…and there would be widespread demoralization. Many would be disabused of the idea….
But not enough. You, and too many of Western leadership, need to stop assuming that what motivates Daesh is what motivates us.
You’re right, though, that we can’t involve ourselves in nation-building. We stink at that. We’ve had significant success at nation recovery (Germany, Italy, Japan come to mind), but in those efforts there was a nation extant to recover.
…air power is more than adequate. Destroying enemy lines of communication, for example.
Yes and no. The clarity of LOCs depends on the nature of the enemy. Against “conventional” forces, the LOCs are clear targets. Recall the difficulty of closing the Ho Chi Minh Trail with air power, though. Terrorists and other guerrilla entities are much more amorphous fighting forces and use much more amorphous LOCs. Air power remains highly useful here, but it’s no panacea–especially here. In the end, there’s always a need for soldiery to stand on the dirt. Doesn’t it just seem like basic prudence to bomb that border crossing? We wouldn’t need to put a single man on the ground to do that. Not particularly. We’re getting into situation-specific tactics here, but they’d just rebuild it. The dirt needs to be occupied, just as Daesh is occupying it, in order for it to be useful or for its usefulness to be denied the enemy. But just randomly blowing up this or that spot on the ground, even stipulating its permanence, needs to be part of an overall tactic for clearing the region, and that needs to be part of an overall strategy for, in this case, destroying Daesh. With preparation, and prompt implementation, of the follow-on strategy when Daesh or a successor stands up to destroy them again.
Others have asked why it’s on us to do this, why aren’t our friends and allies in this, too. For a couple of reasons. One is that we’re the only ones who can. It would be nice if others joined us, but we can’t sit on the sideline bleating about the unfairness of it all and whining about the cost already incurred and refusing to play unless our playmates come out and play, too, because second reason: this is a war to the death. We win, or we die. Our nation ceases to exist. Three hundred million Americans are killed or the survivors enslaved. Full stop.
There are lots of boots on the ground now; we need to stop being namby-pamby about it and arm them. Heavily. And we’ll still probably need to add significant numbers of American boots on the ground. When that addition becomes useful to the war, we need to do so in spades–no half measures, no dribs and drabs going in.
Because if we don’t, we die.
Eric Hines
Several times here I have seen that “we are the only ones who can” stop this. I disagree twice. First, as we have seen, we clearly cannot. We will never give this a go as good as the Bush / Cheney / Rice / Rumsfeld years got. We have failed to win this war, that is, we have lost, serially. Our every defeat is cemented, and our every victory is subverted. This is not an unlikely outcome — victory is fragile and defeat is not.
Second, we may well be the only ones who cannot “stop this”. America is the substitute teacher, incompetent and out of place, and will be lucky to last until the bell rings without getting his teeth knocked out. The rest of the world will be just fine. Or it won’t. It doesn’t matter from a policy perspective because either way — plausible, credible, possible options for making a difference have been removed from the table. Defeats have consequences. Rome wasn’t burned in a day, after all.
I’m a bit confused–I think you might be addressing two people in the same comment, and I’m not sure what part is meant for me. Forgive me if I’m answering something not addressed to a point I made.
Agree completely. 100 percent. My point is that we’re allowing them to claim they have every time the US media reiterates that they’re bursting through our “intensifying air campaign.” I’m mystified by this, and don’t understand why we’re allowing this perception to stand, rather than insistently correcting it. Is it to satisfy American demand for “an air campaign?” It’s obviously much better to say, “No, of course they weren’t able to survive our bombardment–we didn’t bombard them.”
No, one single blow wouldn’t. I’m not sure how much tonnage would have to be dropped on them achieve the effect, but I do believe it’s a finite number and that it’s within our ability.
Yes, but their success is taken as evidence of divine approbation–a sign that this is the right time to establish the Caliphate, and that they’re the ones who’ve been chosen to do it.
The key point–doing nothing at all, or nearly nothing, definitely won’t work.
The immediate priority is just stopping them from getting anywhere near a CW production plant. It’s harder to make and use a nuclear weapon.
I think they’re motivated by what they say they are. It’s definitely not what motivates me.
Yes, but I’m watching them expand, real-time, on the map, as you are–slowing them down is hugely important. The more they take, the more they’ll be able to take.
Not randomly at all–they’re not expanding in a random way. They’re not seizing random territory.
I think there’s a temptation, when we hear people say things like “Who cares,” and “How will this affect us” to unleash this kind of rhetoric in return, out of frustration that people don’t grasp how dangerous to us they wish to be and could soon be. But I think it’s a mistake. It undermines the argument, because it’s not realistic to imagine that ISIS could, undetected, acquire the number of nuclear weapons required to do that and the delivery systems.
It is realistic to say that at this rate, they could very soon be in possession of a significant CW arsenal. This should have the world very alarmed. And indeed, it does.
Claire Berlinski
I’m a bit confused
My apologies. I did respond to a couple of different comments; I should have been clearer.
…don’t understand why we’re allowing this perception to stand, rather than insistently correcting it.
It’s less a matter of allowing it, I think, as one of our media having created it in the first place, together with a too unquestioning public too far removed in time from real war accepting the creation. Someone in this thread noted that we’ve had in the neighborhood of 6500 KIA in all the years of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Total. That’s the daily butcher’s bill for the 1916 iteration of Somme. That’s about a third of the Marine casualties at Iwo. The losses really are frightful for the individuals and their families, but they border on trivial in the overall fight. We need to correct this misapprehension before we can deny the propaganda value of surviving such “frightful” losses, in addition to actually inflicting frightful losses on Daesh.
I’m not sure how much tonnage would have to be dropped on them achieve the effect, but I do believe it’s a finite number and that it’s within our ability.
It’s not a matter of tonnage, per se. Recall the tonnage dropped–for years–on Germany in WWII (ignore the CEP measured in miles; we really can, and do, do rather better than that today). What matters is Daesh killed and ground taken. That’s measured in geography.
The key point–doing nothing at all, or nearly nothing, definitely won’t work.
I’m with you there all the way.
The immediate priority is just stopping them from getting anywhere near a CW production plant. It’s harder to make and use a nuclear weapon.
The threats here are two: you don’t need a CW plant. Some high school chemistry and a handy garage are enough to produce good enough sarin. Some high school chemistry and some household chemicals are enough for adequate chlorine production. The other regards nukes. Making them is high school physics. The hard parts involve getting the uranium in the first place, and then getting centrifuges of sufficient quality. Using them is easy, and no, it won’t take missiles to deliver them; those are just conveniences.
…slowing them down is hugely important.
Absolutely, it is. And bringing them to a halt and rolling them back is a critical item. But absent a coherent strategy, informed by competent tactics, and implemented by soldiers with…the will to fight…we’ll only be murdering friendlies by feeding them to the grinder to achieve the first. We won’t get to the stopping part.
They’re not seizing random territory.
What I was referring to here was (I thought; apparently I misunderstood) the shooting up of a particular spot just because there were Daesh there. It needs to be part of that coherent plan.
this kind of rhetoric
It’s not rhetoric, it’s the fact. And they don’t, of necessity, need CW or nuclear weapons; although those will step up the kill rate. They just need to outstubborn us. They won’t be here Friday if Iraq loses al Qa’im–or Basra–tomorrow. It took the first gang a century or two to get into Spain after seizing Jerusalem. But like any cancer, it keeps growing and spreading and the bigger the cancer gets, the faster its subsequent growth. Kill the cancer early, or die. Kill Daesh or die. There is no middle ground.
Eric Hines
I think HVT raises an important point: why not let these two side fight it out? I agree that militant Islam is an existential threat to US security and fully support the “long war.” In this we must prevail. But what’s missing from the conventional hawk synthesis on this is any sense of re-evaluation of strategy and goals and any sense of opportunity cost. Why *this* piece of ground at *this* time using *these* particular military means? I understand that nuclear proliferation is the ultimate justification but why not deal with that issue directly? Should ISIS or any other non-state actor begin to acquire the means to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon then deal with that issue directly at that time. And that’s conceding the point that pajama wearing teenagers driving machine gun mounted Hiluxes are capable of such a technological feat.
So, yes, by all means let’s continue to thwart terrorism and militant Islam. But for once, let’s do it on our terms, using our asymetric strengths at a time and place of our own choosing. No more bleeding our military white on the streets of Baghdad in Utopian nation building projects for sectarian tribal warlords.
Why *this* piece of ground at *this* time using *these* particular military means?
I can’t speak for other “conventional hawks.” In my view, though, you kill the cancer or fight the evil where it is; you don’t get to pick and choose where it crops up–*this* piece of ground. You do so as early as possible, because the longer the wait, the more expensive the fight, and in some cases the wait proves fatal–*this* time. As to *these* particular military means, I’m not married to any particular means–military or otherwise.
Whatever kills Daesh sooner suits me.
Eric Hines
How about a military strategy that doesn’t play into our enemy’s hands by knee jerk reacting to every terrorist crisis du-jour and instead seeks to take the initiative by systematically attacking ISIS’s leadership and sources of support? Again, why wouldn’t a viable strategy be to let ISIS and Iran bleed each other while dealing limited and highly visible defeats to ISIS’ conventional forces?
How about a military strategy that doesn’t play into our enemy’s hands by knee jerk reacting to every terrorist crisis du-jour….
I don’t know of anyone who’s arguing for that as a strategy.
…systematically attacking ISIS’s leadership and sources of support?
Sort of doing that now. Target ID, though, is problematic. Too, Daesh seems to be doing a credible job of training and having ready in the wings replacements. It’s worth doing, but it’s insufficient by itself.
…why wouldn’t a viable strategy be to let ISIS and Iran bleed each other…
To the extent that’s what they’re actually doing, this could be a usable part of an overall strategy. I’m not convinced this is much of the case, though. Daesh isn’t attacking Iran, it’s attacking whomever is in front of them as they seek to consolidate in Syria and Iraq what they’re pleased to call their caliphate. Iran’s primary goal is overall control of Iraq, for a whole host of reasons, of which Shiite comity is a trivial one. To that end, stirring up the fight between Daesh and anyone in Iraq, even participating to a limited extent for street cred, usefully destabilizes Iraq and makes it vulnerable to Iranian domination. How much Iran is using Daesh for that end I don’t know, but I don’t think the behavior can be discounted.
dealing limited and highly visible defeats to ISIS’ conventional forces?
It’s insufficient. Such limited and highly visible defeats have been administered; Daesh continues to expand. Even counting the Iran-Daesh conflict as sincere on Iran’s part, it’s insufficient. It’s also complicated by the fact that Daesh has no conventional forces–they’re guerrillas. Terrorists, certainly, but guerrillas, differing from those only by their targets and the monstrosity to which they’ve taken guerrilla tactics.
Eric Hines
ISIS is quite different from Al Qaeda. ISIS is claiming to run a caliphate, and has specific ambitions and goals. They are actually more Salafist than Muslim Brotherhood groups like HAMAS or Al Qaeda, and AQ is not a fan of ISIS. Please read the article on ISIS in the Atlantic – these are an entirely different breed of maniacs. ISIS rejects the existence of any authority outside of their Caliph, which is why they engage in conventional warfare. Al Qaeda is a classic case of a terrorist organization with a cell structure, a focus on covert action, and the willingness to use other institutions as a method of power.
Imagine the difference between the Khmer Rouge and the Viet Cong – both communist, but different approaches. Vietnam drove Pol Pot from power.
Honest question: when and where?
Sorry, but these are quibbles. Way too much expertise, not enough situational awareness. We don’t have to worry about a tidal wave because it’s not actually caused by tides.
Kobani in January and Tikrit a few weeks ago.
Eric Hines
It wasn’t the guys in the Alamo who captured Santa Ana and secured Texas. It was Sam Houston, who retreated, and only attacked later. If you think of all military history as being about the serious exceptions, then you’ll struggle to understand any conflict. The US doesn’t often retreat these days (although they did from, uh, Ramadi), because it doesn’t fight balanced fights; it only seems that way in the media because one of our casualties is worth a hundred of theirs.
I’ll paste below the account from Musings on Iraq, by far the best public information source on Iraq, in the next comment, but when your front lines are breached and the enemy is moving to surround you, retreat isn’t cowardly. The Iraqi army would have done little good by adding to the numbers of dead regulars. Iraq desperately needs to retain the ability to fight without excessive reliance on Iranians, and that means giving some thought to force protection.