Militant Islam’s 2014 March
Militant Islam’s 2014 March by Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
Year after year, the acts of Islamic militants grow more terrifying. Witness the 2012 point-blank shooting of Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai and the random slayings a year later of 60-plus shoppers at an upscale mall in Kenya.
The year 2014 was no exception. The newly dominant zealots calling themselves Islamic State produced gruesome videos of their beheading of aid workers, journalists and captured fighters. In April, Boko Haram abducted more than 270 Nigerian girls and dispatched them to sexual enslavement. As the year drew to a close, the Pakistani Taliban slaughtered nearly 150 students and staff at a military school in Peshawar.
It is a virtual certainty that freshly incomprehensible horrors are looming in 2015…
There is something here to be lifted from Vietnam. That is Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition. The President has used the words “destroy ISIL” and “counterterrorism”, not Counterinsurgency. To the Vietnam strategy of attrition, add methodical and lethal search and destroy tactics. To search and destroy, add overwhelming firepower with all guns cleared in “hot”. To firepower, add pile-on until a decision is reached. To all this, add preemption. The GI who can’t shoot first does not live very long. Firepower tells the GI that the Chain of Command has his back. Body count was a measure of success. We were criticized for it, but it is time to assist members of ISIS to meet their maker. They will understand B52s in trail (carpet bomb)rearranging everything on the ground and A10s in close air support, as opposed to smart bombs from 30,000 feet. Let these Islamic thugs see the face of their killers. We beat them by destroying them, not by changing their minds or jihadi behavior. It is time to take ISIS serious.