ISIL is Winning
ISIL is Winning by Bruce Hoffman, Politico
At the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it seemed like we had terrorism on the run; Osama bin Laden was dead, the Taliban was defeated and officials like CIA director Leon Panetta had proclaimed al Qaeda all but finished. But as we mark on Friday the 14th anniversary of the devastating attacks on the United States, it’s time to admit that the terrorists—at least one specific branch of terrorists—are now winning. And it’s time to admit that our response to the so-called Islamic State has been an abject failure.
Last year, fighters belonging to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a group once part of the same organization responsible for the 9/11 attacks stormed into Iraq, conquered half that country, declared itself both a state and a Caliphate and set about to slaughter and enslave thousands of Christians, Shi’a, and members of Islamic minority sects. Fifteen months later, ISIL’s influence has spread far beyond the Levant and Mesopotamia. A thousand foreign recruits converge monthly on its operational cynosure. Hailing from some fifty countries they exceed by a factor of ten the average monthly flow of foreign fighters to Iraq at even the height of the war there a decade ago…
A strategy of “retrenchment” is expected to have “costs.”
The continuing rise of ISIS to simply be understood as being one of these “costs?”
President Obama believing — as do others — that we have, on both our domestic and our international fronts, bigger fish to fry? In this regard, consider:
“First, the Obama Doctrine is doing exactly what it was supposed to do: end America’s commitments to Iraq and, eventually, Afghanistan. This will eventually pave the way for the U.S. to focus a greater percentage of military and strategic attention upon East Asia (meaning China). Obama’s steadfast opposition to the second Iraq War was his strongest bona fide for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2007.
Second, the Cheneys’ argument is reminiscent of the “turbulent frontier” thesis (or myth of Thermopylae): if Obama had only left “…behind some residual American forces” (implying their cheapness), everything would be fine in Iraq. However, everything was not fine with Iraq when the Bush administration left office in 2009. Furthermore, the Cheneys fail to appreciate the greatest threat to the U.S. is not Al Qaeda or Iran or Putin’s Russia, but relative decline; retrenchment is the best way to reverse it.
Withdrawing from the periphery carries costs. Because of their weak position in the international system and the mismanagement of the occupation, Iraq is suffering as a result of our withdrawal. When the British were at the point of bankruptcy after the Second World War, they were compelled to exit India and several of their possessions in the Middle East, leaving chaos and conflict in their wake.
When states make the appropriate tradeoff between overextension and relative decline, they are often able to bounce back and reclaim their place on the international ladder. The more entrenched the rate of relative economic and military decline, great powers are more strongly compelled to forego opportunities to use force, increase burden-sharing with other states that share their interests, and pull back from commitments that do not pose a challenge to their existence. Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan are two of the best ways we can preserve the unipolar moment.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/210253-the-obama-doctrine-and-the-costs-of-retrenchment
Thus, re: “retrenchment,” ISIS — which exists on the “periphery” — to be seen as the primary problem of others? (For example: those in the region?)
President Obama, for his part, focusing more on — not the periphery — but, rather, on the “core?”
Our new top military leaders, in placing ISIS LAST on their list of threats, agreeing with this assessment and this strategy?
“Gen. Paul Selva on Tuesday ranked the Islamic State the least-threatening group to the U.S, saying that the terrorists do not pose a threat to the homeland.” …
“I would put the threats to this nation in the following order: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and all of the organizations that have grown around ideology that was articulated by al Qaeda,” he said, mirroring the list gave by Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford last week in his nomination to be chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/14/isis-no-threat-us-homeland-air-force-general-says/
QUOTE
Results of one year’s worth of US/Allied bombing—-
ISIL has been able to thrive in areas with a majority Arab Sunni population but has failed to take hold in areas where Sunni Arabs are the minority or where effective rival ground forces could oppose them. … Taken in this light, ISIL appears to have essentially traded holdings in Kurdistan and near Baghdad that were hard for it to maintain for holdings in central Syria that will be much easier for it to maintain.
This month, Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the fight against ISIS “tactically stalemated” with no “dramatic gains on either side,” predicting it would take “a decade or more to resolve” the problems that led to ISIS’s rise. This is the difference a year made.
UNQUOTE
I would argue that we the US have made serious mistakes in fully understanding who we can and cannot work with in the ME and that mistake is the direct result of 9/11 and our urge for revenge.
We have failed to fully “see and understand” the drive of the various civil societies in the ME and around the globe and until we finally get that right balance we are drifting and are incapable of even addressing the existential threats staring the US literally in our face.
ISIL has taken what at one juncture seemed to be a simple conflict and protracted it into a long-term war. This is to be expected from terrorist and insurgent conflicts in the modern battlefield. Radically altering strategies this far into the game plays into the hand of a group like ISIL. Attrition will erode them away.
More worrying is the use of such insurgent groups by Russia and Iran as a component to a larger military strategy, evolving the doctrine of proxy conflicts into one that has been designed from the ground up to defeat American and NATO military forces. Without a strong military counter and a hard-line political stance against such actions, they pose a risk that ISIL cannot compete with.