Why Victory in Mosul Is Overblown
Why Victory in Mosul Is Overblown by Daniel L. Davis - The National Interest
The battle for Mosul is all but completed, and any question about the strategic significance of its conclusion has yet to be answered by military leaders. That being so, it is time to start asking the difficult questions, such as why the current administration—which ran and won on the promise to change American foreign policy—continues to follow the path of its two previous predecessors in embarking on tactical combat missions that do not contribute to U.S. national security nor the accomplishment of strategic objectives?
The next tough question: Why does Washington continue expending the lives and limbs of its service members and hundreds of billions of dollars on lethal military operations that not only fail to enhance American security, but arguably diminish it? …
As should be painfully clear by now, there is no military solution to the scourge of ISIS. U.S. leaders seem to believe that America can kill its way out of this mess—if it bombs terror groups, deploys more ground forces and trains enough foreign troops, the thinking goes, America will eventually kill enough “bad guys” to quell the threat. Such calculus is out of step with the past sixteen years.
The conditions that allowed ISIS (and Al Qaeda before it) to flourish still persist today. Killing legitimate enemies of the United States is a valid course of action when necessary, but even that is not a substitute for a strategy. The complex regional problem at the root of Middle Eastern violence is not something the United States can solve. Trying to do so has proven to be both expensive and ineffective. That’s why America isn’t “winning.” It’s not because its tactics just aren’t right or because it has applied too little power to a given situation. America isn’t winning because it’s stubbornly using the wrong tactical instrument to solve the problem while avoiding sound strategy that might actually accomplish American objectives.
It is time to embark on a new course of action…