Officier VS heeft geen goed woord over voor Obamas strategie tegen ISIS

As a soldier who’s spent a fair amount of time on the ground in conflict zones, I find this popular focus on the power of Hellfire missiles and precision bombing a little disconcerting. What many of the talking heads who’ve filled the airwaves since the savage murders of American journalist James Foley (then Steven Sotloff, and this weekend, British aid worker David Haines) apparently fail to understand is that tactics are not strategy. Without first establishing the latter, they advocate a tactic in the dark that, even if successfully attained, could worsen the situation with perverse consequences.

By containing ISIS within a shriveled territory, this strategy would condemn its fighters to sit in the unforgiving heat of Iraqi and Syrian deserts, no longer able to conduct or sustain offensive military action.  The United States and its allies would not fight on the enemy’s terms. Instead, we would deprive him of any ability to engage us; any ISIS terrorists who attempt to venture into the “no-go zone,” day or night, good weather or bad, would be annihilated. Deprived of an enemy to fight, isolated from the rest of the world, ISIS may well try to strike out with terrorist attacks in the Arab, European and American heartlands. These can be countered with good intelligence work – as al Qaeda’s efforts have been blocked for many years. Eventually, ISIS will collapse as a coherent and effective force.  As that process begins, it is likely town after town, city after city will begin turning on the ISIS forces, finally ending this faux caliphate. Ultimately, then, it will be ISIS itself which is the agent of its own destruction.