[May 31, 2017] “Get your act together, boy!” This is how my grandmother would admonish me after I screwed up something important; to get my attention and to put me on the right path to manhood. And it now looks like the Iraqi military is about to get their act together to destroy the remaining elements of ISIS in their country. However, what happens after ISIS is what strategists should already be asking.
To my knowledge, no one is asking this question. Certainly senior Iraqi government officials have asked themselves what happens next but I’ve heard nothing coming from them, their supporters in Iran, or from the U.S. government that also has troops on the ground. Yet, this question is at the heart of Islamic terror that has captivated the world with its savagery and wanton destruction.
Last November I wrote about the reasons why the capture of Mosul, the last stronghold of ISIS in Iraq, was so important. Those reasons were strategic issues, not the tactical or operational level ones discussed in the Western media. Most importantly, in the opinion of those in senior positions of the U.S. military, is that the impending destruction of ISIS in Iraq helps prevent the spread of the Islamic State’s ideology and the evil it perpetuates.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently noted a change of military strategy in the fight against ISIS. Instead of using president Obama’s technique of containment which relied on “passivity, proxies, and special forces,”1 the U.S. will now help Kurdish allies, Western forces, and a deeper engagement with Sunni governments in the Middle East.2
The question about what happens after ISIS is a difficult one to answer. Thanks to the U.S. deal with Iran, their Shia government has gone on a spending spree to support additional terrorism and the spread of advanced kinetic weaponry to other rogue nations. Regardless of the position of America, Iran will be a part of what happens after ISIS.
The good news with the eventual capture of the city of Mosul is that it will help correct America’s abdication of its moral stance against terror when president Obama withdrew U.S. forces from Iraq on a publically-announced schedule. The unlikely allies of Iraq, Iran, the U.S., and other Middle Eastern Sunni countries are a good thing in the short term.
Will the evil of ISIS finally be defeated? That is yet to be seen. But it will take far more non-military intervention with Iran and other allies to see that goal achieved.
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- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/us/politics/tillerson-isis-allies.html?_r=0
- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also explained the idea that his goal is to destroy ISIS by surrounding and then crushing them instead of using the past “whack a mole” approach. This is new to the Western countries involved in the campaign against terrorism. The reason for the timid past military tactics was designed so as to not offend Muslims. It neither worked militarily nor achieved the stated goal of not offending Muslims. The new U.S. strategy is also a tilt toward Sunni Islam and away from Iran and Shia Islam. There are many who argue that our best approach is not to align with either faction and to let the Muslim world sort out their differences (as they have for the past centuries). Such a naïve way ignores the immediate goal of eliminating the most common form of terrorism.