ISIS has intimidated the UAE from continuing air strikes, has recruited 4,000 foreign fighters since September, is holding and gaining influence in Iraq, Syria, and is now active in Libya, Lebanon, and Yemen. There is no sign the militants are being demoralized or degraded in any meaningful way. Instead, they have more momentum and are gaining fighters. If that is not what winning looks like, what is?
But the U.S. is eminently capable of crushing ISIS and as soon as President Obama signals his willingness to do this, it should be done.
So far President Obama has remained unwilling to do more than authorize a limited air campaign. He has outright ruled out some military options that may be necessary to achieve the President’s stated goal to “degrade and ultimately defeat ISIS” and so the results have predictably fallen short of the goal.
In November when asked if the U.S. is winning in the fight against ISIS President Obama answered that it was “too early to say.” Well, that was weeks before ISIS militants sadistically murdered the heroic Jordanian fighter pilot and uploaded the video on the internet. The pilot’s fate is reportedly one of the reasons UAE has suspended its air campaign. The UAE is a key Arab U.S. ally fighting ISIS, but as the New York Times reported, Dubai was understandably unwilling to risk its pilots if the U.S. remained unwilling to station the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft closer to the battlefield in the event a downed fighter pilot necessitated a rapid rescue mission. The Osprey is currently deployed in Kuwait, not nearly close enough for Dubai’s comfort.
If the reports are correct that there have been approximately 4,000 foreign fighters join the ISIS ranks that’s 2,000 less than the total number of militants U.S. air strikes have killed since the air campaign began. This is the proverbial “whack a mole” at its worst. The highest ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Bob Menendez said to reporters, “Foreign fighters keep coming in, even though we are killing many of them.”
They’re coming from all over the place, but they are passing across the Turkish border, which seems to be quite easy to do. The FBI’s chief of the counter-terrorism unit, Michael Steinbach, said he’s concerned about American recruits and that the U.S. really has no way of tracking Americans joining the efforts. Steinbach explained, “Once you get to Europe, you can easily get down to Turkey and Syria.”
And while Pentagon officials continue to paint a slightly optimistic picture of the effects of the U.S. efforts in Iraq, Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi has insisted ISIS is getting stronger. While it is true that the Iraqi government has an interest in painting a bleak picture in order to receive more military support from other countries, the Pentagon has been only moderately optimistic about its success there so far. As for Syria, the U.S. government has provided scant data showing the degradation of ISIS. To the contrary, media reports indicate ISIS now controls up to a third of the territory in Syria, is successfully recruiting opposition forces into the fold, and controls unknown numbers of poor Sunni neighborhoods by providing food and services like trash pick-up.
But the U.S. can turn all of this around.
First, the U.S. must commit to breaking the will of ISIS. This does not mean the U.S. is signing itself up to fight a protracted war. What we are seeing now with the air campaign is the start of a protracted war, and this is what we have to change. Once President Obama makes this commitment, he should welcome all military suggestions for what kinds of capabilities will be required to destroy ISIS. Senior officials and military leaders have already suggested it will take ground forces, despite the President’s insistence he won’t send them. Although no one is suggesting it will take tens of thousands, if the U.S. is serious about wiping out ISIS and that’s what it takes, it should be willing to commit troops as well.
The U.S. should develop a serious search and rescue contingency plan and deploy the assets needed to execute it. Last, even though the U.S. should unequivocally lead in this military campaign, it should empower Arab allies to take high profile roles in the mission. Importantly, the U.S. must convince, or coerce if need be, Turkey to assist the coalition efforts in defeating ISIS — Ankara must plug its sieve-like boarders.
ISIS may be succeeding in its goal to establish a so-called Islamic state from which it can terrorize the region and launch attacks against the West, but it’s only doing so because the U.S. political leadership is permitting it to. Washington has the airpower, manpower, and know-how to wipe out ISIS. But the enemy’s will to win is unremitting, and so ours must be all the more.
Rebeccah Heinrichs is a fellow at the George C. Marshall Institute where she writes about defense and foreign policy and specializes in nuclear deterrence and missile defense.