Fighting the "Islamic State" The Case for US Ground Forces

Abstract

Abstract: This article argues counterinsurgency wars are not analogous the challenges presented by the Islamic State. The United States needs accept the nature of the war it is in, and undertake clear and comprehensive assessment of the necessary for strategic success. Such assessment will make apparent the need commit US ground combat forces. (1) ********** The rise of the Islamic State has forced policy makers confront uncomfortable questions: What will it take defeat the Islamic State? What is the nature of the current conflict against the Islamic State? Can the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), bolstered by US and allied air power, advisers, special forces--almost everything short of ground combat forces--defeat the Islamic State? The difficulty the Iraqis experienced in taking Tikrit and the recent abandonment of Ramadi should be instructive, as was the premature announcement by US Central Command of coming ISF spring 2015 offensive retake Mosul, which was followed by admission that the ISF is not yet ready for the kind of fight Mosul entail. (2) Many have already commented on the need have all US options on the table defeat the Islamic State. Retired Marine Corps General James Mattis recently wrote US strategy should include ground combat forces to achieve our war aims. (3) This article explains why US ground forces are not just better option than the ISF, but absolutely necessary for achieving US policy objectives against the Islamic State. Does Our Strategy Fit the War We Are In? All students of strategy have had the ends-ways-means catechism drummed into them at some point in their education. Assessing the US strategy for the war with the Islamic State from this perspective is useful in reaching understanding of what needs be done defeat the Islamic State. Additionally, it will illustrate the continuing challenges in post-9/11 strategy formulation and, in particular, the chasm between desired and deployed means. President Obama, in his February 11, 2015 letter the Congress requesting Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) fight the Islamic State, set forth clear ends for his strategy: to degrade and defeat ISIL. (4) To this point in the fight against the Islamic State, the US has been limited a systematic campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria and supporting various anti-Islamic State security forces. (5) American means are limited air power, advisers, and US support the Iraqis. The other beyond US supporting forces--the boots on the ground--include the ISF, Kurdish Peshmerga and Sunni and Shi'a militias, the latter backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Indeed, Major General Qasem Soleimaini, commander of the Iranian Quds Force, was at one point directing the offensive retake Tikrit. (6) This is problematic in terms of US strategy in the region, but also creates sectarian tensions with Iranians deeply involved in taking Sunni areas. The AUMF explicitly states it would not authorize long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those our Nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the fundamental flaw in conceptualizing strategy for defeating the Islamic State in Iraq--seeing this new fight as similar in character the past 14 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Clausewitz is instructive when he stresses that war is an instrument of policy.... This way of looking at it will show us how wars must vary with the nature of their motives and of the situations which give rise them. (7) Quite simply, the United States needs understand the war it is in and the adversary it faces in the Islamic State. The Islamic State is not insurgency like the United States fought from 2003 until its departure from Iraq. Rather, it is aspiring proto-state bent on taking and holding territory. …