The Wrong Way to Win a War

    About 2,500 years ago the legendary Chinese general, Sun Tzu, wrote “The Art of War”, a brilliant book on military philosophy, tactics and strategy that is still required reading for officers in the IDF and most armies in the world.

    Here are two quotes relevant to the current US war against ISIS:  

• “What is essential in war is victory – not prolonged operations.”
• “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare”.

When President Obama, in his speech to the nation, declared war on the terrorist organization ISIS (aka: ISIL, IS), he said: “Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.”

In his speech the President also noted: “This is American leadership at its best:  We stand with people who fight for their own freedom.”

After two months of pinprick aerial attacks against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria, it is clear that so far they have had little effect, if any, on the growth and expansion of ISIS, or the non-stop advance of ISIS formations on Baghdad, in the strategic Anbar province and most recently against the Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border.

In Kobani, not only have ISIS fighters taken most of the town after several US air strikes, but according to reports, have brutally butchered civilian non-combatants. Al-Jazeera reports that one witness who escaped described the streets of Kobani as littered with beheaded Kurdish civilians, including women and children.

James Rush reported in the Daily Mail on October 13 that: “Refugees in Suruc, Turkey, have told The Daily Mail how relatives and neighbors were beheaded by the militants, while another spoke of how he had seen "hundreds" of decapitated corpses in the besieged town.” “Amin Fajar, 38, a father-of-four who left Kobani and made it across the border and into Suruc, told The Daily Mail: "I have seen tens, maybe hundreds, of bodies with their heads cut off”. “Others with just their hands or legs missing…I have seen faces with their eyes or tongues cut out – I can never forget it for as long as I live."

Prior to that, ISIS militants had laid siege to the town of Kobani for nearly four weeks, during which time the US launched several airstrikes against them.

A DOD (Department of Defense) newsletter on October 14^th reported that: “In Syria, 21 airstrikes near Kobani destroyed two ISIL staging locations and damaged another, destroyed one ISIL building and damaged two others, damaged three ISIL compounds, destroyed one ISIL truck, destroyed one ISIL armed vehicle and one other ISIL vehicle.”

“As part of these strikes, an additional seven ISIL staging areas, two ISIL mortar positions, three ISIL occupied buildings and an ISIL artillery storage facility were struck”.

OK - now let me get this straight – as hundreds or more trained and heavily armed ISIS fighters first shelled  the center of Kobani for over a week, forced over 200,00 people to flee the town as their possessions and family members were taken from them (to be abused and then sold into sex slavery), and then brutally took the town with only the woefully outnumbered and underequipped Kurdish fighters, many of them women, fighting an unsuccessful and hopeless rearguard action to stop them…the best that the world’s mightiest and most powerful military force can do against its declared enemy is to “strike”:

• nine empty staging areas 
• one truck 
• one “armed” truck 
• another “vehicle” 
• two mortar positions 
• four buildings 
• one artillery storing facility

Since there was no report of enemy casualties, one can assume that all the targets were empty.

I have to agree with Sun Tzu – This is not the way to a “degrade and destroy” victory. It is clearly just the start of years of another US “prolonged warfare”.

I also agree with another general who certainly understood how to win wars, General George S. Patton, who said: “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his.”

Isis today is over 30,000 strong and growing daily. President Obama called it a cancer. In his speech he said that: “it will take time to eradicate a cancer like ISIL”.

From my personal experience cancer is eradicated by aggressive surgery followed by non-stop aggressive cell-killing treatment. It’s not pleasant, but it usually works. 

It’s time to start implementing the right way to win this war. Otherwise this “cancer” as the President fittingly described it, will spread everywhere.