The best way to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is to defeat it on the battlefield, experts told a House subcommittee Wednesday, saying U.S. strategy needs to be adjusted to ensure that happens.
The experts told the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities that efforts to delegitimize the Islamist extremist group’s ideology and even political efforts to create more democratic and inclusive governments in Iraq and Syria depend on battlefield success.
“The most important way to discredit their ideology is by military defeat,” said Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Though the witnesses stopped short of suggesting that U.S. ground combat troops were needed for that effort, they said it may be necessary for U.S. advisers to get closer to the fight, and take more risks, to help local forces win battles. This is a red line for President Obama, who has so far refused to put U.S. troops into combat on the ground except in extremely limited raids by special operations forces.
Wednesday’s hearing was the latest in a series of efforts by congressional leaders to highlight their frustrations with the president’s strategy, which critics say is too passive. The hearing also came as fresh news of Islamic State atrocities, such as drowning men in a cage and wiring explosives to their necks, was emerging.
Among the harshest critics of the administration’s strategy is Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who told an audience at the Atlantic Council on Monday that Obama seemed to be trying to delay the problem and pass it on to his successor.
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“I don’t think there is a strategy for ISIS. I think they are trying not to lose and just run out the clock,” Thornberry said.
That perception of passivity extends to the Middle East, where it hurts the administration’s effort to rally local forces because they doubt the U.S. commitment, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute told the panel.
“Are we in this or not? Is this our war or isn’t it?” he asked.
