Hillary Clinton on Monday night said one of her “organizing principles” in the fight against the Islamic State would be taking out its founder, a task experts said could require more support to collect intelligence on the ground.
And doing so risks running afoul of her pledge to avoid putting troops in Iraq and Syria.
During the first presidential debate, Clinton said she would make removing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the battle a top priority.
“I would also do everything possible to take out their leadership. I was involved in a number of efforts to take out al Qaeda leadership when I was secretary of state, including, of course, taking out bin Laden. And I think we need to go after Baghdadi, as well, make that one of our organizing principles. Because we’ve got to defeat ISIS, and we’ve got to do everything we can to disrupt their propaganda efforts online,” Clinton said at Hofstra University in New York.
Killing Islamic State high-value targets has been a key part of Obama’s anti-Islamic State strategy. While Baghdadi is certainly on the list of terrorists Obama would like to take out, he has not been as explicit as Clinton in making him a top priority.
Baghdadi has been rumored dead several times in recent years, most recently in June. But the Pentagon has never been able to confirm his death.
Phillip Lohaus, an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, said taking out Baghdadi would use a lot of the same capabilities Obama is already using in the fight against the Islamic State, like drones and special operators, but collecting better ground intelligence would really help, he said. Human intelligence is especially important as more and more high ranking terrorists have learned not to use cellphones or other technology that can help track them through signals intelligence, he said.
While putting more U.S. troops on the ground would be the easiest way to grow the human information-gathering network, the intelligence community could also vet and place sources into Syria and Iraq, a task made more difficult in Syria because it’s hard to know “where loyalties lie,” Lohaus said.
Even then, it’s unclear how much effort or how many assets it would take to find and kill Baghdadi, a concern in the tight fiscal environment, according to Chris Harmer, a former Navy commander.
“The U.S. spent essentially unlimited resources trying to find and kill Osama bin Laden, and that took a full decade,” Harmer said. “We have far fewer resources available today to chase down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi than we did to chase down Osama bin Laden. I think the best force-allocation answer is to prioritize the destruction of ISIS fighting units, and try to get Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as a ‘target of opportunity’ rather than as a prioritized target.”
If she did commit more troops, it would mean breaking a pledge she made during this month’s Commander in Chief Forum.
“They are not going to get ground troops. We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again,” she said. “And we’re not putting ground troops into Syria. We’re going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops.”
The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment about whether she would use more U.S. forces for intelligence collection to get Baghdadi.
Because the Islamic State actually holds territory and designates Baghdadi as its caliph, his death would be “pretty consequential,” Lohaus said. Still, he said it would not be a death blow to the Islamic State, which would likely just name a new leader.
Baghdadi is also often invoked by lone wolves around the world inspired by the Islamic State. In one example, the shooter in an Orlando gay nightclub this year pledged allegiance to Baghdadi before being killed.
But focusing too narrowly on Baghdadi risks “missing the forest for the trees,” Lohaus said. The bigger issue is what comes next.
“It won’t solve problems. It will be a step in the right direction, but will open a Pandora’s box of other problems,” he said. “If ISIS is not there, there’s a power vacuum.”
