If we were
willing to inflict massive collateral damage, we could discourage ISIS and its
imitators for a long time simply by bombing. This is the lesson of Hama, Syria.
In 1982, Hafez al Assad put down a Sunni Muslim insurgency centered in the town
by surrounding it and then shelling it for 3 weeks. The place was leveled.
Between 10,000 and 25,000 people were killed in the fighting. Things got quiet
for almost thirty years. The US Air Force has the physical power to do that
kind of damage to ISIS' capital in a week. We don't have the capability to do
it morally. That's why we need boots on the ground to completely defeat ISIS.
Without boots on the ground, we can "win"
only in the way the Israelis win. They call their periodic wars against Hamas
and Hezbollah "mowing the lawn." The weakness of Hamas, Hezbollah and
ISIS is all the same. Once you claim and hold real estate, you become
responsible for what happens to it. In Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza this year,
the Israeli Air Force was very, very destructive. The damage estimate for Gaza
is $6 billion. The damage to Hezbollah assets, along with Lebanese
infrastructure and Shiite owned or occupied buildings, was similarly massive.
Hezbollah has not really attacked Israel since. I think it's because even
though the Iranians paid for a lot of rebuilding, they can't afford to do it
again. Hamas is finding that Gaza residents are equally unhappy with the
massive damage that may take a decade or two to repair. ISIS is similarly
vulnerable. They own territory with assets they value. If those assets vanish
in a series of targeted explosions, leaving worthless rubble, they will lose
the ability to buy support.
Our first strikes against ISIS in Syria were disappointing. It’s an indication of how much we want to avoid collateral damage
that we blew the antenna array off of an ISIS
building without blowing the building up. We only destroyed the antennas on the
ISIS financial control center, leaving the building intact with all the
computers and equipment used to manage ISIS' money. We should have destroyed
everything to make it harder for ISIS to manage its funding. A 2,000 lbs.
guided bomb would have taken the whole thing down. This smells like a civilian
designed targeting order. It really seems like the White House is drawing up
what the targets are and how hard we are going to hit them. Do we want to "send a message" or
do we want to destroy or at least degrade ISIS?