Reckless onslaught could aid ISIL, military warns
The cries for more robust military action against the Islamic State are growing louder. But Pentagon leaders and government terrorism advisers worry that escalation could also bolster terrorist ranks.
By Bryan Bender
12/07/15 07:16 PM EST
Presidential candidates and hawkish members of Congress are stepping up their cries for more robust military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — but Pentagon leaders and government terrorism advisers caution that a reckless escalation of the war could help the group recruit disaffected Muslims around the world.
The quandary has heightened since last week’s deadly shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., which called attention to the danger posed by ISIL sympathizers who become self-radicalized to commit violence in the West. It’s one reason that the U.S. and its allies held back from bombing the Islamic State’s headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa, and why President Barack Obama warned on Sunday night that military overreach could lead to ISIL "using our presence to draw new recruits."
"If you’re killing 1,000 a month in strikes and they’re replacing them at 2,000 a month, that’s not good math," Army Brig. Gen. Michael Kurilla, the deputy director of special operations and counter-terrorism on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center in October.
"There are inherently conflicting considerations here," said Paul Pillar, who retired in 2005 as the top U.S. government intelligence analyst for the Near East and South Asia and is now a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies. "Some form of military actions plays right into ISIL's hands. That has to be balanced with whatever positive happens from military force."
Those concerns aren’t quelling the tough talk in Congress and on the campaign trail following last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris, which appear to have been coordinated by ISIL, as well as the California shootings, which investigators have blamed on a Muslim couple who the FBI says became "radicalized" by the Islamic State’s message.
“We will utterly destroy ISIS,” Republican White House hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said at a campaign rally over the weekend, using another acronym for the terror network that controls parts of Iraq and Syria and has enlisted followers in numerous other countries. “We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!”
In a recent campaign ad, GOP front-runner Donald Trump vowed to "quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS."
ISIL, in its own pronouncements and those of its sympathizers, has also sought to goad the United States into doing more militarily, saying Obama's unwillingness to send large numbers of ground troops demonstrated American weakness. The group has also made it a point of purposely operating in areas where they know civilians will be placed in grave risk from U.S. and allied air or drone strikes.
“This is a success for the Islamic State in creating a 'balance of terror' with the strongest military force in the world,” one self-described loyalist tweeted on Monday, according to Vocativ.com, which tracks jihadi communications over social media.
Another supporter mocked Obama, calling him a "crusader" who "is afraid of sending his dogs to fight the [Islamic] State.”
But it is the no-holds-barred pronouncements by Cruz and Trump that make many current and former government terrorism experts cringe.
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"You might hope to make a headline by recapturing a town, but if it is at the cost of high collateral damage that would stoke the anti-Western resentments, that helps a group like ISIL," he said.
Those concerns have most recently informed the military strategy aimed at damaging ISIL's revenue from illegal oil sales. Fears that destroying the supplies — and the supply chain — would cause undue harm to the civilian economy in Iraq and Syria weighed heavily on Obama administration officials. U.S.-led air strikes have recently become much more aggressive, however, striking hundreds of delivery trucks that move the black market energy supply.
"That is one area where a somewhat higher risk-taking approach is worthwhile," Pillar agreed. "But it doesn’t eliminate the drawbacks completely. Do you attack tanker trucks driven by poor schmucks just trying to make a living?"
More of an interesting read at:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/isil-escalation-pentagon-terrorism-216514
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