ALL IT TAKES TO KILL OFF ISIS IS TO LET OUR MILITARY DO IT

Americans should brace themselves for a long and difficult struggle, Barack Hussein Obama said when he announced air strikes on the headquarters of the Islamic State in Syria Sept. 23.

We can’t defeat Islamic radicals with military force, say others among the self-styled cognoscenti in our political and media elites, because they are motivated by an idea, and "you can’t kill an idea."

The overall struggle against Islamism will take a long time, because there are so many Islamists, in so many places, in different flavors. That’s why when my friend Bill Roggio started the blog that’s the best source of news about developments in the struggle, he called it the "Long War Journal."

But if we actually tried to win, it wouldn’t be difficult, or take very long to reduce the threat posed by the Islamic State from potentially catastrophic to something more like a nuisance.

We may not be able to "kill an idea," but if we kill enough of its adherents, we can reduce substantially its influence, diminish enthusiasm for it among survivors and potential converts.

That’s how the Ottoman Turks crushed the initial foray of Salafi terror from the Arabian peninsula in the early 1800s; how the Brits put paid to the Mahdi in the Sudan in 1898; how we suppressed the Moro rebellion in the Philippines (1901-1913).

The Islamic State is by far the most powerful terror group ever. It has a conventional military force of more than 30,000, with tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery.  But by taking on the trappings of a nation state, IS has exposed its throat, because nobody does conventional war better than our military.

Six weeks of bombing against IS to date has been ineffective, because it’s been conducted mostly for show. The longer we use $40,000 smart bombs to blow up empty buildings and pickup trucks, the greater the threat IS poses in the region, the greater the likelihood of terror attacks here at home, the more Moslems will regard the terrorists as "the strong horse."

Air power is effective against military formations only when used in support of ground troops who flush the enemy and force him to concentrate, and only when we have eyes on the ground to designate targets.

Thanks to precision guided munitions (PGMs), what can be accomplished when air support is used properly is mind boggling. The Taliban was driven from power in Afghanistan essentially by a handful of Special Forces soldiers with laser designators and radios, communicating with B-52s beyond the horizon.

As the former Special Forces soldier who blogs as "Weapons Man" put it: "1. PGMs, no SOF on ground, result misery. 2. No PGMs, SOF on ground, result misery. 3. PGMs, SOF on ground, result happiness."

The Islamic State can’t be defeated quickly – or probably ever – without American boots on the ground.  But it wouldn’t take many American boots.

A mech infantry brigade, plus a Stryker battalion and maybe an airmobile company, supported by an artillery battalion, a company of Apache attack helicopters, a squadron of Air Force A-10 tankbusters and a few B-52s from Diego Garcia should suffice.

We can be confident it would prevail quickly, with few casualties, over Islamic State forces numerically three times greater, because what little armor IS has is no match for our M1s and Bradleys, and we’re the masters of air-ground synergy.

We ousted Saddam Hussein’s regime in three weeks. Iraq War I didn’t go south until after we’d occupied the country in a misguided attempt at nation building.

It’s a shame we have to fight Iraq War II: The Mulligan. But once we’ve shattered the Islamic State’s major formations, there’s no need to stick around. The Iraqi army isn’t good for much, but they can shoot the wounded.

And if American soldiers crush the Islamic State, a very different message will be sent about which is the strong horse.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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