At the Wall Street Journal which has been rattling a saber for war in the Middle East for some time, Mark Gunzinger and John Stillion suggest that by comparison with recent air campaigns we really aren’t doing much in our war against the Islamic State:
While it is still too early to proclaim the air campaign against Islamic State a failure, it may be instructive to compare it with other campaigns conducted by the U.S. military since the end of the Cold War that were deemed successes. For instance, during the 43-day Desert Storm air campaign against Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1991, coalition fighters and bombers flew 48,224 strike sorties. This translates to roughly 1,100 sorties a day. Twelve years later, the 31-day air campaign that helped free Iraq from Saddam’s government averaged more than 800 offensive sorties a day.
By contrast, over the past two months U.S. aircraft and a small number of partner forces have conducted 412 total strikes in Iraq and Syria—an average of seven strikes a day. With Islamic State in control of an area approaching 50,000 square miles, it is easy to see why this level of effort has not had much impact on its operations.
Of course, air operations during Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom were each supported by a massive coalition force on the ground. Thus it may be more appropriate to compare current operations against Islamic State with the 78-day air campaign against Serbian forces and their proxies in 1999, or the 75-day air campaign in Afghanistan that was instrumental in forcing the Taliban out of power in 2001.
Both campaigns relied heavily on partner forces on the ground augmented by a small but significant number of U.S. troops. These air campaigns averaged 138 and 86 strike sorties a day respectively—orders of magnitude greater than the current tempo of operations against Islamic State.
Perhaps the small number of strikes in the air campaign against Islamic State is due to the lack of suitable ground targets. Yet representatives from the Pentagon have characterized forces fighting under Islamic State’s black banner as more of a conventional army than a highly dispersed, irregular force similar to today’s Taliban. Moreover, Islamic State fighters are using captured armored vehicles, artillery, mortars and other implements of modern land warfare to seize and hold terrain. These operations require a considerable amount of movement and resupply that can be detected by airborne surveillance.
This is not a second generation war. We cannot measure our progress on a path to victory by counting sorties or even by tallying how much enemy matériel or how many enemy production facilities we’ve destroyed. They don’t have production facilities, they have plenty of cash with more coming in every day, and they can buy all of the matériel they need.
How would we measure such progress? I’ve already provided one gauge: when more young Muslims are volunteering to fight IS than are volunteering to fight along side it. By that measure victory is very distant indeed.
What other yardsticks could we use? I would suggest:
- When IS starts losing ground.
- When Turkey allows us to use Incirlik Air Base.
- When Turkey starts bombing IS rather than Kurds who are attempting to relieve the town of Kobane.
- When the Iraqi army stands and fights rather than being routed at every encounter.
- When IS withdraws from the Baghdad suburbs rather than pushing into them.
- When there are fewer terrorist incidents in Baghdad.
At this point none of those measures is particularly encouraging. I honestly don’t know what the Obama Administration is talking about when they say that the campaign is going well unless they’re counting inputs rather than outputs, something I would have hoped we would have learned was futile in Viet Nam.
Contrarywise, we might consider actions we could use to determine that IS was winning. The most obvious is if they take Baghdad.
Any other suggestions for how we can tell whether IS is winning or losing?
Just give it the eyeball & ear test. Not conclusive by any means, but when observing competitive endeavors one can often get a good sense for how things are going by looking at the contestants.
Examples:
In the 2008 presidential contest, McCain and his campaign looked beat well before election day made it formal. Obama looked like he had it sown up well ahead of time. Similarly with Kerry and Bush in 2004.
Neither Bush nor Gore looked beat in 2000 for weeks afterwards.
By this test, IS looks good and the Administration looks awful, as evidenced by the Administration saying one thing and having Turkey come out and say the opposite in the last few days. Or the President scoffing at the idea of arming the “moderate” rebel faction in Syria two weeks before declaring it on of the lynchpins of the new strategy. Such thrashing about looks desperate.
Of course, things could turn around, but seven sorties a day? Smh, as the kids tweet.
While I think that my original interpretation, that the domestic political objectives of the war on IS overwhelm any actual objectives, remains the most likely, there are others. Of those two leap out to me.
First, it probably isn’t a target-rich environment. Second, they don’t have enough ground spotters.
Neither of those look particularly good for a “no boots on the ground” strategy.
“Any other suggestions for how we can tell whether IS is winning or losing?”
They seem as upbeat as In N Out workers?
I find myself in complete agreement with your comment at 11:10. I think it raises an obvious question: will the Administration abandon the dominance of the political calculus post election?
Without some kind of political resolution in Iraq, this goes on forever. Even if you sent in troops and we clear out ISIL you just get ISIL 2.0 after we leave. More broadly, we also need some kind of resolution in the Sunni-Shia conflict. I think a number of items on your list occur only if there is some kind of political resolution in Iraq and/or the broader factions reach an agreement.
Turkey may be a special case since they have their separate issue with the Kurds, but even there they are also in conflict with Iran. It is way too complicated.
Steve
ISIS is winning because: 1) it keeps edging towards Baghdad, with more ex-military people stating they will probably be able to take the airport nearby (almost did that the other day), and if that happens then we have another problem of people being trapped in Baghdad; 2) their forces seem to be swelling, not shrinking; 3) their commitment remains hardened and fanatical; 4) even with increased bombing in Kobane, ISIS remains steadfast, holding upward to 50% of this town. Oh yeah, the “coalition” aka US planes, were able to take out an ISIS black flag prominently placed on a hill; 5) it’s proving to be a flexible foe, adapting to the predictability of limited attacks from the air – kind of like treating it like a mosquito attack.
The US is losing because: 1) it’s strategy is known and stuck on symbolic bombing; 2) that bombing is often limited to trucks, empty buildings, and black flags; 3) the only spotters we have on the ground are probably the Kurds in Kobane, who we have left to basically fend for themselves; 4) our much touted goals of to degrade and destroy ISIS is weaponized by rhetoric and virtually nothing else; 5) most of the “gains,” triumphantly looped by the administration, occurred at the beginning of our strikes, with no real headway seen after that.