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Islamic State 101: What the US is doing to counter the threat

Pentagon officials have a mantra when it comes to taking on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL: The US military may be able to use American weapons to blunt the advance of IS, but any lasting change will have to come through political reform.

3. Will US airstrikes stop the IS advance?

Khalid Mohammed/AP
Smoke rises during airstrikes targeting Islamic State militants at the Mosul Dam outside Mosul, Iraq, Aug. 18, 2014.

  • By Anna Mulrine

On this point Pentagon officials have been clear, and the answer, they say, is no.

“Strategically, there are limits to how much you can accomplish with airstrikes,” Secretary Hagel said.

Through airstrikes IS “can be contained, but not in perpetuity,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month as IS moved from Syria into northern Iraq, where they have captured a number of large cities.

“If we’ve learned nothing over 13 years of war, it’s you can’t completely eliminate extremism anywhere through simply kinetics, through air strikes alone,” Kirby added.

That said, General Dempsey noted, “This is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision, and which will eventually have to be defeated.”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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