Assuming that IS has 100,000 troops, the US must bring a force of 300,000 to bear under the old (and perhaps obsolete) rule of 3 to 1 on the offensive. It took six months to prepare for Desert Storm and longer for Iraqi Freedom with far fewer troops than 300,000. The terrain is desert, and supply lines will run from ports that have to be secured, along with roads that could be filled with IEDs. For the Americans, the logistics would be as tough as the battle.

    Logically, the best course for the United States is not to engage. IS is beginning to realize this and seemingly prefers to force a battle. That is why we are beginning to see terrorist actions flaring in Western countries. The lesson al-Qaida taught IS is that the Americans have a threshold and that if you cross it, they will react dramatically.

    Therefore, it appears to me that IS is searching for that threshold and probing to see responses. Attacks like the ones in Paris last month were not in response to French involvement in the region. These attacks are unconnected to that, but are designed to be as terrifying as possible—both in their suddenness and brutality—and compel a response.



blackbootz:

Bleak.

So what to do then? It seems that the IS has got itself in a pretty good position, despite or because of the fact that they are willing and ready to sacrifice the lives everyone around them. The United States is damned if it attacks them (ground war in the Middle East) and damned if it doesn't (suffering indiscriminate terrorist attacks indefinitely). And knowing how scared Americans are after the attacks in Paris--polls put American fear for their security as high as in the immediate aftermath of 9/11--I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to think that all it would take is an ISIS coordinated attack on American soil for the shit to hit the fan.

What's to be done?


posted 3051 days ago