How a Real Air War Could Demolish ISIS

[flamingdem]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/23/how-a-real-air-war-could-demolish-isis.html

* Article goes on to explain the air defense/attack capabilities of Arab regimes and related problems

All ISIS logistics and dispositions in the field are observable by drone and satellite. This is not an elusive, dispersed terrorist network hiding in caves or with a nocturnal leadership moving from safe house to safe house where strikes are very time sensitive, requiring on-the-ground intelligence. To be sure, ISIS can bury their command and control centers in urban areas and use civilians as shields, but they are also a large, massed force designed to take and hold territory and once they commit to an attack they are out in the open with their lines of communication and supply exposed.

Even though they have use of U.S. supplied equipment captured from fleeing Iraqis, their attack formations are an improvised mixture of tanks and armored vehicles and many more pickup trucks jerry-rigged as mobile artillery.They should be extremely vulnerable to a full-scale air attack.

But what does an effective, full-scale air attack look like? The NATO air campaign that ended the Kosovo war in 1999 deployed 1,000 aircraft and took only six weeks to achieve its objectives. But in terms of technology that was another age. There were no drones for accurate target selection and execution and air-to-ground weapons were far less effective than they are now.

The U.S. military knows what it will take. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said, “This is an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision and which will eventually have to be defeated.” A whole cadre of retired generals has been vocal in calling for a realistic assessment of what will need to be called a war rather than a piecemeal offensive. But a full-scale air attack — inherently a declaration of war — requires the kind of commitment that goes beyond anything that the president and congress seem willing to carry out.

[CJCRANE]

1. Because there civilians living in those cities.

They are basically under occupation of a foreign force (with the complicity of local tribes).

[The Magistrate]

2. True, Ma'am, As Long As They Operate As A Formed Force

While they fight conventional battle, and especially while they do so as a motorized force, they are exactly the sort of target modern Air Forces are equipped and trained to destroy. How much of their power depends on this sort of operation is not known. It does lend them prestige, which is valuable.

[msongs]

3. give those "retired generals" guns and a one way plane ticket. mission accomplished nt

[Downwinder]

4. No more pretend air wars like Vietnam and Afghanistan.

The Army's own manuals say that you have to have a 10 to 1 superiority to defeat an insurgency.

[Dems to Win]

5. ...and leave ISIS's funders/ creators in place, safe in their palaces

Let's Bomb Riyadh. Take out the source of the problem, the Saudi royal family

Bomb Riyadh, site of weekly beheadings.

Bomb Riyadh, the source of ISIS funding. The source of salafism (fundamentalist Islam) and the money spreading this cancer all over the world.

If the US must go back to war in the mideast, at least bomb the correct people this time. It's utterly pointless to bomb the creations of the Saudis, while leaving the Saudis in place with their oil billions and toxic ideology, to create the next Sunni terrorist force.

[flamingdem]

6. Is there any proof they're still funding ISIS (or previous version)?

ISIS can fund itself now.

[The Magistrate]

7. The Government Is No Longer Doing So, Ma'am

Until fairly recently, Prince Bandar, as head of their 'special service' was funding and arming I.S.I.L. and made it the most combat-worthy rebel faction in Syria. The King has relieved him of that post recently, and stopped the program. I do not know if wealthy Saudi Arabians are continuing to provide funds, however. It is possible they are, and if they are, possible the government is looking the other way. Loyal Saudi clerics have denounced the I.S.I.L. in sermons and in pronouncements, again, recently.

[Dems to Win]

8. True, word is ISIS captured lots of US dollars in Mosul banks

Still doesn't change the fact that the Saudis birthed the movement. The Saudis fund the radical mosques worldwide that create jihadists, including in the UK. The Saudis fund the madrassas that create radical Sunnis. The Saudi culture is the same cruel, barbaric culture that ISIS imposes.

I'm opposed to US war in the mideast. But if the US is going to bomb in the region, I want to Bomb Saudi Arabia First.

[JayhawkSD]

9. You're kidding, right?

We dropped a million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, in a campaign that lasted for more than a decade. It invoved Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy; a dozen different types of fighter/bombers and B-52s. And we lost.

[bemildred]

10. Right, no more fake air wars, this time it will work.

Why You Should Expect More Bombs to be Dropped Everywhere

When you do something again and again, placing great faith in it, investing enormous amounts of money in it, only to see indifferent or even negative results, you wouldn’t be entirely surprised if a neutral observer questioned your sanity or asked you if you were part of some cult.

Yet few Americans question the sanity or cult-like behavior of American presidents as they continue to seek solutions to complex issues by bombing Iraq (as well as numerous other countries across the globe).

Poor Iraq. From Operation Desert Shield/Storm under George H W Bush to enforcing no-fly zones under Bill Clinton to Operation Iraqi Freedom under George W Bush to the latest “humanitarian” bombing under Barack Obama, the one constant is American bombs bursting in Iraqi desert air.

Yet despite this bombing - or rather in part because of it - Iraq is a devastated and destabilized country, slowly falling apart at seams that have been unraveling under almost a quarter-century of steady, at times relentless, pounding. "Shock and awe", anyone?

http://atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-200814.html

[JayhawkSD]

13. Very well put...

Except that I believe that Obama thinks that the Libya air campaign worked because Ghadaffi was deposed.

He probably didn't notice that Ghadaffi was killed by "troops" on the ground, nor is he aware of the state of chaos that exists in Libya today. That's why he thinks that his air campaign worked.

[bemildred]

14. It has been clear from early on in his Presidency that Obama is naive about military affairs.

Since he went for Petraeus "surge". Or else he felt compelled by circumstances to go along, or perhaps both.

[mwooldri]

11. I don't think an air war will cut it.

The US Air Force had a slogan once : "No one comes close." Then a few news stories get reported about US air force planes bombing British forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. This has left a sizeable portion of the British population with an unfavorable view point of the US Air Force.

I believe they call it "Friendly Fire."

There will be misses. Civilians will get killed. Militants allied with Islamic State will use human shields. It'll be a bit like Israel vs Hamas though not so cramped.

A political solution is required. Even if it means carving out a new state called West Iraq and formalizing the state of Kurdistan.

[flamingdem]

12. I am thinking the latter, a new state will have to be carved out

and Kurdistan given something. They've been clear about a political solution but the Shia kicked that off with a massacre of Sunnis..