Finally, Some Establishment Smarts on ISIS

Here’s a classic good news/bad news story to start off the weekend. The good news: Someone associated with the U. S. national security establishment is showing signs of cognition. The bad news: He’s no longer on active duty.
Retired Air Force general David A. Deptula’s op-ed in today’sWashington Post isn’t a perfect blueprint for eliminating the threats to American national security emanating from the terminally dysfunctional Middle East. But it’s by far the best published article I’ve read yet on dealing with ISIS and the broader challenge of terrorism.
Deptula contributes two key insights to the raging but so far largely brain-dead national debate about fighting ISIS. First, he convincingly argues that Washington should stop wasting so much time and effort in bolstering the Iraqi state – or what’s left of it. The author doesn’t completely dismiss the hope that it might ultimately survive in something like the form it’s taken since its current official borders were first drawn. But he rightly points out that destroying ISIS is a higher and separate priority.
Second, he makes the vital point that ISIS is no longer simply the terrorist movement or insurgency assumed by current U. S. approach. It’s a ‘self-declared sovereign state’ and thus Washington ‘must stop trying to fight the last war [i.e., its latest Afghanistan effort and current Iraq approach] and develop a new strategy.’

This post was published at Wall Street Examiner by Alan Tonelson ‘ June 6, 2015.