I noted the Army's renewed focus on conventional warfare training.
This is an interesting lesson from that article:
"No enemy today would be stupid enough to allow us months and months to build up forces," as was the case in Desert Storm, he said.
He has a point. But we sure seem to be assuming an enemy that stupid as we prepare our perfect plan to defeat ISIL:
We're gearing up for our long-awaited "final offensive" to smash ISIL and seem to expect that ISIL will just sit and patiently wait for the killing blow to fall rather than try to seize the initiative and win victories that might preempt our offensive.
Time is the most precious asset one can give an enemy. We assume our enemies won't grant us this asset. Why do we assume we can afford to give it to our enemies?
Perhaps the Army could prepare a PowerPoint presentation for the White House.
UPDATE: More on the ISIL VBIEDs (Or SVBIEDs--with the S standing for "suicide"):
The jihadists used about 30 explosives-rigged vehicles in the Iraqi city of Ramadi this month, blasting their way through positions government and allied fighters had managed to hold for more than a year. ...
The jihadists used about 30 explosives-rigged vehicles in the Iraqi city of Ramadi this month, blasting their way through positions government and allied fighters had managed to hold for more than a year.
What I find most horrible about this more than the Iraqi rout is that ISIL was left unmolested and allowed to build this phalanx of truck bombs and then move them to the front and use them on the Iraqi defenders despite our absolute aerial supremacy.
Which shows that we have to seize the initiative and make ISIL react to our side rather than granting ISIL the precious commodity of time to carry out their plans against us.
[If this seems oddly familiar, I added this as an update to an earlier post and it seems relevant here, too. Also, I fixed a link.]
UPDATE: Also, by giving ISIL time in their bastions in the Baghdad belts, we give them the opportunity to soften up Baghdad the way they softened up Ramadi and Mosul before that:
The ability of extremists to target heavily secured buildings in the heart of the capital brutally underscored the city's lingering vulnerability. The IS group has been able to carry out regular attacks in and around Baghdad, mainly targeting the security forces and the country's Shiite majority, while battling Iraqi forces on multiple fronts elsewhere in the country.
I don't expect ISIL can take Baghdad. There are too many Shia who would resist in their areas. Although the Shia counter-attack would push even more Sunni Arabs out of the capital in the process of fighting ISIL.
At the least, because we are taking our sweet time setting up the perfect killing blow, we could see an ISIL "thunder run" through parts of Baghdad (as we executed in 2003) that undermines the national government's authority.
