The U.S. is accelerating its fight against the Islamic State and radical Islamism. In his first interview as secretary of defense, James Mattis outlined the United States’ strategy. Mattis’ words carry weight because he is one of the few subordinates U.S. President Donald Trump seems to trust implicitly and to whom Trump has delegated significant responsibility. In the interview, Mattis said the war of attrition – pushing enemies out of their locations rather than destroying them completely – failed to produce the desired outcome. The U.S. will now fight a war of annihilation and humiliation against the enemy, which is not just IS but radical Islamism in general. Mattis expects the war to be a long fight, but he also expects to win.
I mentioned my agreement with focusing on what we do to enemies rather than worrying about what they do to us.
Mind you, this is no excuse to ignore collateral damage to civilians. We must always vocally contrast our care to avoid civilian deaths (while we ruthlessly and relentlessly go after jihadis) with our enemies' eagerness to kill civilians.
And the humiliation aspect is no mistake. No, we didn't humiliate the Germans after World War II. But we did annihilate and humiliate the Nazis who led Germans to ruin.
There is no reason we can't make the same distinction between Moslems and jihadis (not just ISIL), especially given that so many Moslem states are on our side to fight the jihadis--an advantage we did not have as we fought German armies across Africa, Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany itself.
Late in the last century, I tried to get an article published that focused on the need (and ability) to kill "the new warrior class" of fanatics identified early in the 1990shttp://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/Articles/1994/peters.htm. I even quoted Osama bin Laden before he made his name on September 11, 2001.
So let's get to serious killing. The war will be long enough as it is.
I think I should dig out that old article manuscript. It might have a more receptive audience these days.
