ISISDempsey: Attacking targets in Syria essential to stopping ISIS

The United States and other like-minded countries must attack ISIS bases and formations in Syria if they want to defeat the organization in Iraq, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday.

“This is an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated,” said the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. “Can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria? The answer is no.”

The New York Times reports that both General Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who spoke at a Pentagon news conference, gave no indication that President Obama was about to approve airstrikes in Syria.

General Dempsey detailed the broad effort which would be required to roll back ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

“It requires a variety of instruments, only one small part of which is airstrikes,” he said. “I’m not predicting those will occur in Syria, at least not by the United States of America. But it requires the application of all of the tools of national power — diplomatic, economic, information, military.”

So far, Obama administration’s officials have been talking about containing ISIS, not defeating it.

Military experts say that ISIS, a decentralized and highly mobile force, will not be easily defeated.

“If there is anything ISIL has learned from its previous iterations as Al Qaeda in Iraq, it is that they need succession plans because losing leaders to counterterrorism operations is to be expected,” said one intelligence official, using an alternative name for the group. “Their command and control is quite flexible as a result.”

Military analysts estimates of the number of fighters who might be affiliated with ISIS range from more than 10,000 to as many as 17,000. These figures include an initial force of about 3,000 who descended into Mosul from Syria in early June and ISIS reinforcements from Syria since that time, and thousands of new foreign recruits and thousands of Iraqi Sunnis, including Baathists and tribesmen, who are currentlynallied with ISIS.

John R. Allen, the retired Marine Corps general who led American and allied forces in Afghanistan, told the Times that the United States must build up the capacity of regional and local forces in the region to take on ISIS, but he emphasized the important role of American air power.

“For now, attacking ISIS command and control sites, support areas and critical pathways can do a great deal to begin the process of dismantling the organization,” he said.

The Times notes that the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan showed that American airstrikes would be more effective if small teams of Special Operations forces were deployed to identify ISIS targets and call in attacks.

The Pentagon is believed to be considering deploying such teams. Military experts say that there is a need to step up programs to train, advise, and equip the moderate opposition in Syria as well as Kurdish and government forces in Iraq.

Hagel’s and Dempsey’s press conference was the longest, and most detailed, public discussion by the two Pentagon leaders of the nature of the threat to the united States posed by ISIS, but both reflected the Obama administration’s view that the United States should not become more involved in countering ISIS without participation from allies in the region.