[July 7, 2017] U.S. President Ronald Reagan once said of his political opponents that if “you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.” Leadership is about solving problems and senior leadership is about solving hard problems. That is exactly what is happening with the loose coalition of nations led by the United States which are standing against the terror organization known as ISIS.
The “heat” is being brought against ISIS and its affiliates across both Syria and Iraq and with some significant successes. While we do not know what will happen after ISIS, some of the most senior political and military leaders of Middle East nations have gathered to consider the answer to that very question. The answer will be expensive, time-consuming, and fraught with disagreements.
What we do know is that ISIS’s military wing will be severely blunted and only its political-ideological component will survive. How we got to the point where ISIS exists will be a part of history that is a lesson on how not to do certain things and re-learned lessons forgotten from the days of World War II and the Korean War. The defeat of ISIS, however, is not imminent.
The reason ISIS exists, beyond its Islamic link (yes, there are undeniable radical Islamic links), is the result of the United States under President Barack Obama prematurely pulling U.S. combat forces out of Iraq on an announced schedule, underestimating the veracity and tenacity of ISIS (once called the “JV team”), and hampering the U.S. military with highly restrictive Rules of Engagement.
The whack-a-mole strategy employed by the Obama Administration was simply insufficient to a group of Jihadists who were adaptable and persistent … and occasionally intelligent. In war, the enemy has a vote and that “vote” was ISIS doing the unexpected and managing to survive where a normal enemy would have surrendered. Unconventional war sometimes takes us by surprise.
Real leadership will be in the aftermath of ISIS’s defeat on the battlefield. Crucial to success in the future will rest on the defeat of the Islamic ideology that helped spawn ISIS and other terror organizations like it. This is new!
Leadership is about guiding others to success and so long as there is a coherent coalition vision there will be hope of finally eradicating the ISIS scourge.
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