Fighting ISIS: Are We Ready To Invade Syria?

As Congress mulls the issue of authorizing the President to wage war against the Islamic State, there is a lot of discussion of how much involvement U.S. troops should have.  Should they be involved in training, advisory roles during combat, or actual combat?  But these may put the cart before the horse.  Before talking about where on the battlefield U.S. troops should be located, we should talk about what it would take to win the war. 

The Islamic State's attractiveness to its young, disaffected recruits is that, more than anything else, it is a caliphate--an actual geographic location where Islam in its supposed purest form can prevail.  ISIS offers a promised land to go to, a place where you can not only go yourself, but take your family and raise your children (as some jihadists have done).  You aren't just fighting for a cause.  You and your family can live a life of holiness and purity. 

The caliphate is a safe haven for ISIS jihadists.  Defeating ISIS requires conquering its territory--all of its territory, in Iraq and in Syria.  There is no debate over whether U.S. troops should operate in Iraq--they already are, and nobody argues they shouldn't.  But the elephant in the discussion is what to do if the U.S. and its allies succeed in pushing ISIS out of Iraq and back to its lair in Syria.  America currently has no proxy troops to attack and seize the ISIS heartland in Syria.  No other forces in Syria--the Assad regime, the moderate rebels, non-ISIS Islamic extremists, the Kurds, or anyone else--can defeat ISIS in Syria.  But if ISIS is able to maintain its safe haven in Syria, it can persist and even renew its conquering ways if and when America tires of endless troop commitments in the Middle East.  The only way to suppress ISIS is to seize control of its safe haven in Syria.

Simply authorizing the President to wage war against ISIS for three years, as he has requested, only tells ISIS that it needs to hold the fort in Syria for the next three years.  Under present circumstances, it may well be able to do that.  One reason the U.S. lost the Vietnam War was it had no way to effectively control Communist safe havens in Laos and Cambodia.  Not having a strategy for eliminating ISIS in Syria precludes victory.  We need to hear from the President and other proponents of waging war against ISIS how the war will be won in Syria.