Tri-Service
Comment: ISIS Can Be Beaten - But Not This Week
Western leaders have announced new security details to protect their societies from ISIS.
In doing so, they have not demonstrated ISIS' success but the miserable failure of those same leaders, who have waited for tragic circumstances to put in place the safeguards they should have announced two years ago.
ISIS is beatable. Despite confounding reports from around the world; the terror organisation is not invincible.
It certainly is not an organised and state-sponsored military outfit, and not one that could withstand a centrally-commanded campaign from the US and/or its NATO allies.
Moreover ISIS has little natural support in the Middle East. Most governments and people of all Islamic persuasion want ISIS put down.
They are afraid of what ISIS forces would do to them if captured, which is why the Iraqi army ran away when ISIS advanced earlier this year.
The so-called Islamic State has many enemies, both inside and outside Islamic nations. And they are not unbeatable.
That is the message that the G20 leaders, who have just met in Turkey, should be giving out and then backing up with all their military and, most importantly, political resources.
There must be consensus in terms of target and timing. Those without major military roles should support those that have - diplomatically, financially and territorially.
They should be making it clear that new planning starts today to re-establish a joint service military command to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
There will be subordinate commands to do the same in the ISIS diaspora in Afghanistan, Gaza (more powerful by the day), Libya and sub-Saharan Africa.
The command and their political masters have to agree what they are going after, when they are doing that and what the long-term objectives are.
This is not kneejerk reactionary rhetoric.
Compared with the political and economic authority of the major nations fighting ISIS, and most certainly the military assets of those same powers (ISIS does not have, an air force, a drone capability or satellite intelligence), ISIS' only advantage is that coalition powers are relying mostly on air attacks and Kurdish ground forces.
World leaders meeting in Turkey for the G20 Summit
Even now an apparent success against ISIS in reality means fast withdrawal from a town, with locals assuming the extremists will return.
But that does not make ISIS unbeatable. It means that something has to come out of Turkey that will lead not only to hunting down ISIS but then going in hot pursuit to finish the job.
A successful army never allows the defeated force to regroup - the 1991 Gulf War is proof of that.
The International Syria Support Group, which was in Turkey, insists that ISIS will be turned back and then talks on both sides to bring peace to Syria can proceed. Maybe, maybe not.
The anti-Assad rebels will not agree to an election and in any case would not be able to hold one in their war-torn homeland. Until a decision is taken to go beyond airstrikes and drone attacks, and while these conditions still exist, ISIS will remain a thorn in the side of its enemies.
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A single command system, with a four-star general and five-star resources, must be established. It should have regional, UN and domestic legal authority to deploy a raft of intelligence systems, employing electronic, satellite, regular and special forces to attack and destroy ISIS.
There must be a legacy plan in place for what to do in regions where ISIS is defeated and the resentment of its followers festers.
None of this is a job for this week, next week or long weeks after that. Wars do not work that way. But the truth is that with all the advantages of scattered anonymity, ISIS has not been so successful.
If the suicide bombers had got into the Stade de France on Friday, then the number of deaths would be even more heartbreaking and the mood and shock nationally depressing.
But the bombers did not get in. Although 132 deaths occurred on Friday, that number is killed on a daily basis in the Middle East. Now we may appreciate that - for the moment.
While we should understand that terrorism has no end and that it is the level of terrorism and its form that changes, we should also hope that our leaders demonstrate that the global coalition, with its hugely superior intelligence gathering and firepower, can defeat ISIS.
That is why we have them. They need to put the terrorist group in perspective and show what many know in the region where ISIS plots and destroys: that the West has the power to destroy ISIS.
Whether or not it has the political will (the Paris atrocity will quickly lose its effect) - is another matter.
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