Quote Originally Posted by JWing View Post
Bill

I think of the Surge strategy of those you can reconcile with and those that you can't. IS is one of the latter and you have to kill them. At the same time there are plenty of Sunnis and some insurgent groups that you can turn and those are the ones that you need to reach out to with political reconciliation, development projects, etc. That can also hopefully turn away more people from joining IS. I don't think it's an either or.
Of course it is, but we fail to pursue killing IS with an adequate level of aggression due to the points KingJaja brings up. Maybe more appropriately borrowing a phrase from a friend of mine, it is "strategic miscalculation" on our part.

Begin with the end in mind, that is a condition we want after we destroy IS, and that requires political engagement before, during, and after the fight. However, it doesn't mean sidelining the fighting effort and making it secondary to economic development when the adversary hasn't been defeated, which has been our default position.

The liberals and neocons have beautiful theories, but theories that tend to fall apart rapidly when they confront reality.