http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...trategic-terms

As I published here back in Aug 2015, to militarily defeat ISIS is to restore AQ:

"Increasingly ISIS is also growing in influence with the revolutionary Sunni populations and groups around the region who have grown weary of AQ’s more patient approach. To defeat ISIS most likely fragments the revolutionary insurgencies in Syria and Iraq, but in no way resolves them. It also re-empowers AQ in an “I told you so” kind of way as they point out how their way was the right way all along. I don’t see how that is good for US interests in the region. Also important, is that while ISIS is not the Sunni-Arab population, they come from and their forces are of that population. To attack ISIS can only be perceived as an attack on the Sunni-Arab population itself. Any Sunni-Arabs we seek to recruit are placed in an unwinnable conflict of interests, and are expected to support our interests against those of their own people. In short, we are probably working with opportunists driven more by self-interest than patriotism. "