ISIS Is Beheading Journalists to Lure America Into Another Ground War. [View all]

[grahamhgreen]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/isis-is-beheading-journal_b_5757542.html

The nature of war in Iraq today, and for most of the past decade, is the reality of irregular warfare where winning the battle entails occupying territory and dealing with ambushes, roadside bombs, snipers, and every other tactic aimed at weakening a great power. Our soldiers don't deserve another ground war in Iraq and we should never again wage a counterinsurgency war anywhere in the world. ISIS wants this suicidal showdown, they want to lure the U.S. into a ground war, and they need the legitimacy acquired by Al-Qaeda and Bin-Laden when both lured our country into two colossal mistakes in the Middle East.

Our society, sadly, is seemingly quick to forget the lessons learned only several years ago. Why? Because never-ending media images of militants with black beards and uniforms doing donuts in tanks and vehicles, relishing their victories and slaughtering groups of unarmed men, have garnered exactly the type of attention desired by ISIS. In order to defeat ISIS, we'll have to wage war on our terms; not the terms of a terrorist group who's raison detre, like Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and every other terror organization, is to weaken a far greaterer power though asymmetric warfare. There are a number of reasons why ISIS desperately wants the U.S. to send tens of thousands of ground troops back to Iraq and this article highlights why we shouldn't fall into their trap.

1. The U.S. should leave the ground war to Shia, Kurdish and other Iraqi forces. According to a Salon.com article in 2006, the Battle of Fallujah is an example of why Iraqis, not U.S troops, must vanquish ISIS: