War on terror

5 Inconvenient Truths of the War on ISIS

It would be far better to have ISIS defeated by indigenous regional forces. That outcome might well fuel a new round of animosity on the part of Sunni Arabs toward both Kurds and Shiites, but at least Western societies would not be the primary targets.

As U.S. and other Western policymakers decide what to do about ISIS, they at least need to confront these underlying realities, as disagreeable as some of them might be. Inconvenient truths need to be accepted and incorporated to avoid policy calamities. Officials ignored such truths in both the Iraq and Libya military interventions, and we are now paying the price of having to deal with the chaos those blunders caused. It is imperative that we not make similar mistakes in developing a strategy regarding ISIS.