In conventional warfare, an army opposes an army, each organized and directed by a nation-state. But how do you "wipe out" an insurgency that holds territory not by means of government, but through mass terror and execution? If you bomb Raqqa, what exactly will you accomplish, besides killing civilians who already hate ISIS?
Oh boy, there’s a host of things here I have to differ with. First, make no mistake, for all intents and purposes ISIS
is a state, and as such fundamentally different from Al Qaeda and related organizations, despite the fact that it has lots in common with those as well. After all, holding territory through mass terror and execution never precluded governments, last time I checked. But in and by itself, that’s often insufficient incentive for other nations to put up with the investment to defeat such rogue states. You defeat them by physically attacking them, and that may include bombing them. By bombing Raqqa you accomplish the same thing any conventional war achieved with bombing any location held by the ‘enemy’: you make it easier to expel that enemy on the ground and occupy that location. To my knowledge, civilians have never played a controlling role in that process, and certainly not the ones on the side being attacked. They just get killed in large numbers by both sides, unless they manage to escape safely.
I read recent thoughtful reports speculating one purpose, maybe THE purpose, of the attacks on Paris were intended to induce Europe to close its borders thus stopping, or at least slowing, the out migration of the Syrians from ISIS controlled or influenced areas
It turns out that most if not all of the attackers in Paris were born EU citizens. Refugees have yet to play a significant role in terror attacks there. To me blaming (Syrian
*) refugees sounds like a convenient excuse to follow populist dogma that closing borders would solve the problem. It won’t, for the problem is already there. Still, populists have never been hindered by such facts, and their conveniently self-serving delusions will likely prevail now too. The inevitable result will be that in doing so they’ll vastly increase the pool of ISIS recruits with reason to go out with a bang.
*) Syrians are only a (large) fraction of the flood of refugees/migrants currently streaming into the EU.
