How ISIS will be defeated

Guardian:

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Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Mattis said: “Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against Isis. It is a threat to all civilized nations. And the bottom line is we are going to move in an accelerated and reinforced manner, throw them on their back foot.

“We have already shifted from attrition tactics, where we shove them from one position to another in Iraq and Syria, to annihilation tactics where we surround them. Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We’re not going to allow them to do so. We’re going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate.”

Mattis also said efforts against Isis would be “a long fight” and “a fight about ideas”.

“We’re going to shatter their sense of invincibility there in the physical caliphate,” he said. “That’s only one phase of this. Then we have the virtual caliphate, that they use the internet.”

“We have got to dry up their recruiting,” he said. “We have got to dry up their fundraising. The way we intend to do it is to humiliate them, to divorce them from any nation giving them protection, and humiliating their message of hatred, of violence. Anyone who kills women and children is not devout. They … cannot dress themselves up in false religious garb and say that somehow this message has dignity.”

Asked if he was concerned by the prospect of civilian casualties caused by such aggressive action, Mattis said: “Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation. We do everything humanly possible consistent with military necessity, taking many chances to avoid civilian casualties at all costs.”
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Mattis, who has been nicknamed “Mad Dog” due to his preference for aggressive tactics, was also asked: “What keeps you awake at night?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I keep other people awake at night.”

We now have a Secretary of Defense who understands how you win wars.

You have to demonstrate to the enemy that their cause is hopeless.

One of the main problems with Obama's effort was his belief that if we left they would quite fighting.  That was disastrously wrong and a genocide against some in Iraq and Syria followed.  You can't retreat your way to victory.  You have to destroy the enemy's ability to fight.  Take away any hope of victory on their part.

I think that last quote from Mattis will become a classic.