ISIS fight shows you can destroy the enemy by annihilating them

US Naval Institute Proceedings:

When is the United States going to do the killing necessary to beat its terrorist enemies or eliminate them entirely?

Those given the awful task of combat must be able to act with the necessary savagery and purposefulness to destroy those acting as, or in direct support of, Islamic terrorists worldwide. In 2008, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Admiral Michael Mullen said, “We can’t kill our way to victory.” Ever since, many have parroted his words. But what if Admiral Mullen was wrong? The United States has been at war with radical Islamists four times longer than it was with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II. And those previous enemies were far more competent and aggressive than the terrorists. It is time to kill a lot more of them.

Too many commanders and their “operational law” judge advocates have neutered U.S. military forces with far too restrictive rules of engagement and investigations. 1 One Army infantry battalion commander reported that during a 15-month command tour in Iraq, he had to endure 600 AR 15-6 investigations (equivalent to a Navy JAG manual investigation), most of which examined the use of force by his troops. When asked when he had time to command, he answered, “Exactly.”

Human behavior has not changed much in recorded history. Neither have the basic tenets of war. It takes killing with speed and sustained effect to win wars. The notions that the U.S. military can win with “precision strikes” or “winning hearts and minds” are fantasy. Even the great victory in Operation Desert Storm was a bloody killing field. Just ask the remnants of the Tawakalna Division of the Iraqi Army.

During the American Civil War, the Union literally bled the Confederacy dry of fighting-age men. General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac killed its fellow Americans by the tens of thousands until General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia could not resist. It was that pressure that led Lee—arguably the greatest tactician on either side—to surrender. Grant killed his way to victory. He had the manpower advantage as well as the economic and industrial power to do so.

This country’s “Greatest Generation” killed enormous numbers of the enemy’s military servicemen and civilians in World War II. General Curtis LeMay knew that if he killed enough Japanese they would quit. While brutal by 2017 standards, his approach yielded lasting results—a productive peace with Japan that has lasted since 1945. The legal justification then—the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor—is the same casus belli as the one in the current war against al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL): the 11 September 2001 sneak attack on the United States.

Had the United States not killed Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen in the hundreds of thousands, it is likely they would have fought on and the U.S. military would have been forced to kill millions in close ground combat until they finally quit. The United States and its allies did the same against Nazi Germany. While victory required taking and holding territory, the Germans and Japanese fought until it became clear to them that the Allies would keep killing them until they quit.
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In addition to the overabundance of ill-trained lawyers in the force, leaders are giving too much credence to people and organizations (such as Amnesty International) with distorted views of how wars ought to be fought rather than how they truly are. For instance, the concept of proportionality under international law has nothing to do with making war a “fair fight” or using “minimum force.” Sadly, however, such human rights law language has crept into U.S. military standing rules of engagement (SROE), despite warnings from sage counsel such as international and operational law expert W. Hays Parks.
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There is much more.

I think the recent defeat os ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria shows how effective an annihilation strategy can be at ending a conflict that had unnecessarily dragged on because of restrictive use of force dictates from amateurs in the Obama White House.

There has to be some recognition that some hearts and minds will never change.  The only way to win a war like this is to persuade the enemy that his cause is hopeless.  That is what happened to the surviving ISIS fighters who surrendered hungry and disheveled.

One of the problems with Obama's approach is that he kept giving the enemy hope that the US would just leave without winning.  His retreat from Iraq was a disaster.  His drawdown of troops in Afghanistan gave the Taliban hope.  His failure to control the ground in Libya made that intervention a disaster. 

The military must use force in a way to make the enemy cause hopeless.