Prologue[]
I am a guy who doesn't have a significant job and all I do is go to school/colledge. I do nothing all day but wonder how to fix our countries problems. I am a walking talking thinktank. This is the most descriptive, precise, and strategic way to defeat ISIS. You should also know that I keep up with Politics ever night and nobody in politics (or outside of it) has a plan like I have. Enjoy.
Part 1: Quarantine the Beast[]
Step 1: train a few divisions of the US armed forces in conventional tactics as the entire military is trained for a counter insurgency operation.
Step 2: Take a 1 mile wide "buffer zone" in between turkey and syria using the syrian territory. Put up a wall and deploy conventional troops to gaurd that wall. Make sure that anybody leaving Syria to Turkey passes rigorious American vetting standards. If we can't 100% gaurantee they won't commit jihad then they can't come to Turkey. This will stop the flood of ISIS into turkey and onto turkish airlines and into the USA. This will contain ISIS to the north.
Step 3: Convince/Force Russia and Assad to set up rigorous checkpoints in Assad's territory, airports, and ports to assure that no Islamic extremists escape through Assad's Syria to the southwest.
Step 4: Make Jordan and Iraq set up simmiliar checkpoints at their borders and airports to ensure that ISIS doesn't escape through the south and east. If they won't set up the checkpoints then tell them that America will.
This "quarantine" of ISIS must be maintained with the upmost vigilance. No ISIS terrorists must be allowed to escape. No women or children must be allowed to leave Syria. ISIS has shown us that women and children can still commit horendous acts of violence. One side effect of this will be the migrants leaving syria will not have anywhere to go but thats fine. The young men leaving syria should stay and fight for their country. Afterall, if they won't fight for it why should we?
Part 2: Bomb em till the sand glows (in Iraq)[]
During the First and second Gulf wars America ran over 1000 sorties a day. If we got anywhere close to that number (albiet there would be more civilian casualties but it will save more lives in the end) we could force ISIS into a retreat.
Step 5: We will need to put a huge spec op ground force to locate ISIS strongholds and military assets. We cannot do 1000 sorties a day if we don't have thousands of special operations forces in Iraq to guide the missiles.
Step 6: Bomb ISIS out of Iraq. If that means carpetbombing ISIS strongholds then so be it. We will have to use Helicopters as well to deal with ISIS for more precision attacks.
Step 7: When ISIS retreats then we send our spec ops units to take the Iraqi oil fields. We tell Iraq that if they want their oil then they will have to pursue ISIS into Syria which we will argue is in their best national security anyways.
Part 3: The Caged Animal[]
Step 8: Drop Paratroopers into the farthest western ISIS territory and onto all the roads going est with orders to "shoot anybody with a gun." These people will not be wearing uniforms so the only way to ensure we stop ISIS from retreating is to take control of their axis of retreat. This will neglect ISIS any axis of retreat. The purpose of this quarantine is to ensure that NO ISIS militants escape and wage jihad on America.
Step 9: Use the American ground troops/special ops troops already in Iraq along with the Iraqi army to invade ISIS in Syria.
Step 10: With no axis of retreat and all the exits blocked off ISIS will be forced to fight to the death which we will gladly let them do.
Part 4: Aftermath[]
Step 11: Do not engage Russia or Assad. It is only in our national intrest to defeat ISIS and not get engaged in a bloodly civil war.
Step 12: After ISIS has been defeated and any attempts by radical militants to restore ISIS have been crushed then the USA hands the territory over to the Free Syrian Army (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Syrian_Army). I have done the research on most of the rebel groups and this is by far the most civilized and honorable. They are mostly made up of defected Syrian generals and soldiers and have no extremist influence. They
Step 12: Once we have made sure that the Free Syrian army has taken up our positions we pull out. This is not our fight. Indeed, the Free Syrian Army would now control half of syrian and would become the dominant Rebel group, hopefully ensuring the other moderate rebel groups ally with this clear new power.
Step 13: America buys oil from the Syrian Army at low prices to finance their war effort and drive down the price of gas in america. This insures that Russia is stuck in a Syrian Quagmire for years to come and can't focus on Europe where our true allies are.
Analysis[]
There are certain steps that I have clearly missed. The "No Fly Zone", "training people to fight ISIS", "refugee safe zone theory", "arming the syrian rebels", and "arming the kurds". The reason I didn't choose any of these strategies is that they all have at least one fatal flaw.
In the "No Fly Zone" idea it would do more harm than good. It would infuriate Russia and stop them from avenging the Russain airliner that was shot down. We are going to have to cooperate with Russia if we want to stop ISIS. Not to mention that a No Fly Zone means the USA would have to shoot down Russian fighters that wander into the fly zone and im not intrested in starting WWlll.
Training people to fight ISIS has failed miserably. So far we haven't trained more than 50 people and they usually surrender when they confront the animals.
The Refugee safe zone theory is fine but it won't work because it ignores ISIS. We cannont have a safe and civilized america with ISIS still around.
Arming the Syrian Rebels could easily backfire as most of the groups that don't have enough arms are in that position for a reason. They are dangerous. And these arms could fall into the hands of radicals and be used to kill americans. That would be the definition of a backfire.
Arming the Kurds is fine and dandy but they can't go on the offensive against ISIS. They can only defend Kurdish towns and take back kurdish towns. The Kurds won't go on the offensive in Sunni regions where ISIS is most prominent.
Wrap up[]
That strategy is the work of a month of hardcore thought. Since I love talking about foriegn policy and politics I might turn this into a series. Make sure to keep your cool in the comments section and please give your critisism. Thanks for reading!