Committee on Foreign Relations United St

United States Strategy to Defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Committee on Foreign Relations United St

Publisher Marketing: President Obama has laid out a comprehensive, holistic strategy that purports to integrate all the tools of U. S. power to defeat ISIL. Our partners in the Middle East are willing to support, fund, and provide resources for this campaign. From Riyadh to Abu Dhabi, from Cairo to Amman to Beirut, our partners are sending the signal to ISIL that they are not welcome, that they have a bankrupt religious ideology, and that they will be aggressively confronted. The problems in Iraq and Syria that created an environment susceptible to ISIL's advance can only be solved locally. In Iraq, this means an inclusive government with a national agenda and leaders ready to empower the Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish Peshmerga forces to take the fight to ISIL. In Syria, it means training and equipping a vetted Syrian opposition force that shares our vision for a pluralistic free Syria, free of ISIL and all violent extremist groups. We must be clear-eyed about the risks before providing our enduring support for this operation. We must not repeat the mistakes of the past, given the nature of the threat we face. This means clearly defining the objectives, the political end state that we seek through this anti-ISIL campaign.