Experts Explain How Global Powers Can Smash ISIS

By TIM ARANGO, NYT
NOV. 17, 2015

Much of the world agrees that the Islamic State needs to be crushed.

But how that can be accomplished, and what the unintended consequences may be, are a lot more complicated.

The group, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, has proved to be as flexible and amoebalike as it is apocalyptic and brutal. It thrives under pressure, and a stepped-up war by the West may be just what it wants, to draw new recruits.

And don’t forget that the group’s predecessor was defeated once before: Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, established to fight the Americans after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was gutted and its leaders killed by 2009. That took thousands of American lives, many billions of dollars and an ultimately unsustainable effort to pay Sunni tribal leaders to fight against the group.

But after the Americans left Iraq, the group rose again from the shadows, and in its reincarnation became even more brutal and determined.

(More here.)