Chelsea Manning: ‘Islamic State Cannot Be Defeated by Bombs and Bullets’

The WikiLeaks whistle-blower and United States Army intelligence analyst offers an alternative plan to President Obama’s approach to IS insurgents currently terrorizing the Middle East.

The Guardian:

I believe that Isis is fueled precisely by the operational and tactical successes of European and American military force that would be — and have been — used to defeat them. I believe that Isis strategically feeds off the mistakes and vulnerabilities of the very democratic western states they decry. The Islamic State’s center of gravity is, in many ways, the United States, the United Kingdom and those aligned with them in the region…

Attacking Isis directly, by air strikes or special operations forces, is a very tempting option available to policymakers, with immediate (but not always good) results. Unfortunately, when the west fights fire with fire, we feed into a cycle of outrage, recruitment, organizing and even more fighting that goes back decades. This is exactly what happened in Iraq during the height of a civil war in 2006 and 2007, and it can only be expected to occur again…

Based on my intelligence work in Iraq during that period, I believe that only a very focused and consistent strategy of containment can be effective in reducing the growth and effectiveness of Isis as a threat. And so far, Western states seem to have adopted that strategy. With very public humanitarian disasters, however, like the ones on Mount Sinjar and Irbil in northern Iraq, and the beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, this discipline gets tested and can begin to fray.

To read more of Chelsea Manning’s detailed proposal, click here.

—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata