The administration says the Islamic State group is neither Islamic nor a state. One of the problems in fighting a non-state actor is determining what constitutes victory. Unlike conventional wars, there is no territory to seize, no capital to occupy, no formal signing ceremony on the decks of the USS Missouri. So how do you know when you’ve won?
The latest National Strategy for Counterterrorism says that a terror group is defeated when its “primary individuals and groups [are] rendered powerless, and its message relegated to irrelevance.” That is a succinct definition, but a difficult objective. Al-Qaida, the focus of the strategy, has been significantly reduced but not rendered powerless, and its ideology is alive and well. The Islamic State group is an al-Qaida offshoot with an identical message, tens of thousands of fighters, an increasing number of affiliates and operational control over territory spanning at least two countries. It can certainly be disrupted, degraded and to an extent dismantled. But “destroyed” is another matter.
The administration has complicated its message by creating a muddle over whether the United States is in fact at war with the Islamic State. When the president of the United States makes a prime time address to the American people announcing that he is launching a long-term military effort to destroy a major threat to the country, it sounds a lot like war. But almost immediately after last week’s speech, senior administration officials and spokespeople began insisting this was not a war. They insist it should be described as a “sustained counterterrorism operation.” Various rationales were proffered for why war was an inappropriate term: that there was no formal declaration, that the war powers resolution was not invoked, or that it can’t be war if there are no “boots on the ground.”
What Secretary of State John Kerry has called the "tortured debate over terminology” is a mess of the administration’s own making. The White House has no problem using the term “war” when it comes to al-Qaida. The National Counterterrorism Strategy emphasizes that “we are at war with a specific organization — al-Qa‘ida.” Elsewhere, it notes that al-Qaida is an umbrella term that encompasses the group’s “affiliates and adherents” — a list which includes al-Qaida in Iraq, the Islamic State group in an earlier iteration. So, in truth, the United States has been at war with the Islamic State for years. Yet today, we seem to be bashful about saying precisely that.
The Islamic State has no such hang-ups. It is waging a holy war, even if the White House doesn’t recognize it as such, and is willing to die to prove its point. This underscores the asymmetry of fighting terrorist movements. The leaders of the Islamic State group are highly motivated, willing to “pay any price, bear any burden” in pursuit of their vision. Their only “tortured debates” are about how many people to torture. In order to defeat them, the United States has to approach the campaign with the same serious intent. This is not a bloodless, technical exercise in managing regional stability. If the United States is going to destroy the Islamic State, call it a war and get it done.
