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The Islamic State is “an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision,” Gen. Martin Dempsey said at a Pentagon news conference Thursday.
WASHINGTON — The Islamic State cannot be defeated unless the United States or its partners take on the Sunni militants in Syria, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday.
“This is an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated,” Gen. Martin Dempsey said in his most expansive public remarks on the crisis since American airstrikes began in Iraq. “Can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria? The answer is no.”
But Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who also spoke at a Pentagon news conference, gave no indication that President Barack Obama was about to approve airstrikes in Syria.
Dempsey also was circumspect in describing the sort of broad effort that would be required to roll back the Islamic State.
“It requires a variety of instruments, only one small part of which is airstrikes,” he said. “I’m not predicting those will occur in Syria, at least not by the United States of America. But it requires the application of all of the tools of national power — diplomatic, economic, information, military.”
Even so, Dempsey’s comments were notable because he is the president’s top military adviser, and had been among the most outspoken in describing the risks of ordering airstrikes in Syria when the civil war there began.
In the current battle with the Islamic State in Iraq, Obama’s military strategy has been aimed at containing the militant organization rather than defeating it, according to Defense Department officials and military experts. Pressed on whether the U.S. would conduct airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria, Hagel said, “We’re looking at all options.”
Any use of air power involves risk, including that civilians might be killed. Airstrikes in Syria would also draw the White House more deeply into a conflict from which it has sought some distance.
In planning the campaign against the Islamic State, U.S. military officers have been contending with a highly mobile force that can move across the Iraq-Syria border with impunity.
According to one U.S. intelligence analysis, the Islamic State could not be easily defeated by killing its top leadership. Given its decentralized command, experienced militants could easily replenish its upper ranks.
“If there is anything ISIL has learned from its previous iterations as al-Qaeda in Iraq, it is that they need succession plans because losing leaders to counterterrorism operations is to be expected,” said one intelligence official, using an alternative name for the group.
From sky, on ground
The military strategy that the Obama administration has employed to confront the Islamic State has been limited. Since Aug. 8, the U.S. has carried out 90 airstrikes to halt the militant group’s advance to Irbil, to help government forces retake the Mosul Dam and to protect Yazidi civilians trying to escape from Mount Sinjar.
While U.S. air power appears to have been relatively successful in those missions, some military officials say the only way to deal a major setback to the group is to attack Islamic State fighters throughout the battlefield.
John Allen, the retired Marine Corps general who led U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, said the United States needed to build up the capacity of indigenous forces in the region to take on the Islamic State, but he stressed that there was also an important role for U.S. air power.
“For now, attacking ISIS command and control sites, support areas and critical pathways can do a great deal to begin the process of dismantling the organization,” he said, using another name for the militant group.
Those that have been on the receiving end of Islamic State attacks believe more action is needed.
“ISIS needs to be fought in all areas, in both Iraq and Syria,” said Atheel al-Nujaifi, the governor of Iraq’s Ninevah province, which is now mostly held by the militants. “The problem is finding a partner on the ground that can work with them because the jets can’t finish the battle from the sky.”
Those in Syria who have fought the Islamic State also have expressed hopes for intervention.
A member of the Shueitat tribe in eastern Syria — where the Islamic State captured and killed hundreds of tribe members this month — said he could not understand why the United States was bombing the militants in Iraq but not in Syria.
“I wish we could ask the Americans to hit their bases wherever they exist,” said the man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Anger over journalist
When the United States began airstrikes in Iraq this month, senior Obama administration officials went out of their way to underscore the limited nature of the action.
“This was not an authorization of a broad-based counterterrorism campaign,” a senior Obama administration official said then.
But the beheading of an American journalist and the possibility that more U.S. citizens being held by the group might be slain has prompted outrage at the White House.
Obama has harshly condemned the slaying, and Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement declaring that the group should be confronted “wherever it tries to spread its despicable hatred” and “must be destroyed.”
Such strong statements have widened the gap between the harsh denunciations of the Islamic State and the strategy that the White House has so far employed.
And Hagel said Thursday that while U.S. airstrikes had made a difference thus far in slowing the Islamic State advance in Iraq, he expected the militants to regroup and stage another offensive.
The Obama administration has ruled out sending ground troops into Iraq. Administration officials also continue to insist that much of the strategy is political: the establishment of a more diverse Iraqi government that would give a prominent role to Sunnis.
But other options are being considered, including increasing the scope and frequency of airstrikes.
“You can hit ISIS on one side of a border that essentially no longer exists, and it will scurry across, as it may have already,” said Brian Katulis, a national-security expert with the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.
Michael R. Gordon
and Helene Cooper,
The New York Times
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