A Quote by Fareed Zakaria

ISIS is a formidable foe, but the counter forces to it have only just begun and if these forces, the Iraqi army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, American air power, the Syrian Free Army, work in a coordinated fashion, it will start losing ground. Also, please keep in mind that ISIS does not actually hold as much ground as the many maps flashed on television keep showing. Large parts of those territories that ISIS supposedly controls are vacant desert.
In delivering the agreed objective of a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process, the removal of Isis from its territory in Syria by Syrian forces, the Syrian army and the Syrian Free Army fighting alongside each other is an opportunity to bind wounds.
We're at war with the ISIS caliphate that sprang up because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama precipitously withdrew all American forces from Iraq and created a vacuum of power, that ISIS was able to overrun vast territories that our soldiers had won in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In 2014, everybody kind of knows that the Iraqi army fled when it was attacked by ISIS. But actually, the Kurdish Peshmerga, although they had a better reputation, fled even faster, about a month later, when they were attacked.
Having western, Russian or Iranian forces providing the ground defeat of Isis would certainly work militarily, but would be the least attractive option as it might help reinforce the Isis myth.
We saw that, as Syrian troops went to Aleppo, ISIS took Palmyra. But ISIS' days are numbered. The Donald Trump administration has said that they're going to concentrate on ISIS and they're going to work with Russia. Now, we don't know whether they really will work with Russia or not, but it's clear that ISIS is going to be pounded.
Our primary threat today is ISIS. And because Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a status of forces agreement that would have allowed some American combat troops to remain in Iraq and secure the hard fought gains the American soldier had won by 2009, ISIS was able to be literally conjured up out of the desert, and it's overrun vast areas that the American soldier had won in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Fomenting an ongoing political crisis is actually one of ISIS's objectives; it distracts policymakers' attention from terrorists inside Iraq; and it draws critical Iraqi security forces and law enforcement away from the front lines of the battle against ISIS.
We also have to intensify our air strikes against ISIS and eventually support our Arab and Kurdish partners to be able to actually take out ISIS in Raqqa, end their claim of being a Caliphate.
You would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops. You use air power directed - and you have embedded special forces to direction the air power. But the object isn't to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists.
The only people that have ever fought ISIS in Syria is not the regime; it is the Free Syrian Army.
It's quite clear the Syrian regime in Syria, as the Iraqi regime in Iraq is benefiting from America's effort to destroy opposition forces in both countries. And there aren't any other rebel forces that one can foresee on the horizon that will be able to take Eastern Syria that's now occupied by ISIS.
ISIS already has strongholds in Syria, while the Free Syrian Army desperately needs more U.S. assistance.
I think that, given the threat that ISIS poses to the region and beyond, as we have sadly seen in our own country, it is important to keep the Iraqi army on a path where they can actually take back territory, to work with the Sunni tribes in Anbar province and elsewhere so that their fighters can be also deployed, to work with the Kurds to provide them the support, but they're doing the fighting. We're doing the support and enabling.
Let me begin by saying that we have to understand who ISIS is. ISIS is a radical Sunni group. They cannot just be defeated through air strikes. Air strikes are a key component of defeating them, but they must be defeated on the ground by a ground force. And that ground force must be primarily made up of Sunni Arabs themselves, Sunni Arabs that reject them ideologically and confront them militarily.
There is no one else at all who is fighting ISIS on the ground, except for President al-Assad's army.
Assad's regime helped ISIS grow by attacking other opposition forces and rarely targeting ISIS.
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