Is ISIS bin Laden's self-destructive legacy?

It is as if someone directing the strategic direction ISIS takes has mapped out the most likely route to its eventual Armageddon and destruction.

Looking at the ISIS way of waging war, we see many parallels with America’s old arch-enemy Japan.

During the 1940s, Japan ensured that her enemies would have no qualms in destroying her utterly.

Suicide Bombers

The tactics of using suicide pilots, the Kamikaze or Divine Wind were inspired by fanaticism and religious belief in much the same way as ISIS suicide bombers are today. The use of suicide fighters is anathema to Western combatants in that it ignores any battle conventions that have been developed and tacitly agreed upon over centuries of warfare. As far as Western soldiers are concerned, suicide bombers cannot be dealt with in any civilized way. ISIS is in fact much worse in Western eyes than the Kamikaze bombers were because the targets were at least military ones when the Japanese were involved. There was also some sort of proportionality in that a single Kamekaze bomber could sink an entire aircraft carrier, so the sacrifice of the pilot was seen by his enemy as at least worthwhile although incomprehensible.

The ISIS suicide bombers on the other hand often only harm or kill a handful of civilians or other targets of low military consequence. Their effect is often only a propaganda one that demoralizes their perceived enemy. This has entirely removed any sympathy ISIS may have enjoyed for their political aims in the minds of their enemy.

Beheading the enemy and other atrocities

Another strong similarity between ISIS and the World War Two Japanese is their penchant for beheading and torturing their prisoners. Films and photographs of Japanese officers beheading Allied prisoners of war was a strong reason for the West to believe they were dealing with an enemy who gave no quarter and probable expected non either.

The many videos of ISIS beheadings have instilled in western minds the inhumanity of ISIS guerrillas. ISIS has ensured that all their combatants are equally hated by staging mass beheadings and torture involving many of their people rather than using a single executioner. This has had the effect of instilling hatred in the Western minds of all ISIS personnel, not just hatred of its leadership.

Desecration of cultural icons

As if the inhumanity to its enemies were not enough, ISIS has not only desecrated Christian monuments but has destroyed its own historic birthright.

In imitation of the Vandals sacking Rome, the barbaric ISIS iconoclasts have filmed themselves sacking the priceless ruins that give identity to their own people. This cultural suicide is almost designed to disgust the history-loving Western viewer as much as live burning of prisoners does.

Exciting a merciless response

It seems that everything ISIS does, and publicizes in film of unusually high production values, is purposely designed to elicit a deadly and merciless response from the West. This call to battle on both sides of the Muslim-Christian divide has upped the ante to a condition of war where no negotiation is possible or even desired between the parties.

ISIS has thrown down the gauntlet and a total war is being forced upon both sides. Those sides are seen as Civilization vs Barbarism by the West and Muslim Fundamentalism vs Infidelity by ISIS.

Self Destructive ISIS strategy

The most interesting part of the rise of ISIS to the student of warfare is the radical departure ISIS has taken from the tried and trusted methods of Terrorist Warfare.

That great chronicler of Terrorist Warfare, Chairman Mao said the great power of the terrorist guerrilla was the way that he mingled with the ordinary people of the land. Like a fish swimming in the ocean, the terrorist was not held by boundaries, he didn’t hold territory but attacked the enemy from many different directions . The 1965 book, The War of the Flea by Robert Tabor distilled guerrilla warfare into any easily understood concept that achieved great goals with the loss of comparatively little life. The terrorist attacked the body of the enemy like fleas do. A little bite here, a little one there and while the giant is scratching here, you attack him someplace else. Eventually, these little red spots become rashes on the body of the enemy and the terrorist eventually wins.

Notice that the great advantage the terrorist has is that he doesn’t have to hold territory. He moves with impunity wherever he needs to be fed and find shelter.

The enemy on the other hand has to expend huge amounts of energy and assets on attempting to keep the whole area safe from the tiny fleas infesting it. Nowhere can the state strike the terrorists and kill them in appreciable numbers.

Find them, fix them and finish them

The great difficulty for the conventional forces fighting a terrorist guerrilla enemy is to Find Them, Fix Them and Finish Them.

Finding a highly mobile tiny force that can hit and run has proved very difficult since the Boer War when the Boers harassed the British with the first formalized version of Guerrilla Warfare. The small bands of Boers could live off the land for extended periods and what’s more, had the sympathy of the peasants working the land. In the end, the British could never Find Them and had to resort to scorched-earth tactics and concentration camps for the supportive peasants.

What the British did to win the Boer War was, instead of Finding, Fixing and Finishing their enemy, they did that to the enemies support system. While this may have won them the war, it lost them any legitimacy they may have had and self-rule was soon handed to the Boers anyway.

The Caliphate makes it easy to Find Them

By espousing the concept of re-establishing the ancient Caliphate, ISIS has broken the first rule of successful guerrilla warfare. They have tied themselves to territory.

The Caliphate has physical boundaries and for ISI to be seen as successful to its adherents and future recruits, this territory must be defended.

Gone is the mobility a good guerilla thrives upon. Now supply chains are needed to keep everyone fed and armed.

In fact ISIS are turning themselves into a conventional army with all the pitfalls that entails.

The West, who has not enjoyed much success against guerrilla forces over the years must be overjoyed at this sudden inversion.

At last the West has an enemy that, while it uses very unconventional ways of killing its enemies, has set itself up as a target ripe to be taken and annihilated by conventional forces.

Not only has it made itself a fruit ripe for plucking, but ISIS has ensured that by its atrocious and barbarous deeds, there will be little sympathy for it, no matter how savage the means of its annihilation become.

Like the Japanese who made dropping a couple of nuclear bombs on cities containing predominantly civilians acceptable, so too will almost any means of extermination prove to be acceptable when ISIS is concerned.

How to Fix them

After finding them, they need to be fixed in place so that they can be attacked and defeated.

Although ISIS has made the cardinal (mullah?) error of giving themselves a territory, the Caliphate, to defend, they are still an unusually mobile force.

They travel about using flying columns of Toyota pickup trucks with multi-barrel Russian Heavy Machine or AA guns mounted on the rear.

This makes chasing them down with conventional light armored troop carriers very difficult. Using Land Rover type Sabre desert-adapted vehicles makes more sense, but few could match the firepower of a twin 14.5mm AA gun on a Hi Lux.

Toyota Hi Lux trucks are very quick and maneuverable but decidedly thin- skinned. They are not mine-proofed and are vulnerable to small arms fire.

The Western nations have over the last fifty years developed a strong aversion to putting men on the ground. Killing takes place at ever-increasing distances from the battlefield. Missile bearing Helicopters, long range artillery, drone strikes and high altitude bombing are nowadays the preferred means of killing the enemy. Even the infantry has become dependent on long-range snipers for the odd killing that occurs on the ground.

While all of these methods will be effective against an ISIS confined to a geographical area they need to be boosted by good intelligence from people on the ground.

The only force nowadays that has the appetite to operate on the ground and in close proximity to the enemy is the British SAS.

The SAS has the skills and troops to provide the essential intelligence gathering that will enable air strikes and artillery strikes to do a quick and efficient job.

The combination of SAS information gathering and forward air control skills will ensure a quick and fairly clean destruction of ISIS whenever the West decides to strike in earnest.

Finishing Them

There is no reason to believe that Muslim Arab fighters have become any more proficient than they were during the Six Day War. In fact, looking at the ISIS distributed films of their guerrillas training, they appear even less well-trained than they were in 1967.

While the average ISIS guerrilla is ferocious when decapitating a victim handcuffed and kneeling in front of him, his bravery and proficiency in a real fire-fight is likely to be just as comical as it has always been.

The combination of SAS Forward Air Controllers, helicopter missiles, artillery and carrier borne jets will be enough to annihilate ISIS in a few days.

ISIS has done enough to prevent even the most bleeding-heart pacifist from complaining about their removal from the face of the earth. In fact, they give the West no alternative to exterminating them. No-one can deal with them.