Misoverestimating ISIS: New at Reason

Despite the media attention and public perception, ISIS is in decline.

John Mueller and Mark Stewart, the authors of Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism, write:

Its coun­terproductive brutalities, such as staged beheadings of hostages, summary executions of prisoners, and the rape and enslavement of female captives have left it without allies and outside support—indeed, it is surrounded by enemies.

ISIS’s ability to behead defenseless hostages certainly should not be taken to suggest its military might. And its major military advance, the conquest of Mosul in 2014, was essentially a fluke. Its idea was to hold part of the city for a while in an effort, it seems, to free some prisoners. The defending Iraqi army, trained by the American military at enormous cost to U.S. taxpayers, simply fell apart in confusion and disarray, abandoning weaponry, and the city, to the tiny group of seeming invaders even though it greatly outnumbered them—even taking into account the fact that many soldiers had purchased the right to avoid showing up for duty by paying half their salary to their commanders. The fall of a smaller city a few weeks earlier was similar. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff put it, the Iraqi forces weren’t “driven out of Ramadi.” Rather, “they drove out.”

After its advances of 2014, however, the group’s momentum has been substantially halted, and its empire is currently under a form of siege. And, by holding territory, it presents an obvious and clear target for airstrikes and other methods by military opponents.

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