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Making Sense of ISIS

(Fathom-BICOM) Shirin Lotfi interviews Michael Weiss - Q: How could we defeat ISIS? Weiss: Syria is where the war should begin. Syria is a Sunni majority country. Most of the Sunnis don't want to work with ISIS; they've cut pragmatic deals with ISIS because of the lack of any alternative. They certainly don't want to be ruled by Assad, and the Free Syrian Army has proven to be corrupt and illegitimate in the eyes of many. The U.S. has air superiority in northern Syria. Why not put that to even better use by stopping the Syrian Air Force from dropping barrel bombs and chlorine gas on the heads of mostly Sunnis? If they did that, then suddenly the local population in Syria says, "Oh, America does care after all, so maybe we do have a partner here." Q: And why do you think the U.S. is not doing this? Weiss: The excuse given is that if we engage Assad in Syria, then Iran will turn the Shia militias in Iraq against U.S. soldiers - some partner, huh! If we threaten their ally and their proxy, they're going to kill us. Michael Weiss is the co-author with Hassan Hassan of the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.
2015-09-04 00:00:00
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