ISIL: STARVING THE BEAST

ISIL is a beast. A beast that cannot be killed directly because it is (to a significant degree, though not completely) a leaderless organization (see link - better yet, read the book).

Air strikes and special operations can kill the leadership but - as with al Qaida - more leaders will replace them.

But a beast needs to eat and what this beast eats is money and radicalized, alienated, young adults of all nationalities.

The money largely comes from oil and transnational crime whereas the recruits come through slick media propagated over the internet showing atrocities and successful attacks and projecting .

Unlike al Qaida, their ideology requires a geographic base so there is an additional military vulnerability there - they need to project success on the ground as part of their recruiting.

To starve the beast allied forces, especially regional, largely Islamic forces, need to:

1. Stop them in the ground "game" and start rolling them back.

2. Stop their source of oil money.

3. Use international law enforcement resources to disrupt their criminal moneymaking alliances and funding sources with gangs and organized crime in criminal enterprises involving money laundering, trafficking of drugs, weapons, and people.

4. Use cyber resources to fight back through detection of radicalization, counter-propaganda, disruption of operational plans, etc.

5. The root of the problem is highly empowered, profoundly alienated people - largely young adults. Some alienation is the alienation of a child who isn't getting his own way. But much - perhaps most - of the alienation comes from the predatory history the West has had with the Middle East through both colonization and, later, the propping up of ruthless and despotic regimes (LIKE Saddam Hussein's) so long as they were anti-communist.

Sadly, this does not fit as neatly in a sound bite as "just bomb the bastards." It's that "nuance"  thing that conservatives despise.

But it took more than a century to help arrange our current situation and, as they said in WWI, we will NOT be home before the leaves fall.

The Starfish and the Spider (Summary, All Chapters)