President Obama is officially at war with the Islamic State, yet he is not fighting to win. He is fighting to contain it and “degrade” it over a period of years. Practically speaking, this means: helping the Islamic State develop itself at home, and helping it inspire more terrorists worldwide — something the terrorists have brought home to country after country in recent weeks. Obama’s strategy is barely different from fighting to lose.
As long as the Islamic State is fighting America without losing — as long as it continues to control a large swath of territory — its roots deepen at home and its charisma grows among Muslims everywhere. Here finally is an Islamic entity that is able to fight “the Empire” and succeed in holding it off! It attracts adherents from a global base — a base of many thousand aspiring jihadists and many million supportive Islamists.
The U.S. has announced that it has killed a thousand Islamic State fighters — this, in all these months of containing and “degrading.” Meanwhile, by conservative counts, the Islamic State has recruited more than twice that number of additional fighters. Leftists argue that we are building up the IS by fighting it, so stop fighting. They would be right, if they put it this way: We are building it up by fighting pro forma without trying to win.