THE HARD PART WAS GETTING THEM TO GATHER IN ONE PLACE SO WE COULD DESTROY THEM:

In the second part of Degrade and Destroy, Gordon recounts the 2014-2019 campaign that eventually destroyed ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Operation Inherent Resolve did not emerge from a dedicated planning process, nor was its ultimate objective clearly defined at the outset. The author recounts how the White House considered two distinctly different courses of action: direct US military action, including airstrikes--or a limited advisory role of planning, intelligence, and logistics for US forces.

The author explains how Obama's National Security Council planning team was then simply overcome by events. The ISIS offensive in eastern Iraq took Pentagon and White House planners by surprise. The administration was faced with a stark choice: commit US forces to a combat role with close air support of pro-American Iraqi-Kurdish forces, or risk losing a modern airport, the US consulate, and a hub of new US commercial interests to the militants.

Faced with the dilemma, and reportedly upset by the turn of events, Obama ordered the air attacks that eventually became a doctrinal approach during Inherent Resolve: massive and unopposed air power would be wielded in support of proxy boots on the ground. During the last three years of the battle against ISIS, operational fires from manned and unmanned airstrikes and from American artillery were engrained in the battle plans. 

Then, a few weeks later, the objective of Operation Inherent Resolve was stated with remarkable clarity for an administration that had long relied on subtly nuanced statements and carefully parsed language about the war. In a national address, Obama told the country, "Our objective is clear. We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy." Gordon here shares his keen insight that "destruction" raised the bar for US planners, advisors, and operators. The objective now was not merely to regain lost territory, but to destroy ISIS as an effective fighting force, as an insurgency intent on toppling the Iraqi government, and as a jihadist movement exporting terrorism abroad.

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