Air strikes alone cannot defeat ISIS says former UK Army Chief
London (IraqiNews.com) On Monday, the former UK armed forces chief, David Richards said, that an air campaign alone against the ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria will not succeed, stressing the need for ‘western boots on the ground’ to combat ISIS with an aerial cover.
In an interview on BBC, Richards said: “Air power alone will not win a campaign like this. It isn’t actually a counter-terrorist operation. This is a conventional enemy in that it has armour, tanks, artillery, it is quite wealthy, it holds ground and it is going to fight. So therefore you have to view it as a conventional military campaign.”
Richards stressed that ISIS would only be defeated by a ground campaign with western forces playing at least a supportive role in the battle. He said, “You either have to put your own boots on the ground at some point or else you have to very energetically and aggressively train up those who will do that with us and for us. My worry at the moment is that the scale of the challenge isn’t being met by the right scale of response.”
“What we should be able to see is in the first part of the strategy we will contain ISIS. They shouldn’t get any bigger. But then we have got to start doing the much more difficult thing which is attacking them and then eventually defeating them. This will take a lot of planning, a lot of logistics, outstanding command and control.”
It is worth noting that, the former British PM Tony Blair stated previously in an interview on CNN, that Obama was wrong to promise to not send ground troops in to combat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Blair said, “it was the fight against ISIS fighters in northern Iraq and Syria could evolve over time and therefore involve the use of combat force.”
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