The United States can help at the margins, but ultimately only the Iraqis have the power to defeat ISIS.
Now which countries destroyed Iraq and their crackerjack Republican Guard that had the means to keep the warring tribes and groups from the chaos that reigns there today? US and UK!
]Regardless of what limited additional measures America decides to undertake in the coming weeks and months, there are three possible Iraqi policies that could help turn the tide.
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If Iraq succeeds in replacing Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, as now seems likely, the new unity government should decentralize power and distribute a larger portion of the national budget to Sunni-majority areas. Baghdad should also work to strike deals with local Sunni tribes and business owners where ISIS has not yet taken control. These Sunni leaders would cooperate in squeezing ISIS out of local markets in exchange for subsidies and other direct government economic assistance.
Second, America could help the Iraqis and the Kurds analyze ISIS financial information collected in raids and from informants, and then use that information to plot a strategy and to plan operations.
Third, Iraqi and Kurdish forces should make it a priority to displace the group from oil wells in northern Iraq, and to restrict its ability to process oil at its refining facilities in eastern Syria. The Iraqi government must also engage Turkey, Jordan and the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds to plot a joint strategy to contain ISIS's oil operations, especially stopping ISIS from controlling Baiji, Iraq's largest oil production facility, which small Iraqi special forces teams have been defending for the last two months.
http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/pub ... ve_defense
Check the article for the target countries for ISIS. Canada wasn't listed and the USA according to this expert:"Is America on the ISIS Hit List?"
Op-Ed, The National Interest
September 29, 2014
Author: Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his organization are unusual among terrorists in their explicit articulation of their ambitions, their agenda, their priorities, and their strategy. Analyzing their actions, one finds a high level of alignment between what they say and what they do.
Notice who is not at the top of this list. For ISIS, the US is both far down--and far away.[/quote]
What should Washington make of this?
]First, if our friends and allies (and adversaries like Iran) to whom ISIS poses an imminent or even existential threat are unwilling to fight for themselves, to kill and to die for their own interests and values, Americans should ask: why should we?
Second, if by feigned, studied fecklessness, those who are threatened most directly can simply wait for Uncle Sam to do the job, is it not rational for them to do so?
Third, if those who are threatened most directly rise to the challenge, they will have more than enough foot soldiers to do the job. While officially excluded from the international coalition the US has assembled, Iranian-sponsored Shai militias, Assad's army, and others whom we rightly count as adversaries on other issues are doing more of the fighting on the ground against ISIS today than our traditional allies.
His conclusion though is what is now not working and has actually put a lot weapons in ISIS hands:
A US strategy that limits our role to air strikes and explicitly forswears American boots on the ground in combat provides just the right balance of incentives and assistance this issue requires.
