Sleeping giant

When the Japanese were planning their attack on Pearl Harbor, their most famous military person warned, “do not wake the sleeping giant”, but he was ignored. In today’s war against terrorist the United States is once more asleep. What will it take to wake up the giant? The first step will be to recognize that we are in a war. Many of our leaders are hesitant to act so we name our battle plan, “Operation Inherent Resolve”. To act with more force, invites criticism from others for collateral damage. ISIS is now gathered in parts of Iraq and Syria and could be severely degraded with an intensive air attack but fear of hurting civilians is stopping the US from acting. The first Gulf War, started to drive Iraq out of Kiewit, was over quickly with a minimum of US casualties. The Gulf War began with an extensive aerial bombing campaign on 17 January 1991. The Coalition flew over 100,000 sorties, dropping 88,500 tons of bombs,[92] and widely destroying military and civilian infrastructure. After 5 weeks of continuous bombing the ground forces went in and in 100 hours the war was over. This same strategy could bring an end to ISIS in these areas and do so with a minimum of US loses. This would also send a strong warning to other terrorist groups and they would be hesitant to ever congregate large forces in a single area.