Where Should Our Focus Be With Regard to Daech?

For John, BLUF:  If you can't answer the Center of Gravity question all you can do is play whack-a-mole.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

One of President Obama's opening lines in his Oval Office talk Sunday last was:

We are at war with Terrorism.

A friend of mine noted in an EMail:

As Eliot Cohen wrote shortly after George W declared the Global War on Terrorism, “Declaring war on Terrorism after 9/11 makes about as much sense as declaring war on Dive Bombers after Pearl Harbor.”

This comment about being "at war with terrorism" is, for me, the one slip in the President's 13 minute talk from the Oval Office.  Terrorism is a tactic.  We need to better define the enemy than a tactic he uses. The tactic is not a "center of gravity".  To win, as Dead Carl tells us, we need to identify the enemy center of Gravity.

Here is a 35 page monograph on the topic of a center of gravity.

Now it is your turn, dear read:

What do you think is the Center of Gravity we need to identify?

The Daesh (ISIS) leadership.

The Daesh (ISIS) forces in the field.

The financing for Daesh.

Saudi support for Daesh

The ability of Daesh to recruit soldiers from Europe and the US.

The Wahhabist religion they follow.

Their apocalyptic world view.

The inability of Islam to look inward and self criticize.

The weakness of the Syrian and Iraqi Governments.

Something else (please describe in Comments).

 

pollcode.com free polls

Regards  —  Cliff