The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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ISIL Seeks A New Gimmick
by James Dunnigan
April 18, 2015
In March West of Mosul ISIL gunmen tried to attack a Kurdish headquarters but were repulsed with heavy losses. The inability to get through Kurdish security has been a source of great frustration for ISIL. For a while ISIL had a winning combination with Islamic terrorists willing to die and a carefully cultivated (via grisly videos released on the web) reputation for savagery. This worked against most Iraqi soldiers and police who would flee when a few dozen ISIL gunmen showed up. This never worked against Western troops, or against the Iranians or the better trained and led Kurds. Now it isn’t working against many militias, especially self-defense groups who have nowhere to run. All this has been very bad for ISIL because of the large number of inexperienced new recruits they now use. Most of these new guys are willing to die, but in a gunfight they don’t know how to be useful and frequently just get killed. That demoralizes their fellow newbies and that is leading to plunging morale, more desertions, jailing and execution of deserters and even more ISIL wondering what happened to the good old days. People no longer fear ISIL and they are increasingly quick to kill ISIL men on sight. Don’t they want to be saved by joining the new religious dictatorship that ISIL says will solve all the problems of corruption and bad government. It’s all so confusing now and ISIL leaders are scrambling to create a new gimmick to stave off looming defeat.
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