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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  - Edmund Burke

The Past

During World War II, the campaign against the Japanese in the Pacific theater was marked by brutal fighting. Japanese hopes for bringing the United States to the negotiating table had been dashed by the defeat of the Imperial Navy at Midway in early June, 1942. In August, less than 8 months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, US Marines landed on Guadalcanal. The US and its allies were on the offensive.Though three years of bloody fighting remained, in hindsight it is apparent that Japan’s defeat was inevitable by the end of 1942. Employing a strategy of attacking some enemy strongholds and by-passing others in an “island-hopping” campaign, US forces relentlessly moved closer to the Japanese home islands over the next three years.

The Japanese met each new attack with evermore determined defenses, literally fighting to the death. (At Tarawa in late 1943, for example, only a handful of the 5000 Japanese defenders were captured alive.) The casualty figures from the major battles in the 15 months prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki show the increasing lethality of the fighting, culminating with the nearly three-month struggle to wrest Okinawa from the Japanese in late Spring, 1945.  

Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/pacific-costs-war

Given the proximity of Okinawa to the Home Islands, the Japanese were driven to fanatic measures, the most extreme being the use of suicide aircraft- the Kamikaze- to make thousands of attacks on the Allied fleet. Though these attacks sunk and damaged dozens of ships, killing thousands in the process, they ultimately did not alter the outcome of the battle. Desperation was insufficient to avoid the inevitable.

Repeating it

I bring up this war that ended in the year of my birth because of the parallels to the fighting being carried on in the Mid-East with the putative Islamic State. (American media refers to it as ISIS, administration officials as ISIL and Arabic-speakers as Daesh. Details of its origins can be found in a number on online sources.) In the vacuum left by the combination of the breakdown in civil order in Iraq in the wake of the US-incited war and the outbreak of civil war in Syria subsequent to the Arab Spring, the group established control over areas of both Syria and Iraq. They declared the establishment of the Caliphate in June, 2014 after the capture of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

By now, the signs of the inevitability of Daesh’s demise should be evident. They have no allies. They are militarily disadvantaged- they lack an air force and heavy weapons. In a slow but persistent air campaign designed to degrade Daesh's ability to use mobility to attack and overwhelm its enemies quickly, the US-led coalition has begun to achieve its goal of eliminating further expansion. The Iraqi military and Shia militias have re-taken Ramadi and Tikrit. Earlier this year, the Pentagon claimed that “ISIS has lost control of 25 to 30 percent of [its] territory in  central and northern Iraq”.

As a response, it appears Daesh has turned to terrorism, a move which signals its desperation. The last few weeks brought major terror attacks in Turkey, Bangladesh and Bagdad. There have been smaller attacks in Jordan and Lebanon. Prior to that, there were the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. In the US, we were hit by the ISIS-inspired “lone wolf” shootings in San Bernadino and Orlando. Still, the question must be asked  “Are these attacks going to alter the outcome?” Look past the horror and understand you are viewing the final, flailing acts of the eventual loser. It is apparent that terrorism does not bring victory; it is simply the slaughter of innocents for the purpose of striking fear into the Western societies. Is there any doubt that sometime in the future, whether it be 5 years from now or ten, the Islamic State will cease tor exist?

That said, the asymmetrical nature of the unconventional conflict with Daesh means that there will be no dramatic last act, no nuclear weapon dropped on a city in order to seal a final victory. There will only be the inexorable strangulation of their "state". Depriving them of territory- of populations to tax and exploit, of oil to sell on the black market- means that the funding of terror operations will become more difficult. When their state is no longer a reality, they will find themselves in the same position as al Qaeda did ten years ago: Still dangerous, but reduced to finding proxies to commit isolated attacks. For the Western democracies, it would seem that what is required is some combination of prudent security measures and vigilance. Not surrendering to fear, not forfeiting our civil liberties and maintaining a vibrant society is the best route to prevailing

(Dealing with the power vacuum in the region and other causes of terrorist movements is  a subject for another day.)

Make no mistake about it Daesh/ISIS/ISIL will be vanquished. That is what we have learned from history.