It’s been widely reported that State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on MSNBC about defeating ISIS that “we cannot win this war by killing them, we cannot kill our way out of this war.”  She doubled down on her error by stating we should “go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups’ – including ‘lack of opportunity for jobs.”

I try not to dog pile on sheer stupidity but the comment is illustrative of the state of mind of an administration that can’t use words like “terrorism” or “radical Islam”.  The enemy is not traveling to Syria/Iraq for a job.  The ideological draw is what is creating the largest concentration of radical Islamists in modern history.  As for the effectiveness of death on defeating ideology one has to look no further to our approach to fascism in WWII.

This and the accompanying logic like stating when one’s going to withdraw simultaneously with announcing a surge, overly restrictive ROE or pursuing a use of force authorization that is both limited in time and scope are indicative of why it’s going to be a long two years and things will be getting much worse.