As long as ISIS sticks to the battle plan of Japan in SE Asia 1941-42, they will keep growing and keep winning.
The plan mixes extreme brutality, rape, terror, and indifference to casualties.
It worked for Genghis Khan, it worked for Tamurlane, it worked for Saladin, it worked for the Einsatzgruppen, it worked for Japan, and it will work for ISIS as well.
The counter to this enemy tactic is also well understood, as Halsey, Nimitz, Patton, Zhukov, and the Crusaders well knew and as, alas, we do not.
Here’s Patton’s famous prescription: “rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts...”
As long as no one fights ISIS the way they fight, they will win. It’s not going to be a “hundred year war”, because if we keep fighting the way we are, they will conquer us long before that.
Patton was the best.