--- title: ISIS: The U.S. Needs a New Yardstick for a New Kind of War description: America keeps measuring progress on a battlefield that no longer exists canonical: https://time.com/3681754/isis-isil-us-pentagon-hagel-mccain/ author: Mark Thompson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-25T23:06:01.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:01.508Z article:section: Politics og:title: The U.S. Needs a New Yardstick for a New Kind of War og:description: America keeps measuring progress on a battlefield that no longer exists og:url: https://time.com/3681754/isis-isil-us-pentagon-hagel-mccain/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt43a4256e78a03ee6/69877bc35f570f68e5b14e51/462071058.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 594 og:image:height: 334 og:image:alt: IRAQ-CONFLICT og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The U.S. Needs a New Yardstick for a New Kind of War twitter:description: America keeps measuring progress on a battlefield that no longer exists twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt43a4256e78a03ee6/69877bc35f570f68e5b14e51/462071058.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The U.S. Needs a New Yardstick for a New Kind of War > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: The Brief: Rising Religious Tensions in Western Europe [Watch (HLS stream): The Brief: Rising Religious Tensions in Western Europe](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/DqxaDBme.m3u8) (2:50)  _Published 2015-01-08. Time's Ben Goldberger sits down with Foreign Editor Bryan Walsh to understand why some western European countries are experiencing Islamaphobia._ by [Mark Thompson](https://time.com/author/mark-thompson/) ## Mark Thompson Jan 25, 2015 11:06 PM UTC  Buildings burn Saturday during a military operation launched by the Iraqi army to retake positions held by Islamic State outside the village Sharween, north of Baghdad. Buildings burn Saturday during a military operation launched by the Iraqi army to retake positions held by Islamic State outside the village Sharween, north of Baghdad. YOUNIS AL-BAYATI / AFP / Getty Images by [Mark Thompson](https://time.com/author/mark-thompson/) ## Mark Thompson Jan 25, 2015 11:06 PM UTC Body counts are never a good a yardstick for measuring progress in a war of ideas. That’s why the Pentagon freaked out Thursday when [Stuart Jones](http://iraq.usembassy.gov/ambassador.html), the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, [told](http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/01/22/Air-strikes-killed-6-000-ISIS-fighters-U-S-ambassador.html) the Al Arabiya News Channel that America and its allies “have now killed more than 6,000 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq.” The first counter-fire came, within hours, from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. “I was in a war where there was a lot of body counts every day,” the outgoing defense chief, who served as an Army sergeant in the Vietnam War, [said](http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5574) in one of his most pungent observations in his two years on the job. “And we lost that war.” Hagel’s spokesman piled on Friday. “It’s not a metric that we’re going to hang our hat on when it comes to talking to the success of this strategy,” Rear Admiral John Kirby [said](http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5575) of the Pentagon’s internal body-count estimate. “This is not a uniformed army with identification cards and recruiting posters.” While Ambassador Jones added that the 6,000 number was “not so important” in the overall scheme of things, the catnip was out of the bag. That’s because Americans, impatient over wars that drag on (like Hagel’s Vietnam and George W. Bush’s Afghanistan and Iraq), crave measurements that suggest progress. Unfortunately, that metric mindset has little utility in wars against ideology. “I don’t know whether 6,000 \[ISIS\] people have been killed or not,” California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, [told](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-january-25-2015-mcdonough-mccain-feinstein/) CBS’s _Face the Nation_ on Sunday. “But that is not going to do it.” That’s because conflicts like the one now underway against the Islamist fundamentalism represented by the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) are not constrained by national boundaries, or the national pressure points that have traditionally been the trigger of wars (and the foundation of ending them) among states. Without the trappings of formal government—a capital, commerce, standing armies—non-state actors like ISIS or al-Qaeda deny military powers like the U.S. the kinds of targets they prefer. Their allegiance to ideology—be it theology or something else—takes away the fulcrum that victors used to leverage to bring wars to an end. Industrial powers created industrial militaries, where rear-echelon bean-counters could tote up tanks, ball-bearing factories and troops destroyed—and thereby chart progress, or the lack thereof. But ideological war isn’t industrial in scope. Instead, it’s more like information warfare, where ideas, shared online, create alliances that ripple across borders and oceans. It took a Detroit to build an industrial arsenal of democracy, with each weapon requiring dollars and sweat to assemble. Today, it merely takes a keyboard to build an ideological alliance, each member a low-cost addition requiring little more than fervor and an Internet connection. The Administration of George W. Bush concluded the way to prevail after the 9/11 attacks was to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. Following wars that eventually will cost $3 trillion or more, and at least 6,845 American lives, his successor has decided not to tag along. Instead, President Barack Obama has told the nations involved—those with the most at risk—to step up to the plate to do the fighting, with the U.S. filling the role of best supporting actor. Some see such a policy as too timid. “The U.S. efforts have always been halfhearted, half-resourced and focused on exit strategies rather than on success,” [says](http://time.com/3667367/charlie-hebdo-yemen/) David Sedney, who ran the Pentagon office responsible for Afghanistan, Pakistan and central Asia from 2009 to 2013\. “We always want to have an exit, and the problem with real life is there’s no exit.” He argues that the U.S. needs to launch nation-building strategies in failed states that currently serve as incubators for ISIS and other groups. Politicians aren’t calling for such radical action. But some believe the U.S. needs to step up the fight. “We need more boots on the ground,” Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, the new chairman of the Armed Services Committee, [told](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-january-25-2015-mcdonough-mccain-feinstein/) CBS on Sunday. “I know that is a tough thing to say and a tough thing for Americans to swallow, but it doesn’t mean the 82nd Airborne. It means forward air controllers. It means special forces. It means intelligence and it means other capabilities.” The U.S., McCain said, can’t simply direct wars against ISIS and similar foes from relative safety behind the front lines. “For \[the Administration\] to say, ‘we expect \[Iraq and Yemen\] to do it on their own,’ they’re not doing it on their own,” he said. “And they are losing.” The last clear victory scored by the U.S. military was against Iraq in 1991, led by President George H.W. Bush, a Cold War commander-in-chief. It was a bespoke war tailor-made for the Pentagon: Iraq’s massive army stormed into Kuwait, occupied it, and waited for the U.S. and its allies to drive it out. The world watched that conflict and decided, given Washington’s overwhelming advantages in that kind of war, not to fight it again. Unfortunately, too many Americans seem unaware that the rules have changed. So they continue to want to measure progress in today’s conflicts with yesterday’s yardsticks. But such yearnings are doomed. Persistence and will, not body bags, are the keys to winning these kinds of wars. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] The deadly attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has shined a glaring spotlight on the growing religious tensions in Western Europe. I spoke with Times Foreign Editor, Brian Walsh, to better understand what's going on. So, this attack was shocking, but it didn't exist in a vacuum. What is the climate in France that lead to. to this The climate in France has really become increasingly fevered in recent months and years actually. There have been a number of lone wolf attacks leading up to this one. There was actually a few where people actually ran their cars into French citizens claiming they were inspired by, by ISIS. So that's sort of out there right now. The French had known that was a possibility, but. What they are very concerned about is that there are something like 1, 400 French citizens who have gone to fight in Iraq and Syria. They may have joined ISIS. They may have joined some of the other rebel groups there. And while we are still trying to figure out the details of this actual attack. It seems very clear from the video we've seen so far that these are guys who knew what they were doing. Almost every European country is worried about what's gonna happen when their citizens who've gone off to fight jihad come back home. I mean, I think they, they would say people have every right to be worried about what's gonna happen. You know, can you keep me safe? [ NOISE ] Can you keep me safe if you do see radicals returning. And there's a number of different ways to deal with this, you know, different countries in Europe are sort of looking at, what do we do when our citizens come back, should we not let them back, which is something that Britain is considering. In countries like Finland actually, they are trying to experiment with, do we, you know, how do we decontaminate them, de- radicalize them. You will need strategies like that, I think, to make people feel that. This is something that, that they, they don't have to worry about, necessarily. And, and right now I don't think anyone has a handle on it. And the very fact that, while we could've saw elements of these kind of attacks coming up, no one was ready. No one was seeing this in advance. Even though this, this magazine was a well known target. It had been targeted before. And yet, here was something that was incredibly well carried out. Very sophisticated. And I think people are very worried, and I would be very worried, actually, that you'll see more of this. And why are those fears particularly prevalent in Western Europe as opposed to other nations? Well, I think in that case, you have, you have a relatively high Islamic population. You have a lot of sort of feeling a growing amount of Nationalism, anti- Muslim feeling. In these countries. In Germany, actually just in recent weeks, there've been a number of rallies, really sort of against Muslims, against immigrants. And then when you have an even like this, a lot of people will be worried will this actually increase that, those fears, increase that anger all the more. Thanks for watching. And for the latest news and analysis in this fast moving story, go to Time. com. I'm Ben Goldberger, and you've been briefed. 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