re: ISIS slaughter 250 Syrian soldiers (Graphic Video)

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couldn't we forge alliances with Muslim countries and since they don't have an effective "nation-state" encourage the peaceful Muslim majority handle this problem?

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How to handle this challenge? The American, a former senior administration figure, counsels against pessimism. The Islamic State “is not nearly as strong as al-Qaeda in Iraq was in its heyday,” he noted, playing down recent reports that the militant forces contain within them fearsome elements of Saddam Hussein’s disbanded army. “We fought that army. It was not very impressive,” he noted. The Islamic State could be defeated, he said, but it would take a comprehensive and sustained strategy, much like the one that undergirded the surge in Iraq.

“The first task is political,” he said, supporting the Obama administration’s efforts to press the Iraqi government to become more inclusive. “We have more leverage now than at any time in recent years, and the administration is using it.” If this continues, the next step would be to create the most powerful and effective ground force that could take on the Islamic State — which would not be the Free Syrian Army but rather a reconstituted Iraqi army. Built, trained and equipped by the United States, “it’s actually got some very effective units. Iraqi special forces were trained in Jordan and are extremely impressive,” the American said, pointing out that it was those forces that recaptured the Mosul dam recently. It has underperformed because then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had transformed it in the past three years into a sectarian and loyalist force.

The reconstitution of Iraqi army units will require the firing of the Shiite commanders that Maliki appointed. This again mirrors the surge, during which 70 percent of Iraq’s battalion commanders were replaced to create a more inclusive and effective fighting force.

Once the Iraqi army is fighting again, the American said, it should employ the “oil spots” strategy of the surge, clearing and holding areas. But the key to that would be winning the trust of the local Sunni populations. That same approach could be used in Syria, with the Free Syrian Army using money and providing security to win over locals who oppose Assad but now ally with the Islamic State out of fear rather than conviction.

The two observers agreed on one central danger. The temptation to gain immediate military victories over the Islamic State could mean that the United States would end up tacitly partnering with the Assad regime in Syria. This would produce a short-term military gain but a long-term political disaster. “It would feed the idea that the Sunnis are embattled, that a Crusader Christian-Shiite alliance is persecuting them and that all Sunnis must resist this alien invasion,” the European diplomat said. “The key is that Sunnis must be in the lead against IS. They must be in front of the battlefield.”
The strategy that could work against the Islamic State is nothing less than a second Sunni Awakening. It’s a huge challenge but appears to be the only option with a plausible chance of success.

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