KILLING ISIS
My driver moves slowly through the blasted empty streets of Sirte, Libya. Here, in this once prosperous coast town, home to Gaddafi and now ISIS, it’s difficult to tell friend from foe. Bullet-pocked and bomb-shattered buildings seem empty. Clusters of fighters in plain-clothes wave while armored bulldozers roar by. As we creep toward the ocean, as far as the walls of shipping containers and earthen berms allow us, a familiar crack of a Dragunov bullet splits the air. My driver stops dead in the middle of an exposed intersection, somehow wondering if it was friend or foe. Fighters under cover wave us to get the hell out of the street. When we get behind their RPG-blasted wall, one of the fighters wants to know if I can fix him up with an American bride … using crude body motions in case I didn’t get his point.
ISIS, ISIL, IS, or as the locals call them “Daesh,” really began with our covert war against the Soviets. Afghan war veteran Abu Musab al-Zarqawi returned to Jordan in 1999. His exposure to other Arab fighters, brutal death, and Mujahedeen tactics spawned a number of violent Sunni gangs that ultimately became ISIS. Our secret war with ISIS began in earnest in Iraq in 2004 with Joint Special Operations Command bringing on General Stanley McChrystal and his intelligence
