Been reading a lot of suggestions about what to do with ISIS and other terrorists. Some want to go all in to wipe them out while others seem to think simply bringing everybody home is the answer. The best course likely lies somewhere in between. After Iraq and Afghanistan, the last thing this country is prepared for is another long occupation. Containment may really be the answer, though probably a more muscular approach than what we have been doing.

I am a believer in airpower, but not in an airpower-only approach. Boots on the ground are necessary -- but they don't have to be American boots. If the indigenous troops are up to the task, great. Tbe bombing campaign has been successful, in no small part because it supported troops on the ground who have stopped and even rolled back ISIS gains.

We will likely have to adopt the methodology of the British after their failed Afghan campaign of 1839-42. In 1839, the Brits marched into the Stan to create buffer state between their Indian colony and Russia. In the end, even the friendly government they installed in Kabul turned on them and the British were massacred as they marched out in the winter if 1842.

After that, the Brits would return to Afghanistan a few more times, but each time they would conduct short, sharp campaigns and then leave. It is a strategy we could have adopted after 9/11, not just with Afghanistan but also with Iraq, a containment strategy which would have left terrorists and other bad guys rotting on the vine, even as we conducted occasional short, sharp campaigns to keep them in their boxes.

Rather than invading Iraq in 2003, we should have strengthened the box Saddam was already in. But, this kind of containment strategy requires patience, and after ten years of containing Saddam in the 1990s, we were already losing patience. Without the requisite patience, then, would a containment strategy be any more successful than a counterinsurgency strategy?