Interesting article.

Here's why the ISIS plans won't work as the article describes how ISIS is planning:

ISIS has basically five things
going for them:

(1) A lot of oil money, (2) a lot of desert no one wants to try to live in, (3) a lot of young men without much to do except live off the oil money, (4) a totally, world-class, grand-champion, one of a kind wacko leader -- calling that guy a wacko is an insult to all the ordinary wackos there have ever been, and (5) by far the most important of the 5, the humanitarian desire of the Western countries to avoid civilian casualties.

But ISIS doesn't "avoid civilian casualties", and the Western countries have a very long and/or significant history of not avoiding civilian casualties. That is, still, now, if the West wants, then it can also quit avoiding civilian casualties.

E.g., the US military fought hard and brilliantly, and took casualties and deaths, fighting in Fallujah, but there was a much faster, safer, cheaper, and easier way -- just level Fallujah from the air. The US could easily have done that in time from a day, an afternoon, an hour, or a millisecond -- literally. Why not? Avoid civilian casualties.

Mean? ISIS mean? In the list of world class mean countries, if want to call ISIS a country, ISIS isn't mean. ISIS is crude, medieval, stupid.

For world class mean, the all time, unique, unchallenged grand champion, and may I have the envelope, please, yes, here it is, the US. Way, way back in honorable mention is a four way tie -- Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Stalinist Russia, and Mao's China.

Why US #1 on mean? The bomb, the atom bomb, used over Japan. Setting that aside, the B-29 and the fire bombing of Japanese cities. Setting that aside, the B-17 and the bombing of German cities including the fire storms where much of the civilian population was converted into burning torches -- shortest way to put it. Horror that can only be tolerated from 20,000 feet up or higher. The best thing those German people had going for them was that they could die only once and, on a night of a fire storm, hopefully, likely quickly. One of the worst horrors in the history of the planet.

For more, and more recently, in a 6 week air campaign and a 100 hour ground campaign, General Schwarzkopf brought to unconditional surrender Saddam's army, the fourth largest army in the world, with 7 million men under arms. Mean? IIRC the US had more casualties (but not deaths) from recreation, e.g., softball, than from enemy action. Soon the Iraqi air force got the message that it was not smart to fly at all (US AWACS could see them and send in F-15s) so would fly just to get away, low, slow, and to ditch in Iran.

Mean? General Schwarzkopf was asked what happened to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers in the desert next to Saudi Arabia. The answer: "They are still there."

Mean? When a US A-10 flew over the Iraqi troops, they rushed out with white flags.
What one or a few A-10s did to
the escaping Iraqi troops on the road from Kuwait City back to Iraq -- turned the whole crowded road into teeth, hair, eyes, blood, guts, big pieces made into small ones, and fires, all in just a few A-10 passes -- so shocked the world that Bush 41 rushed to stop such actions. The A-10 is one mean machine -- reduce really big pieces of metal to small ones in a few seconds. And the A-10 is long out of date -- the US has much meaner machines now.

In Gulf War I,
it went on this way, our tanks against theirs, our planes against theirs, and especially our F-117 stealth bomber against their radar and anti-aircraft artillery and missiles -- the F-117 flew through Saddam's exploding defenses, bright enough to light up the night sky, and literally never got even a single scratch. Why? The sky is a really big place; shooting blind gives really small chance of hitting anything; and against the F-117 Iraq was shooting blind. The F-117? From the Lockheed Skunk Works -- bright guys out there.

We, here in the US, have GPS, surveillance satellites, smart bombs, cruise missiles, drones, the B-2, the F-22, the M1-A1 tank, aircraft carriers (so difficult to do well the US has about all there are in the world), submarines, both attack and missile firing, etc.

Mean? The US is mean, unique, world-class mean.

Net, without (5), that is, the determination of the US to avoid civilian casualties, the US could "wipe the desert clean" (from an Indiana Jones movie?) of ISIS in a day, much faster if we were in a hurry. E.g., all within about 30 minutes of the ISIS areas, several US SSBNs, each with about 16 missiles, each missile with several warheads, each warhead with, IIRC, ballpark 330 KT of exploding fusion energy.

The US has been willing to kill enemy civilians in the past and can be again in the future. So far, the US is still being a nice guy -- we just blew up some ISIS oil trucks, but first we dropped leaflets telling the civilians to get out of the way.

France? "They are a funny race", but they are no joke: Great wine, cheese, bread, food, really pretty, world class feminine young women, great art, and more. And, in pure and applied mathematics, both physical and medical science, philosophy, etc. France has a very long history of world-class excellence. Since WWII, some of the best mathematicians have been French -- e.g., Bourbaki.
My favorite is J. Neveu.

In technical excellence, the French are no joke. They are darned good at making both airplanes and working with nuclear materials, both the electricity generating kind and the exploding kind.

Net, anytime France wants to be "merciless" to ISIS, France can wipe the desert clean of ISIS in an hour.

France is a member of NATO. Maybe that old organization looks like a comedy act, but without firing a single serious shot it's kept the peace in Europe since 1945 or so. Other members include Germany and England and, of course, the US.

Basically, ISIS attacked NATO; definitely a Darwin award on the way. As from Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping tiger and fill him with a terrible resolve." Yup.

If NATO were a country, then it would be by a wide margin the meanest in the solar system.

ISIS can't make glass or matches but attacked NATO? Did I mention wacko?

As soon as, as in no more than a day, the West is willing to kill ISIS civilians, there will be no more ISIS -- in the ISIS areas no more buildings, oil infrastructure, vehicles, tents, camels, flocks, or people. None. The desert wiped clean. The West has killed plenty of civilians before and can do it again, especially against an enemy eager to kill civilians.

For me, IIRC ISIS has said that they intend to get a nuke bomb and explode it against the US. They would likely aim for Wall Street, and I'm just 70 miles north of there. They could hurt me. 'Nuff for me -- wipe the desert clean.