Defense secretary tells 101st Airborne its training mission key against ISIL

Defense Secretary Ash Carter spoke recently to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell in Kentucky to outline the Pentagon’s plan to counter ISIL extremists.

Carter’s address came as the 101st gears up for a mission to Baghdad to provide training and support for local forces fighting ISIL there. Carter said the Obama administration’s plan to deal with the violent extremist group is three-pronged: Destroy ISIL’s ability to operate in Iraq and Syria, halt the spread of ISIL’s ideology to other regions and protect U.S. territory from terrorist attacks.

Carter also said it’s a job the U.S. can’t and shouldn’t undertake alone.

“I know the 101st has taken Mosul before, and you could do it again,” Carter said to the gathered soldiers. “We could deploy multiple brigades on the ground and arrive in force, but then it would likely become our fight, and our fight alone.

“Going in alone would also Americanize the conflict, giving ISIL the chance to call it a foreign occupation, persuading some of those who are resisting ISIL to fight us instead, and feeding the anti-Western story ISIL has been pushing all along as it tries to inspire acts of terror around the world," Carter said.

One of the key elements of the Obama administration’s plan to fight ISIL involves empowering and supporting local forces -- a task that will fall to the soldiers of the 101st Airborne.

“We can’t ignore this fight – and we also can’t win it entirely from the outside in,” Carter said. “That’s why our strategic approach is to help local, motivated and capable forces on the ground in every way that we can without taking their place. That’s why your mission is central to our strategy.”