Chelsea Manning, the U.S. soldier currently serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking government documents to WikiLeaks, wrote a column for The Guardian criticizing Obama's approach to ISIS. \"Based on my experience as an all-source analyst in Iraq during the organization's relative infancy, ISIS cannot be defeated by bombs and bullets,\" she writes. <\/p>\n
Manning wrote the article from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she's in military custody. She explains: <\/p>\n
Attacking ISIS directly, by air strikes or special operations forces, is a very tempting option available to policymakers, with immediate (but not always good) results. Unfortunately, when the west fights fire with fire, we feed into a cycle of outrage, recruitment, organizing and even more fighting that goes back decades. This is exactly what happened in Iraq during the height of a civil war in 2006 and 2007, and it can only be expected to occur again. <\/p>\n
Manning recommends a policy of containment instead: \"Let ISIS succeed in setting up a failed 'state'in a contained area and over a long enough period of time to prove itself unpopular and unable to govern. This might begin to discredit the leadership and ideology of ISIS for good.\" <\/p>\n
This is the first time she's spoken out since entering custody. She's in the process of appealing her sentence. <\/p>\n
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