Excerpts:

To begin with, this is not simply a fight against the Islamic State. In fact, the key center of gravity in this campaign is to create something approaching a unified Iraq that is not dependent on Iran, or divided into Arab Shi’ite, Arab Sunni, and Kurd.  There can be no meaningful military victory in Iraq without Iraqi political stability, and changes in the quality and equity of governance that offer every major faction hope and an incentive to cooperate. Moreover, there can be no meaningful military victory unless these changes create a structure of Iraqi security forces that can win back and then secure all of the country.

(the above statement is probably one of the best insights which has been lost in all the discussion about boots on the ground - I think the administration's emphasis on no boots on the ground may go down in history as one of the bigger strategic communications miscalculations.)

Iraq still has effective combat units in spite of Maliki, but it is going to need forward Special Forces, ranger-type troops, and other teams of experts to help coordinate, train, and link ground and air power. These need to be embedded at the combat unit level, they need to be armed, they need to be capable of self-defense, and they need to be prepared to take casualties and have medical aid.

...

Doing it their way—rather than trying to make them do it our way in spite of cost and major cultural differences—is critical. However, helping them change “doing it their way” to deal with maneuver, combined operations, land-air warfare, and develop leadership in complex operations is critical. This can only be done forward and in combat. “Force generation” in the rear is equally necessary, but is never enough. It does take a limited number of U.S. “boots of the ground” that will effectively be in combat to make the difference.

Conclusion:

This is the plan and the risk the administration should have presented to Congress from the start. This is the level of U.S. involvement in Iraq the President should have had the courage to explain and defend. This is the level of U.S. “boots on the ground” the Congress needs to understand, debate, support, and properly resource. The political risks already are high enough. Trying to make the Iraqi side of the campaign work on the basis of air strikes and force generators and enablers on the ground that can’t go forward and can’t be where it will count most is a recipe for failure.

I think what Dr. Cordesman has outlined is the strategy that both the Pentagon and the President want.  I think the President's advisers may have counseled what might look like a bait and switch when this turns out to be the strategy that we will execute in the months to come.  But we have tried so hard to address the perception of war-weariness and tried to prevent the domestic political backlash that it is going to get harder and harder to execute an agile strategy to do much of what Dr. Cordesman recommends.  Again, I know that politics trumps all - except leadership.  Sometimes leadership needs to trump politics in order to do what is right.

One thing about advisers forward with combat troops and air power.  Yes our Air Force and Naval Aviators can hit what they are aiming for and with their advanced targeting capabilities may not need the kind of support from the ground that has been necessary in the past.  What US advisers on the ground are really needed for is to advise and help the Iraqi ground forces to maneuver and exploit the effects of air power.  Air power alone won't do the job. The ground force cannot do the job if it is not synched with air power.  The Iraqis on their own are not capable of orchestrating and coordinating their ground operations with our air power.  Experts are needed for that. Therefore we need US forces forward.

Iraq, Syria, and the Islamic State: The “Boots on the Ground” Fallacy

http://csis.org/publication/iraq-syria-and-islamic-state-boots-ground-fallacy

• 
  By Anthony H. Cordesman
  SEP 19, 2014
  
  
  There are times the United States does not need an enemy in going to war. It poses enough of a threat to itself without any foreign help. The current debate over ground troops in Iraq and Syria threatens to be yet another case in point, compounding the American threats to America that have done so much damage in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the earlier fighting in Iraq.

  The Islamic State is Not the Center of Gravity, and the Politics of Iraqi Unity are More Critical Than the Fighting

  To begin with, this is not simply a fight against the Islamic State. In fact, the key center of gravity in this campaign is to create something approaching a unified Iraq that is not dependent on Iran, or divided into Arab Shi’ite, Arab Sunni, and Kurd.  There can be no meaningful military victory in Iraq without Iraqi political stability, and changes in the quality and equity of governance that offer every major faction hope and an incentive to cooperate. Moreover, there can be no meaningful military victory unless these changes create a structure of Iraqi security forces that can win back and then secure all of the country.

  It is not a fight directed at the Islamic State alone in Syria. Even the best outcome in degrading and destroying the Islamic State will not produce a broad political victory against violent Islamic extremism. It will not defeat such extremism in Iraq or Syria, only suppress it to the extent to which key ethnic and sectarian factions find a better alternative, and the broader threat of violent religious extremism will almost certainly continue to grow in the rest of the Islamic world.

  More seriously, it will leave Syria divided between an Assad regime that has managed to create even more casualties, human suffering, and repression than the Islamic State, and retake control of something like 65-70% of Syria’s population while leaving divided and sometime warring rebel factions in the east. The refugee and internally displaced persons crisis that the UN now estimates puts some nine million Syrians at risk will remain, and even the best run U.S. and allied Arab effort to create an effective political and military alternative will take years to build and win.

  These are the key goals and realities that will shape the fight against the Islamic State, and the much broader strategic objectives the United States has in Iraq and Syria. They also, however, place some key limits on the kind of U.S. ground presence that will help achieve them. This is not 2003-2011. The United States is not a conquering or occupying state, and it must now intervene in a state that Maliki divided, undermined, and drove into civil war.

  History will have to judge whether Maliki was worse than Saddam Hussein, but any use of U.S. ground troops must take account of the reality that any major U.S. combat units sent into today’s Iraq would inevitably become caught up in the civil war Maliki triggered after 2011, and find it impossible not to become caught up in the struggles between Arab Sunni and Arab Shi’ite, and Arab forces and the Kurdish peshmerga. He politicized and helped corrupt the Iraqi forces, alienated the Sons of Iraq, sentenced key Sunni political leaders to death, crippled the Kurdish economy and peshmerga, used his army and police to suppress and alienate the Sunnis in the West and North, and create the power vacuum that allowed the Islamic State to win so much territory.

  There is a Strong Case Against Deploying U.S. Major Combat Units
• (Continued at the link below)
• http://csis.org/publication/iraq-syria-and-islamic-state-boots-ground-fallacy