According to press reports, an elite U.S. Special Forces unit has been tasked with hunting down "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but the elusive and secretive Baghdadi is reportedly hiding somewhere in Syria.

Obama has also ordered reconnaissance flights over Syria, but the United States lacks the intelligence to effectively bomb IS. He has rejected the Syrian government's offer to jointly fight the jihadists and has vowed to continue backing Syrian rebels.

Nearly all these actions are based on ad hoc decisions, which are inconsistent and self-contradictory.

The situation in northern Iraq, northern and eastern Syria and the entire Middle East is extremely complex. IS (which is still usually referred to as ISIS -- Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, which is the Arabic name for the Levant) is by no means the only jihadist force fighting in northern and western Iraq. There are many others, including Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam); the Military Council of the Tribes of Iraq, which is composed of as many as eight tribes; the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, a group that claims to have Shiite and Kurd members; and many Sunni Ba'athists, formerly loyal to Saddam Hussein.

These groups are now fighting together. But there are deep differences amongst them, and it is almost certain that they will eventually split.

This problem seems to offer no purely military solution, but it does have an important political component: access to government revenue and a say in decision making. IS has Sunni support at the moment because of the misguided sectarian policies of the Iraqi government.

So the first step should be to form a truly inclusive Iraqi government, which allows for the fair sharing of oil revenue and the reversal of counter-productive de-Ba'athification policies in order to win over the Sunnis and isolate the Islamic State.

The United States must overcome its narrow-minded prejudice and try to work together with the right partners. But such an approach requires true political wisdom on the part of American leaders, of which there is little evidence.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.ccgp-fushun.com/opinion/zhaojinglun.htm

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