The president has a plan to deal with ISIS/Daesh and it’s called strangulation. In other words, it means depriving the enemy of the means to wage war. The trouble is, no one wants to hear that plan so they say he doesn’t have one.

History gives us the precedent. Early in the Civil War, Gen. Winfield Scott proposed a strategy called the Anaconda Plan. He would have blockaded all southern ports and the Mississippi River, depriving the enemy both of civilian necessities and the equipment to wage war — items they were unable to produce themselves.

The men and leaders, blinded by their anger, rejected it. They wanted to destroy the enemy.

Scott’s plan might have saved 650,000 lives. A similar plan, later implemented by Grant and Sherman, sapped the South’s will to fight and won the war.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Strangulation is slower but more effective and less costly.

Marilyn Burgess, Leeds