Fighters of al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant parade at the Syrian town of Tel Abyad, near the border with Turkey January 2, 2014. REUTERS/Yaser Al-Khodor

3 Numbers That Explain Why ISIS Will Be So Hard To Destroy -- Zack Beauchamp, VOX

After President Obama announced his plan to destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), one general involved in war planning called the mission "harder than anything we've tried to do thus far in Iraq or Afghanistan," according the Washington Post. Given how tough those wars have been for the United States, that's an incredibly high bar. So what is it about the ISIS situation that makes it so very hard for the United States to solve?

Obviously, there are quite a few things that make the crisis in Iraq and Syria complicated. But there are three really important features of the ISIS crisis that make it especially complicated. Each can be represented, simply, in one number. So here are three numbers that explain the ISIS crisis — and why it's so, so difficult to resolve.

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My Comment: A sobering read.