Walk with the Devil: Evil Bargains and the Islamic State

War on the Rocks ^ | Sept. 2, 2015 | Patrick Porter

[Twotone]

“My children,” President Franklin Roosevelt pronounced in his fatherly way in November 1942, “it is permitted you in time of grave danger to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge.” It was an old Balkan proverb. The bridge of his time was the war against Nazism — barbarism without limit — allied with imperial Japan, which was carrying out an Asian holocaust of its own. The devil, that day, was Vichy France. At the price of reaching an accord with collaborator Francois Darlan, Roosevelt purchased the cooperation of French forces in North Africa, an important shift in the ground campaign.

[BenLurkin]

I have never heard that saying attributed to FDR.

[Twotone]

“To defeat it, someone will have to mount a credible, effective, and sustained ground campaign to recapture the ground it has taken. It is not a diffuse terrorist network that can be suppressed and broken up by a combination of special forces, intelligence, and police. It is not a beleaguered insurgency sheltering in caves or jungles that its opponents can marginalize through the smack of government. It is a state, backed by armed forces of at least 20,000 fighters (at conservative estimates) that commands major urban centres.”

I keep thinking about the refugees that are becoming an ever bigger problem in Europe. Maybe they should be told you will be helped on one condition: You will be taken to a military base & run through boot camp & then you will be returned to your country to fight the Islamic State. They should be willing to clean up the mess of their own country!

[kearnyirish2]

I would have thought he was referring to his alliance with the USSR (who DID NOT help in our war against Japan).

[2banana]

Don’t pay the ferryman

Until he gets you to the other side