Posted on 08/13/2014 9:36:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
The hawks (including me) were wrong about a lot, but some got one thing right. It's going to be a long war.
In the early days after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about a "clash of civilizations" and a long "existential struggle" facing the West. I once asked the late Christopher Hitchens what he felt on that terrible day, and he said he felt no small amount of joy. Not for the suffering and death, but for the fact that the West finally had been awakened to the terrible but necessary struggle before us.
And for a time, many liberals bought into the idea that America was heading into a generational struggle with jihadism. There were a slew of books on the subject. Peter Beinart, for instance, wrote "The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again." As the subtitle suggests, there was a lot of partisan mischief in his argument, but it rested on the premise that liberals must accept that "Islamic totalitarianism" -- his phrase -- has replaced communism as our enemy. On this, at least, Beinart and company, briefly agreed with George W. Bush that the war against "Islamic fascists" (Bush's term) was the "decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century."
That consensus evaporated in the hot rage ignited by the Iraq war. By the time President Obama was elected, even the war in Afghanistan -- once the good war according to most Iraq war critics -- had become an emotional albatross. Tellingly, among Obama's first executive orders was one to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay as quickly as possible.
This was a triumph for the new enlightened consensus that the war on terror wasn't really a war at all. In 2007, retired Gen. Wesley Clark co-authored an op-ed for the New York Times ridiculing the idea that Al Qaeda was a military enemy. "Labeling its members as combatants elevates its cause and gives Al Qaeda an undeserved status," he argued. The "more appropriate designation for terrorists is not 'unlawful combatant' but the one long used by the United States: criminal."
Although Obama has tried to move captured terrorists into the domestic criminal justice system, to his credit, he never fully bought into this argument. Still, he cast terrorism as a manageable problem for the experts, not a civilizational struggle. Zeus-like, he personally went over his kill lists, selecting which enemies should be dispatched with a drone strike or, in the case of Osama bin Laden, the furies of SEAL Team 6.
When new threats emerged, the White House dismissed them with the whitewash that "core Al Qaeda" was "on the run." All pretenders to Al Qaeda's mantle were little more than a "jayvee" squad, as Obama put it. It's OK to slumber again was the message.
One jayvee squad -- the self-styled Islamic State formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS -- now controls the territorial equivalent of Britain and is one of the best-equipped and ideologically committed military forces in the Middle East. Everyday jihadis -- many with Western passports -- enlist in the struggle to create a global caliphate while the "Muslim street" from Turkey to Saudi Arabia follows the Islamic State like a sports team.
The Islamic State's atrocities are too numerous and too horrible to list here. It includes rape and slavery, religious cleansing, mass murder, public crucifixions and beheadings. Over the weekend, an Iraq official said that the Islamic State had killed at least 500 Iraqi Yazidis, burying some alive, including women and children. The group is only too happy to tweet about all of it.
Watch Vice TV's reports from Islamic State-controlled parts of Syria and you will quickly see how the word "criminal" is morally, logically and strategically inadequate. They indoctrinate children to become jihadists and suicide bombers. They vow to fly their black flag over the White House.
Pentagon officials told NBC's Jim Miklaszewski that they see the Islamic State as a "10- to 20-year challenge." I hope that's pessimistic. But it's simply realistic that the ideological agenda driving these jihadis will present a challenge for far longer than that.
No one in the West wants a generational struggle with jihadism any more than Israel wants perpetual war with Hamas in Gaza. The problem is the enemy always gets a vote. It just may be that the Middle East will become the West's Gaza. And, so far, nobody has a good answer for what to do about it.
Yes indeed. With Obama welcoming his cohorts in the Muslim Brotherhood into the White Hut, with Obama and his Rama lama ding dong dinners, with Obama and his anti-Christian/pro muslim rhetoric, with Obama and his open borders allowing God knows how many muzzies in, with etc. etc....
We will soon have issues like Europe now faces with riots and everything.
But you need the will to do it and the guts, something this country sadly lacks.
Logically, under the separation of powers doctrine, officers of the court like lawyers (GWB was an MBA, I know) should be barred from both the Legislative and the Executive branches.
No thanks to current and past “leadership”.
Exactly. We need to change our expectations.
Civilians will die. Children will die. Innocents will die.
In order to beat an “idea” you need to give them a better idea. You need to allow them the freedom to worship who they want. But...and this is the but we are missing—the second they try to impose their will on others, they feel the wrath of everyone.
But that will never happen until our civilization has become so uncivilized that we have no choice.
What is more likely is that the US, as it’s formed today, will lose the birthdate race. Europe will cease to exist as it is in twenty years. We are a couple of decades behind them.
Some people aren't listening:
Birthdate= birth rate.
War against Islam (which is necessarily terrorist, superiorist, and totalitarian) will be going on long after I’m dead, and I’m 52.
Why do you consider Shock and Awe to be a boondoggle?
It took the Brits from 1835 until 1871 to exterminate the Thugee Cult of India. I don’t see this as being any different. It’s going to take several decades to eradicate the feral beasts.
It doesn’t have to be a long war. Just. . . take the handcuffs off, ignore the Press and the Euros and the whiny Libprogs, and let the troops to the voodoo, that they do, so well.
We don’t go in to win hearts and minds. We go in to kill the enemy, and let God sort them out. . .
I totally agree. But certain Islamic allies of the west would absolutely resist. So, a starting point & one way to do it could be to get key Islamic countries (Turkey, S. Arabia, Indonesia, all the Gulf Sheikhdoms, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia) to actively take part in fighting the current IS situation in Iraq. I mean beyond words. After 9/11 all I can recall is the US, Britain & really only western countries & their leaders condemned the act & tried to differentiate between moderate vs radical, militant, etc Islam. The Islamic leaders mostly & publicly remained silent. I found that very strange.
At least 25 of our 44 presidents have been lawyers.
“It would be shorter if we would quit funding them. We need a strong advocate of Israel in the White House.”
Precise, and totally correct.
GWB started us off on the wrong track, by claiming that Islam is a religion of peace. Yes, he knew it wasn't, but he seemed to think that we could convert the violent jihadis to a more benign form and declare victory, without having to confront the billion muslims directly. I think we have now seen enough evidence that that will not work.
The only thing that will stop the jihad is when the muslims lose faith. The only thing that will make them lose faith is to confront the religion of islam. It is the least defendable of religions, and only gets by on thuggery. Make jihadis confront islam. Fighting them with arms while telling them that we respect their religion and that their religion is valid doesn't work.
The campaign against the Thugee lasted from 1822 to 1841.
http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Secret-Societies/The-Thuggee.html
It took a long time to get a handle on the oil dependency but we're nearly there, no thanks to the current administration. But four decades of funding and propaganda support for this, and the Soviets as well had a lion's share of the blame, have left the world with too much money and too many weapons in the hands of burn-the-world religious psychotics.
There is simply no negotiation possible. These are not reasonable people, they can't be bought off with concessions, they can't be lived with. One of the principal advantages of the Iraq conflict was that we could choose the ground on which to fight them. That we gave up for the illusion of peace.
At the moment they have the inestimable advantage of military initiative - they get to choose the where and when of the fight. If U.S. strategists have determined that a foreign field is too difficult and expensive, then we must accept that the fight will be on our grounds and their terms, and prepare for that. Because they want a fight and have the means to force one, as we see before us now.
JC will be back shortly to finish the job...
If America has a Sulla, he should step up to the plate.
It’s time to eliminate our 21st C. Mithridates.
So do I, also I believe we are going to get hit right here at home and soon, and I believe it will be much more than shooting up a mall.
They want to hit us and make a statement, more in line like 9-11 was suppose to be, but parts of it fell apart.
They will nuke us if they can pull it off, mass destruction and death is their goal.
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