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.
From your link...and thanks for it! Important to understand...
General Mayville was clear that US air operations so far have had minimal impact on the Islamic State’s operations in northern Iraq. He gave a “ballpark figure” of the number of sorties a day as “between 50 and 60.” ......Mayville is clear that he does not believe the US air campaign in its current form will have a strategic affect on the Islamic State’s operations in northern Iraq, let alone elsewhere in Iraq and Syria, where the group has made significant gains over the past year.
The general notes that the Islamic State forces in areas where the US is operating have begun to change their tactics somewhat by dispersing their fighters and hiding among the local population. This has made US targeting of the group even more difficult, he notes.
“[O]ne of the things that we have seen with the ISIL forces is that where they have been in the open, they are now starting to dissipate and to hide amongst the people,” he said.
I’m very concerned about the threat posed by ISIL in Iraq and in the region. They’re very ‘well-organized’. They are very ‘well-equipped’. They ‘coordinate their operations’. And they have thus far shown the ability to attack on multiple axes..... This is not insignificant.
Breaking on Fox”...
Hamas broke the ceasefire and shot rockets into Israel. Remains to be seen how Israel will respond Ceasefire was to be over after midnight tonight.
The Shites and Sunni's will unite against us if we go too far over there....which I think is why we don't go in there both guns firing. This administration wants them Represented in their Governance..but are blind to the fact Shites and Sunni's will always fight each other for dominance.
Maliki began sleeping with Iran very soon after the Government was formulated.....it was not hard to see where that would end once we left..and Obama knew as much.
------------------------------->
Can't we use "Rules for Radicals" against them or apply Sun Tsu's Art of War?
Not going to happen....for most are supportive of the Caliphate being formed....and as much support it regardless of the violent ISIS in positioning the ME for it. Their battle is between Iran and Saudi on who will be the head hancho once the Caliphate is in place.
You will not be able to discredit Islam to the Moslems...efforts to do so simply fuels their objective and determined efforts to resist and fight harder.. They see any attack against Islam as a “sign” they are doing what they are suppose to be doing.
Look at their funeral procession that was rigged with a bomb which blew up and killed many......in a breath they were yelling Allah Akbar....just the sound of explosions has them 'wired' to respond in celebration no matter if it's their own who get blown to smithereens!
They are a controlled, heavily indoctrinated death cult population who glories in death and torturous practices against others and themselves. The rob their children from infancy of the personality and life God intended them to otherwise have and fill them with hatred and a militant mindset toward others outside Islam.....which is why even the children were taken out in Biblical times...... ( IMO God ordered that done as he took these wee ones home to himself to spare them of the life they would otherwise have within the pagan doctrines and brutality lived at that time.)
Minds/Hearts cannot be changed within Islam without the intervention of God changing their hearts and minds....and the process in doing so often takes years for individuals who do come away...and can often be triggered in the right circumstances if they don't stay the course.
This war is going to escalate, though there may be times of withdrawing from as History shows, but Islam never leaves their objective....nor their life... which Islam is one in the same for them.
The Christian Crusades came AFTER Islam’s crusades, crusades which were hallmarked by slaughter of populations not just enemy soldiers. The latest variant of this evil incarnate is just doing what their crusades did before, slaughter.
Iran was the first country that lay blocking the path of these bloodthirsty maniacs who were out to impose their Islamic creed on all those who succumbed to their ruthless march.
The Persians (and the Byzantines) were both unfit to defeat the Muslim Arabs, as till then in human history nowhere had a people been worked into a frenzy to go out defeat the adversary and convert the defeated and weak to a creed that imposed the same paranoia of converting still others who were unfortunate and weak to fall before the bloodthirsty Islamic Jihad.
Till the rise of the murderous creed of Islam, the world had known only imperial conquests, where the conqueror, be he Alexander, Cyrus, Julius Caesar, Hannibal or any other, the war took place between the opposing armies. The fate of the battle was decided on the battlefield alone..... The common people, the unarmed civilians ....were not in danger of a victorious adversary imposing anything more than new taxes and new administrators.
How Islam changed the rules of warfare making the entire civilian population of a defeated adversary, into a victim of tyranny
The Muslim Arabs hounds who set their eyes on Persia (and the rest of the world) wanted not just to conquer land and impose new administrators and taxes,.... but they wanted to impose a creed on the Persians and make them as bloodthirsty in turn, to attack, other parts of the world..... Those who fell victim to the swords of the Jihadis could only save their lives by becoming Muslims, and in turn themselves become bloodthirsty.
http://www.historyofjihad.org/persia.html
In the 11th cent. AD when Europe was just beginning to emerge into life from the womb of Christendom and Western Civilization as we know it was about to be born, it was threatened and nearly destroyed before blossoming by the threat of Islam. In its infancy , the people had the faith and conviction to fight for its life-even to the point of starting the Peasant’s Crusade. Now 1000 years later, faced with the same threat, we no longer have the faith to inspire a people to defend their own civilization. We are too busy talking about our own precious “rights”, and have forgotten or deny the source from which our own rights derive. The vigor of Youth has been supplanted by the senility of Old Age.
First, one needs to know more about the animal behavior of the wild ass: It knows no spouse or loyalty and hides from the light (ref "Irad" in Gen. 4:18). Then recall that the root for "hand" (yud dalet) is the same as what it is to "know" or to procreate and can literally mean the male phallus. Ishmael's "face" (panim) means that his FEATURES will be in every man, as he will interbreed with them which is why he dwells in their tents. Remember too that the "angel" of the Lord (you know, the one that Hagar names GOD in v.13) had promised that Ismael's descendants would be a multitude without number in v. 16:10. Yes, IMO, the angel in this story is the Adversary, Ha Satan, who raises up the children of Ishmael because Hagar named him "yud-hey-vav-hey." It is a symmetry with the covenant between G_d and Abraham that is not to be missed.
The lessons OF HISTORY should tell us the depravity of the enemy we face in the Muslims an enemy who dances on corpses, displays body parts as souvenirs, who distributes candy to celebrate death of an adversary..... Against such a ghoulish adversary, we are fully within our rights to use nuclear weapons to reduce the enemy to radioactive dust across the entire swath of the Islamic crescent from Morocco through Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Arabia, Iran, Pakistan up to Malaysia and the Indonesian archipelago.
But we all know this isn’t going to happen until they make make a run for Israel in that final battle.
....”the covenant between G_d and Abraham that is not to be missed”...
Oh God is not finished with Israel by any means...his promises to them have yet to be fulfilled as a nation. Although they will again have to go through some very difficult times to turn them as a nation to Him...and they will...but they will also suffer before that time.
BTW...with all that’s happening we should always be mindful of Israel. ..without them there would be no Christianity nor Messiah.....and mankind overall would have no hope whatsoever.
Ever notice how ISIS/al Qaeda don't plan any activities for Texas? Their historians know what happened to the Karankawa Indians, for starters.
Oh, I’m sure we could get Hearts and Minds from ISIS terrorists.
As mounted trophies for the wall. . .
Abraham Lincoln said (paraphrased) “This nation cannot survive half-slave and half-free. It must eventually become all-slave or all-free”.
The world cannot survive half-Muslim and half-non-Muslim.
It must eventually become all-Muslim or all-non-Muslim.
Interpret that how you will.
Do you wish to become Muslim?
I’ll see your 2 companies of Marines and raise you 1 Trident ballistic missile submarine’s worth of W88s.
30 minutes or less.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.