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Prepare for a Long War Against the Islamic State
Townhall.com ^ | August 13, 2014 | Jonah Goldberg

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.


TOPICS: Editorial
KEYWORDS: globaljihad; iraq; isis; islamicstate
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To: PoloSec

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.


61 posted on 08/13/2014 12:07:02 PM PDT by caww
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To: NormsRevenge

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.


62 posted on 08/13/2014 12:09:33 PM PDT by caww
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To: Gunner TLW
....”MacArthur warned us that.... “In War, there is no substitute for Victory”.....Today we have gone beyond where MacArthur couldn't imagine; we can't even name our enemy!”....

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.

63 posted on 08/13/2014 12:14:50 PM PDT by caww
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To: Vince Ferrer
"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."

------------------------------->

Can't we use "Rules for Radicals" against them or apply Sun Tsu's Art of War?

64 posted on 08/13/2014 12:16:22 PM PDT by hummingbird (Mark Levin and Article 5. Period. 26 IS THE NEW 18. US = Koyaanisqatsi.)
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To: odds
...”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”....

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.

65 posted on 08/13/2014 12:17:52 PM PDT by caww
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To: Petrosius
....”Islam itself must be discredited. Otherwise this “long war” will be a permanent war”....

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.

66 posted on 08/13/2014 12:36:03 PM PDT by caww
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To: clintonh8r

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.


67 posted on 08/13/2014 12:38:37 PM PDT by MHGinTN
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To: Carry_Okie
..."trying to persuade Muslims to cease with their aggressions, forget it; they've been hell bent on world conquest for 1400 years"....


68 posted on 08/13/2014 12:40:22 PM PDT by caww
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To: MHGinTN

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


69 posted on 08/13/2014 1:09:10 PM PDT by caww
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To: Kaslin
The West (and the developed East) will not win as long as the middle east is a major source of oil without alternatives.

We are funding our own destruction. This must stop.

Developing oil sources outside of Muslim countries removes their influence. Increasing the supply of oil worldwide lowers the price.

The Saudis are funding much of the hellraising. The "royal family" is now so enormous that the riches are beginning to get a little thin compared to a few decades ago. Cutting back and eliminating their oil earnings as much as possible will cut back on their ability to destroy us.

Let the Muslim countries backslide all the way to the 7th century. Leave them there. They offer NOTHING to the rest of the world.

We have to expel Muslims from Western countries. Give them the opportunity to become Unitarians or Buddhists or any number of faiths that do not preach murder, and they can stay, but the others have to go because Islam is not a religion, it's a death cult for a political movement.
70 posted on 08/13/2014 1:11:16 PM PDT by Nepeta
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To: Kaslin

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.


71 posted on 08/13/2014 1:11:57 PM PDT by Voegelin1
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To: caww
IMO, that quote from Genesis 16:12 is mistranslated.

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.

72 posted on 08/13/2014 1:19:34 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: MHGinTN

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.


73 posted on 08/13/2014 1:23:49 PM PDT by caww
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To: Carry_Okie

....”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.


74 posted on 08/13/2014 1:27:38 PM PDT by caww
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To: Carry_Okie

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.


75 posted on 08/13/2014 1:31:48 PM PDT by caww
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To: 22202NOVA
We won’t develop the stomach until they come here, if it’s not too late.

Ever notice how ISIS/al Qaeda don't plan any activities for Texas? Their historians know what happened to the Karankawa Indians, for starters.

76 posted on 08/13/2014 1:36:05 PM PDT by Night Hides Not (Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember Mississippi!)
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To: caww
The people who wrote the Torah were not mystics; they were shepherds, nomadic peoples of the land. They don't think like urban priests. We were given the teaching to follow it, not to wave it around like a flag while ignoring the instructions in our daily lives. Some of those instructions were military, logistical, and demographic. To treat them otherwise so that one can sit on one's duff waiting for G_d to make miracles and save us is not what we were taught to do (ref Luke 13:27).
77 posted on 08/13/2014 2:05:09 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: hummingbird

Oh, I’m sure we could get Hearts and Minds from ISIS terrorists.

As mounted trophies for the wall. . .


78 posted on 08/13/2014 6:29:09 PM PDT by Salgak (Peace through Superior Firepower. . . .)
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To: Sherman Logan

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?


79 posted on 08/13/2014 6:35:27 PM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: Gay State Conservative

I’ll see your 2 companies of Marines and raise you 1 Trident ballistic missile submarine’s worth of W88s.

30 minutes or less.


80 posted on 08/13/2014 6:52:07 PM PDT by Kodos the Executioner (.. the revolution is successful, but survival depends upon drastic measures..")
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