A reader (Sept. 11) can’t wait to watch Republicans as they
respond to President Obama’s plans with regard to ISIS. I am only a Republican by default (Most
elections are rigged against third party candidates.), but perhaps I can give
this reader some amusement with my response to Obama’s actions.
1) First of
all, he is about two months too late.
The best time to have confronted ISIS was when they were expanding their
area of conquest. Then they were on the
move in large groups away from any civilians.
Now they are embedded in civilian populations where you would need
ground troops to combat them with very high casualties, both on our side and
civilians.
2) The land
that ISIS now controls in Iraq is territory that our troops spent months
securing at a very high cost. We watched
and did nothing while ISIS went from town to town taking control.
3) The
President is going to rely on troops from other countries to do the hard work,
countries that don’t feel the threat as greatly as we do. Will they stick it out when their casualties
mount? Will we compel them to use the
same rules of engagement that we did that cost our troops so many lives and
wounded?
4) The
President is relying on training soldiers of another country to fight a war we
are not really sure they want to fight.
It didn’t work in Viet Nam; it didn’t work in Afghanistan, and it didn’t
work before in Iraq. Why should we
expect a different or better result now?
5) Why in the
world would the President announce to the world that he is going to bomb ISIS
targets in Syria? He should have had a
major onslaught like we had at the beginning of the war in Iraq, and then tell
us what he did. Never tell your enemy
what you are planning to do. Do it, and
then tell everybody what you did. Be
sure that many targets will now be off limits as civilians are moved closer to
the people we want to eliminate.
6) Have you
seen the videos of the bomb strikes against ISIS? A hundred and 51 air strikes probably killing
a total of 200 militants. I get the
impression he is more interested in looking like he is doing something rather than
actually doing something.
7) Now that
everybody knows our plans, watch for any ground troops sent into ISIS territory
to encounter IEDs and booby traps, just like our troops did, at very great
cost. In war, you don’t want to give
your enemy time to prepare for what you are going to do.
8) Speaking of
enemy, I would like to see Congress declare war for once. They haven’t done that since World War
2. What’s the difference? Simply, we will try harder if it is a real
war and not just counterterrorism tactics.
9) The
President is catching a lot of heat apparently because he said that ISIS is not
Islamic. If ISIS is simply a group of
radicals who hijacked a peaceful religion, why are there so many other groups
of radicals all across the world doing the same thing? What is it that makes so many people and
groups of people think that this is the way it is supposed to be? Is there any Muslim country in the world that
became Muslim without the use of force?
We are now seeing millions of Muslims moving into Europe
thanks to an open door immigration policy.
Interestingly, as their numbers grow, so does the tension between them
and the native Europeans as they seek to make Europe more Muslim. A moderate Muslim is a Muslim who is a very
small minority in a non-Muslim country.
While those individual moderates may not become militant as the number
of Muslims increases, the presence of militants will increase. There is no way to differentiate between them
when they immigrate. It may be generous
to say that one in ten Muslims is a radical, but when we have 3 million Muslims
in our country, that is 300,000 radicals.
10) Attacking
ISIS when they were on the move could have decimated them. Now he is expecting and planning on a war
that will last longer than his presidency.
There will be groups of Islamists that will need to be faced constantly
in the years ahead. He talks resolve,
but I think he was more accurate when he spoke of trying to make them “a
manageable problem.”
