First, Call ‘em anything but ISIL
The View from the Middle
I’ve never seen a poll that asked if war is a good thing. I would guess that 99% of people would agree
that war is deplorable. And I would be
in that group. War causes tremendous
pain, especially to the millions of young men and women who do the fighting,
and scars the warrior in more ways than one.
Unfortunately, as horrible as war is, it cannot always be avoided. There will always be evil in the world and
psychopaths like Hitler, Stalin and al-Baghdadi (leader of ISIS) who
will gladly ask millions to die or commit unspeakable atrocities to advance
their causes. At such moments, our
leaders must make the tough decision to confront.
I think most of the readers would agree that FDR did the right thing
when he, along with Congress, involved us in WWII. Actually, we had been “involved” for quite
some time, even before we declared war on Japan.
Did we want war? Absolutely not,
but FDR recognized that evil, unchecked, would eventually impact us. Evil then was Hitler and the Nazis. Evil today is ISIS. So, how does today’s challenge with ISIS
compare to the situation we faced in the 1940’s?
Germany was a world power. Hitler
was cruel and brutal, but he and his party hid their most abhorrent acts from
worldview, and Hitler never suggested that he would actually attack the
continental US.
By Comparison, I actually agree with President Obama that ISIS is (or at
least was) the JV team. They do not have
the structure or resources that Germany had all those years ago, but to extend
the metaphor, if the Lakers (us) just sit on the bench, the JV will win the
game.
ISIS is, however, in my opinion even more evil than Hitler and the
Nazi’s. These people not only behead
innocents and set people on fire, but they actually advertise their
brutality. They are proud of it and only
hope that this blatant display of barbarism will deter countries from
confronting them.
They have also made it clear that they intend to bring their savagery to
the United States. They constantly chant
“Death to America”, and Baghdadi himself has suggested that he will see us in
New York. While they are not the power
that Germany was in 1940, they’re more evil and have made direct threats to the
US.
This is why most Americans believe that, while we hate war, we must
attack ISIS with the intent of eradicating them. But what exactly does that mean?
First, we must stop arguing about what to call them. Call them extremists. Call them terrorists. Call them Islamic Terrorists. Call them ISIS. I don’t care.
I wouldn’t call them ISIL however, because that is what they want and it
is an aspirational title. Google “The
Levant” (the “L” in ISIL) to understand what that includes. Even if the President insisted on calling them
ISIL – Fine! As long as we agree we need
to kill them.
Next, while bombing will continue to be an important aspect to this war,
I have long believed that we will need to put boots on the ground in Iraq. ISIS is embedded in towns like Mosul, Tikrit
and Fallujah. We can’t bomb these entire
cities. We’d kill more innocents than
terrorists. The good news is; we know
where they are. They’re not hiding in
caves these days.
Unfortunately, this means that our guys will have to go door to door in
order to extricate these thugs. ISIS has 20 to 30 thousand soldiers. We probably need to match that with US troops
and get a like amount from our coalition partners like France, England,
Germany, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others.
And we need to act now while ISIS is still the JV. I’ve heard we are attacking Mosul in
April. That’s great, I guess. “That we are going”, is great. “That I know about it already”, is
disturbing. I don’t think we mailed our
plans for “D Day” to Hitler. Please Mr.
President, stop telling our enemies what we will and won’t do and when we will
start and stop our efforts.
Finally, Congress needs to approve whatever AUMF (Authorization for Use
of Military Force) the President wants.
Some would argue that he already has all the authority he needs from the
2001 authorization given to President Bush.
I would at least encourage the President not to handcuff himself by
putting a three-year limit on the AUMF or by using language like no “enduring ground
troops”.
We need to do whatever it takes to eliminate this evil from the world
right now!! No country in the world
supports these goons: not Iran, not Saudi Arabia, certainly not Europe or
us. We can worry about jobs for the
poor, young people throughout the world when ISIS is gone! By the Way – the biggest deterrent for
recruiting for ISIS is killing their existing membership.
