I must admit, I don’t understand the threat or the solution.
Politicians and pundits agree that we face an existential threat to our culture
and nation. I am called to a war without personal cost or discomfort, we will
get other countries to fight it and pay for it. My destruction by terrorist is
certain, but the Saudi government will save us with their soldiers and oil
money. American conservatives with their huge brains and razor sharp critical
thinking skills proclaim “ISIS will conquer America, replacing our constitution
with sharia law”, I just don’t see how any of this is possible.
Militarily, ISIS is an armed mob without any air force or
navy. A self-proclaimed caliphate without any CIA, FBI or NSA. A government
that can’t pick up the trash, repair roadways, or keep the water and
electricity operational. They collect their taxes with a bayonet, and enforce
their law with beheadings. They have no industrial capacity to build tanks or
artillery, they can’t mass produce bullets or antibiotics. ISIS can’t even
defeat the Kurds.
The only advantage/asset that ISIS has is fear. Our morale
is their target.
ISIS leadership is well aware of all this, they will never
meet us on the battle field, they will never challenge us in the market, they
will never allow fair and honest elections. They survive on media coverage,
they need us frightened and jumping at shadows.
Perhaps that is my problem, ISIS doesn’t scare me. I worry
more about some random traffic accident, living on the gulf coast I worry about
hurricanes not ISIS. For conservatives if you shout ISIS! They will jump in the
air screaming WHERE!! WHERE!!, then land and shake in their boots. I don’t have
the required mental wiring to be a conservative. I actually think that having a
Mr. Tough Guy President that will make “sand glow” or will “bomb the sh*t out
of them” is rather simplistic, even stupid. But then, I am a
Low-Information-Voter and can’t figure things out for myself, I only believe those
things my masters tell me to believe. Or so I am told by conservatives.
The most successful tactic for ISIS is fear, and the best
tactic for republican politicians is fear. There is a symbiotic relationship,
without ISIS the politician has no campaign, without the politician ISIS has no barker, without fear neither has anything. Without fear both become irrelevant, little
more than an irritant, and occasionally a terrible tragedy.
The republican candidates promise another war, another
invasion of Iraq, one more time, we’ll get it right this time. War using
borrowed money with soldiers worn thin by multiple deployments. This approach
has an unbroken record of failure. Some blame President Bush, others blame
President Obama, but I blame both. Since 1941 we have built a military designed
to defeat any major world power, a well-trained and well equipped professional
army to defeat another well-trained and well equipped professional army. Now we face an
armed mob hiding among civilians which befuddles our generals. We will not
slaughter unarmed civilians for no military gain. Yes, in WW2 we leveled
Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of unarmed
civilians, and that ended the war. Would leveling Aleppo, Damascus and Baghdad
end the war with ISIS? Or would it strengthen ISIS, and create more recruits?
We do not have the correct institutions to fight an ISIS
type organization. We have the institutions to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial
Japan.
President Obama has developed a Fabian strategy. Since they
won’t face us in a decisive battle, he is trying to harass them with
skirmishes, disrupt their money flows and oil sales, striking the leadership
and small gatherings when and where we can find them. Unfortunately, the American public
wants to see shock and awe, we want a 5 minute news bite on the evening news
cast, or 10 minutes on the endless cable news broadcast, followed with instant
analysis by some expert. We want the expert pundit to say exactly what we want
to hear, and we want this without having to pay any war taxes or send any
family member to the war zone.
Our politicians understand all this and see opportunity.
They will scare us and then promise to “make sand glow”, and “bomb the sh*t out
of them”. The talking heads tell us this will work, or that it won’t work,
depending on what their audience wants to hear. The charlatan gets rich, the
politician gets elected and the foot soldier gets the shaft. Meanwhile we get a
titillating little scare without facing any real danger nor any financial cost.
ISIS is not a creditable threat to America and eventually
they will be destroyed. Then there will be another outlaw terrorist bunch and
we will start all over, and I still won't be scare.
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