The president gave a speech this week about what labels to use in the prosecution of our now 14 year old war on terror. Apparently prompted by the usual bating about his supposed flaccidness in attacking radical Muslims, Obama attempted to frame the discussion in a way similar to though a bit more nuanced than George W. Bush – we’re fighting terrorists who seek the legitimacy of a major religion while violating its central tenets. We need the cooperation of Muslims, not their enmity. They’re not religious leaders; they’re terrorists.
Okay, that’s all good. But as the president lists all of the horrors Islamic extremists have unleashed onto the world, there’s one question that begs to be asked: is ISIS responsible for more death than we are? How many Muslims have we dispatched over the last 15 years? Sure, ISIS is a bunch of crackheads, thugs, and killers. But they are bush league next to us. As all of these war-fevered pundits and Congresspeople run around fulminating over the “death cult” that is ISIS, do they give even a passing thought to our own 70 year history of threatening the entire planet with nuclear destruction? That’s not a “death cult”?
Finally, it’s patently obvious what ISIS is doing. They are trying to goad us into doing something really stupid and self-destructive. They saw what happened to the United States when we were stupid enough to let our government drive us into an invasion of Iraq. It killed thousands of us, wounded tens of thousands, and drove the American global enterprise to the brink of collapse. It built up a level of hatred of the United States around the world that was way beyond anything that preceded it. Best of all (from their perspective), it created the scorched landscape from which rose Al Qaeda in Iraq, the immediate predecessor of ISIS. How would American “boots on the ground” not be good news for ISIS?
Recent polls show the propaganda campaign is working – something like 57% of Americans think we should send troops into the fight against ISIS. A couple of things: we’re already there in the thousands. Second …. Would any of these folks send their own kids … or go themselves?
Doubt it.
Luv u,
jp
Of course, we’re building them stick by stick, using the usual bailing wire, string, tape, toothpaste, and whatever else is handy. And, well … they sound it. These are homespun recordings, my friend. We’re not riding over to the Record Plant and laying down some serious tracks. No, sir … we march straight down to the hammer mill basement and bang on those pots and pans. We tune up the tired old strings on Matt’s Rickenbacher bass and start thumping along, hollering into distressed old condenser mics, cupping my superannuated headphones to our ears. Not a lot of nuances, friends. Not hardly.
That said, our President is on the brink of another useless military adventure. As this is debated, will anyone in Congress ask, “When has this ever gone well?” Kosovo? Don’t say Kosovo. We made the killing worse, predictably. Afghanistan? Just as ungovernable as ever, only now with more dead people. Iraq? Please! Libya? Now divided between two hostile governments; a failed state shedding refugees by the thousand. Now the conversation is centered not so much on whether we should fight in Iraq / Syria, but rather how heavily we should get involved. I hear a lot of T.V. talkers advocating for a ground war. They should consider whether they would want their kids to fight it. Or if maybe they’d want to fight it themselves. Anything short of that is just talk.