The President’s Speech: Is This War or Not?

I am glad the President is finally realizing that we need to take an active role in the extermination of the Islamic State.  I wish I had more nice things to say but I don’t have any because the President did not give me much reason.

The President failed to answer the one question that matters the most, are we at war with the Islamic State?  I am not arguing semantics.  The President is using the power of his office to bomb people.  That is all fine and well but there a limits.  Is the President actually satisfied that he can defeat the Islamic State using the powers of his office alone? 

I have a serious concern if the President believes that he can stop ISIS with just bombs and less than two battalions of ‘advisors’.  All credit to the warrior skills of the men and women deployed but if 1,700 were enough to win, we would have victory already. 

“It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”  What  do you call the 1,700 men and women already there?  Are they not Americans?  Are they not “combat” troops?  What are they, all contractors with the CIA? 

I have a news flash for you Mr. President.  You just lied to the American people and in the process you just spit on all the troops that you have already put into harm’s way.  Do you honestly believe that calling them ‘advisors’ changes what they are?  Did they stop being Americans?  Did they stop being combat troops?  Did you send cooks?  How many are expendable before you acknowledge that they are in combat? 

This is part and parcel to the problem with our President.  One military service member on foreign soil is boots on ground, a political statement, and a national security issue, and when American planes are bombing foreign soil, American troops fighting on foreign soil.

I get it.  The President does not want to fight wars.  He pledged to stop wars.  Well he was wrong and the course of human events means that he has to put on his big boy pants and lead instead of hiding behind rhetoric and political double speak.  Some of are not stupid enough to buy that line of crap.

“Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy.”

I have two issues with that.  Counterterrorism is not war.  It is a strategy as he stated.  Strategy to defeat terrorism sounds nice but you do not use strategy to defeat something.  You use strategy to mitigate and mitigate allows them to continue.  You use war to defeat someone.     

The second issue I have is the ‘degrade, and ultimately destroy part’.  It is passive.  Degrade is a slow process.  Couple that with the ‘time and place of our choosing’ and this could last forever.  What happened to get in, smash, kill, burn, and then leave?  His campaign for President complained about how long the war in Iraq and the still ongoing war in Afghanistan has lasted and now he sets the stage to deal with ISIS on an indefinite basis? 

“America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat.”  What coalition?  I want names and nations who are willing to follow where we lead.  I saw Desert Shield/Storm play out.  I saw Bosnia.  I saw OIF and Afghanistan.  The members of the coalitions for those wars were stated up front and before anything else.  We don’t have a coalition.  He wants to form one but we do not currently have one.

In every challenge there is a choice.  Do you give or receive?  Individually we have to wait.  We cannot preemptively harm another human being because we believe they might act.  We have a legal requirement to wait until they do act. 

As a nation those are not the same rules.  The amount of damage is different.  The loss is different.  The threat is different.  War is not an individual game and the rules of war are not the same as the laws individuals must obey.

One bomb in the right place can affect millions of Americans, cost billions in damage, and immeasurably boost the terrorist cause that sponsored it. 

ISIS is using a very dangerous tactic that might gain them a serious strategic victory.  They are gambling that they can push hard enough and gain enough to be seen as a powerful force and the victor on the battlefield without truly bringing the wrath of powerful nations down on them. 

Every day they stand, they gain followers because perception of power is nearly as great as actual power.  It does not matter what nation they come from or what tribe.  They are Muslims before all else and Sunni for the vast majority after that.  The Western world cannot truly understand what that means until you face it.

Time and again we have run into the same problem, the President and the People of America, keep applying their Western values as if they make any sense in the Middle East.  The President did it again last night.  “That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq.”  The “L” stands for Levant. 

With one letter of the alphabet our President just took a dump on Israel while at the same time boosting the very enemies he claims we are going to fight by giving them credit for lands they do not occupy.  He just legalized their claim.  I thought he had a better grasp of law than that.  Don’t give anything more than you have too. 

The President cannot seem to open his mouth these days without making life harder on America by injuring our allies or making the situation worse.  He wants to form a coalition that will require the cooperation of Islamic Nations in support and, in an attempt at political pandering, says “ISIL is not “Islamic.”  He is trashing Israel and denigrating potential coalition partners all at once. 

Can someone please by the President or one of his advisors an Islam for Dummies book?  The Saudis say that the Islamic State is Islamic and so does everyone else in the Muslim world.  Just because their tactics are barbaric does not mean that they are not in fact Islamic.  Saying they are not is both Bigotry because he denied them their own faith and stupid because he underestimated them.

He did get one thing right.  “Islam, as millions of Muslims can attest, is a peaceful religion;” One problem, there are over a billion Muslims.  So if only a few million are peaceful, how many does that leave that are not?  Add to that, a warped religious ideology is still a religious ideology.  Saying ISIS is not Islamic is ridiculous.  If Muslims want to call ISIS out, that is fine.  Outsiders don’t get that privilege. 

Doing so not only undermines our cause, since it just so happens that our Nation is not a Muslim country, and it shows that the President is pandering to others instead of respecting his own people. 

LOTB

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