America has fought a lot of enemies. Some have been a nuisance such as the "Barbary Coast Pirates" of the early 19th century. Some have been cherry-picked due to the fact that they were seen as patsies, i.e. Spain in 1898 and Grenada in 1983. Sometimes our nation has been called on to save the world from fearsome enemies who threatened our very way of life such as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Unfortunately, we have also found ourselves engaged in wars where the enemy is often indistinguishable from those we are attempting to aid, or even worse, our war strategy failed to identify an "end game" for our soldiers to be removed successfully from combat operations. The Vietnam war as well as our second war with Iraq both proved to be challenging in ways we didn't imagine. But it is the second Iraq war, impulsively begun by President George W. Bush, and prematurely abandoned by President Barack Obama, that has created unforseen circumstances that may lead us into yet another armed struggle with an enemy that seems to have abandoned all precepts of civilization, and bounced all of the guidelines for how people and nations behave on their ear.
- Dreaded ISIS!! (Times Union)
(Oh Mighty Isis! An Isis I can get behind!) (You Tube)
Many may wonder, "Where did ISIS come from"? The genesis of ISIS was the group known as "Al Qaeda in Iraq". How did they come to be? Well, the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 under the guise of preventing an attack on our nation and our allies by Saddam Hussein, who according to President George W. Bush was amassing a frightening array of weapons of mass destruction. There was no evidence that Al-Qaeda was in Iraq before the U.S. invaded. In order to prevent another "9/11", the United States executed the "Bush Doctrine of Preemptive War" and quickly disposed of Iraqi Despot, Saddam Hussein. Either due to incompetence or lack of proper planning, "post Saddam Iraq" quickly spun out of control, (Much to the shock and chagrin of Vice President Dick Chaney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld) and tragically, Iraq became a recruitment poster for jihadists all over the world. This collection of extremists came to be known as "Al Qaeda in Iraq". How horrible were they? "Classic Al Qaeda" distanced themselves from the Iraqi version, proclaiming them too extreme! This is like Walter Hudson turning to Haystacks Calhoun and saying, "Buddy, how about a salad"?
- When asked about what our troops could expect to find once we invaded Iraq, "Rummy" famously replied: "There are known knowns, there are known unknowns, there are unknown knowns, and there are unknown unknowns." It's hard to believe that man who spouted such unassailable logic such as that could have botched the occupation of Iraq. (You Tube)
Iraq was quickly devolving into a nightmare when George W. Bush decided to make one of the better decisions of his Presidency, and fired Donald Rumsfeld. He then proceeded to bring in the much more competent Robert Gates. Gates engineered the "surge". This increase in U.S. troop deployment allowed the U.S. to drive "Al Qaeda in Iraq" out of most of the metropolitan areas in Iraq, and hand control of these areas to the Iraqi government. However, despite the success of the "surge", a majority of Americans had become disillusioned with the war in Iraq, and were looking for any way for the U.S. to withdraw its troops from harm's way. Barack Obama ran for the Presidency in 2008 under the premise that he would remove all U.S. troops out of harms way in Iraq as soon as possible, and that he had always been opposed to the war. A majority of Americans who were suffering from "War Fatigue" and "Bush Exhaustion", (Bush's final approval rating when he left office was 22% according to cbsnews.com) were eager to support Obama's idea to pull the U.S. out of the war. Obama, eager to keep a campaign promise, began drawing down the number of troops in Iraq, and moved the ones left behind a safer distance from the continuing sectarian violence. This turned out to be a huge mistake, since without the backing of U.S. troops, Iraq's army proved woefully unprepared. As for the Iraqi government, what it lacked in competency, it made up for in its appalling corruption.
- Oh Iraq, you started out so promising. (You Tube)
Suddenly, a radical extremist group known as ISIS, (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) or ISIL, (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) emerged from the shadows to take advantage of the "power vacuum" created by the instability and corruption in Iraq as well as the Civil War in Syria. Their horrific combination of 7th century justice, along with their incredible sophistication regarding the use of social media has made them a most formidable adversary. They seem to relish and thrive on their ability to do shocking and horrific acts of violence against captured perceived enemies. They decapitate hostages as well as burn them alive. They just recently kidnapped over 130 Christians in Syria, and now they have just completed a ransacking of a museum in the city of Mosul. Some of the artifacts they "gleefully" destroyed were over 2500 years old, and date back to the Assyrians. These are priceless artifacts that can never be replaced. Like Stalin, ISIS is trying to erase history and thereby morph it into their own particular version, which is to say that before there was Islam, there was nothing.
(As a history teacher I'm appalled. All they seem to understand is death and destruction) (You Tube)
Labeling an enemy evil is the easy part, now, how do we deal with them? The President is trying to limit them through the air while training and aiding "friendlies" on the ground. So far this has had some success at limiting their advances, but they haven't really surrendered a whole lot of territory. Many suggest that the only way to push them back and destroy them is with American combat troops on the ground. That's going to mean significant casualties. We have just emerged from 13 1/2 plus years of war, are we ready for more? What about the Europeans? Well, we know they never want to get involved. What about some of our Middle Eastern Muslim allies? Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia? How many billions of dollars worth of weapons do they purchase from us every year? Do they ever use them? I wonder if some of these nations have ever even tested any of these weapons?
It almost seems like the Middle East spins a little more out of control everyday. Why is this happening? Well, nobody wants to say this, but, at least when it comes to the Middle East, Dictatorship works! It just does. That is sad of course, especially for people in the Middle East who yearn for freedom and democracy. Egypt looked like it had achieved a region changing event with the overthrow of the "Despot", Hosni Mubarak. But when given the vote, the people voted in Islamic extremists. Their attempt to create a theocracy in Egypt led to the all-powerful Egyptian military to take charge of the government. Now, Democracy seems like a long way off.
It seems like we are forever attempting to clean up the mess caused by imperialism. We are resented as a nation for interfering. We are begged to step in and save innocent victims by others. We want to help out and crush ISIS once and for all, but who wants to see their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, moms and Dads die for that cause? We love to talk a good game here in America, but somebody's child has to go and do the dirty work. It's times like these that one starts to envy Switzerland. They get to sit above the fray. It's hard to understand the actions and motives of a group like ISIS. Sometimes students will ask, "Why do they do these horrible things"? I tell them that you can't put logic to the illogical. It's beyond our comprehension how people can justify in their own minds such senseless violence. Not even the recently departed "Mr. Spock" could find logic in the actions of such a group.
- "Live long and Prosper". Hopefully, ISIS will do neither. (You Tube)
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