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Reece Terry, publisher
Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4 • Thursday, August 28, 2014
Corinth, Miss.
To defeat the Islamic state The decisions that determined the fate of the great nations and empires that failed to survive the 20th century are well known. For the Kaiser’s Germany, it was the “blank cheque” to AusPat tria after Sarajevo. For Great Buchanan Britain, the 1939 war guarantee to Poland. For the Third Reich, Columnist it was the June 1941 invasion of Russia. For the Empire of the Sun, the decision to attack Pearl Harbor. And for the Soviet Empire, it was the invasion of Afghanistan. As for the United States, historians may one day concur with the late Gen. Bill Odom. For the lone superpower to survive that century, the decision to invade and occupy Iraq was the most disastrous blunder in its history. George W. Bush held out the promise of a peaceful Mesopotamian democracy as a magnet for all Arab nations. What we produced is a broken land awash in blood, a country severed by tribe and faith. In Syria, where the United States has been aiding rebels to bring down Bashar Assad, that Islamic State now controls the northern and eastern half of the country. In Libya, where we delivered the air and missile strikes to smash Col. Gadhafi’s forces, Islamist fanatics have gained the upper hand in the civil war for control of that country. In all three countries, the United States, which claimed to be battling dictatorship to bring democracy, helped to create the power vacuum these Islamists have moved to fill. We are the enablers of the Islamic State. How grave is the threat? ISIS is a “direct threat to our homeland” says Rep. Peter King. “An existential threat” echoes Sen. Lindsey Graham, “I think of an American city in flames.” The Islamic State “is beyond anything we’ve seen,” says Sec. Chuck Hagel, an “imminent threat to every interest we have.” Undeniably, these are bloodthirsty religious fanatics who revel in beheadings and crucifixions and have exhibited battlefield bravery and skill. But are 17,000 jihadi fighters in landlocked regions of Iraq and Syria really an imminent and mortal threat to an America with thousands of nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of missiles and bombs and the means to deliver them? Moderate Sunnis detest ISIS for its barbarism and desecration of shrines. The Christians and Yazidis fear and loathe them. The Kurds, both the Syrian YPG and PKK, which broke open the exit route for the Yazidis from Mount Sinjar, and the peshmerga despise ISIS. Lebanon’s army, Syria’s army, Hezbollah and Iran have been fighting ISIS with Russian assistance. Vladimir Putin himself warned us of the absurdity of our attacking Assad last year, arguing that we would be allying ourselves with the same terrorists who brought down the twin towers. Even al-Qaida and Hamas have repudiated ISIS. If Assad is willing to go in for the kill on ISIS, let us work out a truce and amnesty for the Free Syrian Army and call off that part of the rebellion, so Assad’s army can focus on killing ISIS. George H. W. Bush made an ally of Hafez al-Assad in Desert Storm. Why not make an ally of his son against ISIS? We should next tell the Saudis, Qataris and Kuwaitis that any more aid to ISIS and they are on their own. We should inform the Turks that their continued membership in NATO is contingent upon sealing their border to ISIS volunteers and their assistance in eradicating the terrorist organization. We should convey to Iran that an end to our cold war is possible if all attacks on the West stop and we work together to exterminate the Islamic State. Why would they not take the deal? As for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed successor to Muhammad, my bet is that he closes out his brief career as caliph at an unscheduled meeting with Seal Team 6. (Daily Corinthian columnist Pat Buchanan is an American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster.)
Prayer for today Lord God, help me to keep the things under my feet that are inclined to destroy happiness. Show me clearly the line which divides right and wrong, that I may not fear the censure of the world. Help me to act with good judgment and be calm in obeying thy laws. Amen.
A verse to share “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.” Matthew 23:12
ISIS is Obama’s Iraq war ISIS is a force for evil that poses an imminent security threat to the United States, but please, let us get back to you on whether we are determined to defeat it. That is the posture of the Obama administration toward the terror group that proudly demonstrated its malevolence by beheading American journalist James Foley in a propaganda video. For the administration, ISIS isn’t merely a dire enemy, it is a dilemma. President Barack Obama must respond to a group that – with its resources, apocalyptic vision and Western recruits – is clearly a threat to the homeland, at the same time he wants nothing to do with Iraq in particular or any new military intervention in general. The default Obama strategy, then, will be to do the minimum necessary not to be accused of allowing ISIS to run riot. If he must launch a few airstrikes to arrest ISIS’s sweep toward Kurdistan, he will. If he must make a statement about the beheading of James Foley before hitting the links on his vacation, he will. But he is loath to commit himself. In his Foley
statement, the president sought to sound stalwart without saying anything in Rich p a r t i c u l a r . Lowry He brought down the National hammer of Review History with a capital “H” on ISIS. He said, “People like this ultimately fail.” He asserted that “the future is won by those who build and not destroy.” He pronounced a global consensus around the proposition that a group like ISIS “has no place in the 21st century.” All reasonable, forwardlooking people agree that genocide has no place in the 21st century, either. Yet the prospective slaughter of Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar after fleeing ISIS wasn’t stopped by the inevitable progress of international norms, but (to the administration’s credit) by American bombs in conjunction with Kurdish fighters on the ground. At a press briefing last week, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel sounded like they were setting the intellectual
and rhetorical predicate for a broader campaign – before it was all tacitly walked back. Gen. Dempsey said that ISIS “will eventually have to be defeated” and that it couldn’t be rolled back without hitting it in Syria. Then, a few days later, he made it clear that he opposes hitting it in Syria. Hagel said that ISIS is an “imminent threat,” a statement that White House spokesman Josh Earnest refused to back up a few days later. If the administration is too forthright about ISIS, it closes off escape hatches for the president, who as an anti-Iraq War purist has a consistent record of not wanting to grapple with this particular threat. He opposed the surge under George W. Bush that defeated al-Qaida in Iraq, the precursor to ISIS. He had no interest in keeping U.S. troops in Iraq that might have helped preserve those gains. When the Syrian civil war began to rage, he refused to robustly support the relatively moderate opposition, thus ceding the ground to what became ISIS. Iraq is now doubly reminiscent of the Vietnam War.
First, the collapse of American political will to maintain forces in Iraq, even after we had defeated the insurgency, recalled the end of Vietnam. Now, the administration’s de facto policy of graduated escalation – progressing from a strictly limited mission to protect the Yazidis and American personnel potentially threatened in Kurdistan to something more extensive, yet still amorphous – recalls the beginning of the Vietnam War. The administration must fear where the logic of a war against ISIS leads. If it is prosecuted in earnest, it means a bombing campaign against the group on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border, and quite possibly American boots on the ground. In other words, the kind of “escalation” that would have brought howls of outrage from Democrats in the Bush years, and especially from then-Sen. Obama. He must decide how badly he wants to win his Iraq War. (Daily Corinthian columnist Rich Lowry can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com.)
If ISIS attacks again, what will U.S. do? The Obama administration is reportedly considering airstrikes in Syria against the terrorist group ISIS. The New York Times quotes “a top national security adviser” to the president as saying the U.S. is “‘not going to be restricted by borders’ to protect its interests...” What about American cities? If ISIS attacks one or more U.S. cities, as it has threatened to do, what then? We can’t bomb ourselves. How would we counter a nosedive in the stock market or the ensuing chaos and fear? The U.S. and Europe are vulnerable because of a false belief that we can somehow “convert” ideological and religious fundamentalists into pluralistic, tolerant people by exposing them to our way of life. So we let them into our nations. They build mosques, often with funding from Saudi Arabia, which practices and teaches a radical brand of Islam known as Wahhabism, and allow them to set up Islamic schools, at least some of which teach hatred of Jews, Christians and Western values.
Reece Terry
Mark Boehler
publisher rterry@dailycorinthian.com
editor editor@dailycorinthian.com
Willie Walker
Roger Delgado
circulation manager circdirector@dailycorinthian.com
press foreman
France has seen its Muslim population explode to more than 8 million, and growing, Cal a c c o r d i n g Thomas to the Gatestone InstiColumnist tute. It is the same in other European nations. While not all of these immigrants are terrorists, no doubt terrorists immigrated along with those looking for a better life, or were radicalized after arriving. Many Muslim immigrants have lived in isolation from Western cultures and values which their faith has taught them to hate. According to the Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, “the estimated share of legal Muslim immigrants entering the U.S. each year has roughly doubled, from about 5 percent of legal immigrants in 1992 to about 10 percent in 2012.” While it is a diverse group with not all holding to the same ideology or hatred of the West, there are enough radicals among them to constitute a clear and pres-
ent danger. Groups like the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) intimidate some politicians and the media with cries of “Islamophobia” whenever anyone warns of the radicals’ agenda. As the Center for Immigration Studies points out, “Since the November 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane by an Egyptian, the immigrant Muslim community has been associated with a great number of violent incidents – all these even before the atrocities on September 11, 2001. In its long history of immigration, the United States has never encountered so violent-prone and radicalized a community as the Muslims who have arrived since 1965.” So, if even a small number of Muslim immigrants – or American citizens who have been radicalized by imams – attack a shopping mall, killing and terrorizing shoppers, what will the president do? Will he treat it as a crime, “workplace violence,” or call it by its right name? Will civil libertarians have their way in opposing further surveillance of po-
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tential and actual radicals, deporting some and stripping others of their U.S. citizenship, if they travel to align themselves with ISIS fighters and try to return to the U.S.? Will they be allowed in? They should be barred. These and many other questions must be answered before another attack, which our leaders repeatedly warn is coming. Why is it coming? Because presidents over several administrations have not done all they could to prevent it, preferring soft words to tough action. What will the current president do when the next attack comes? Will the public take matters into their own hands and fight back? Vigilantes are the last thing we need, but they could rise up, if government fails to perform its constitutional duty to protect us from enemies, foreign and domestic. (Cal Thomas’ latest book is “What Works: Common Sense Solutions for a Stronger America” is available in bookstores now. Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribune.com.)
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