Comments

Regarding ISIS, no good choices — 102 Comments

1. Moderate body counts now, or massive ones later.
   Personally, I think it may be far more beneficial to allow 10,000 New York liberals to die in a very public and horrific way. In that case, at least they can’t blame Republicans for their problems or have any illusions left about ISIS or Islam.

   Thankfully, the decision isn’t mine to make.

2. Hudson Institute Panel, March 19, 2015: moderator Lee Smith, panelists Michael Doran, Kimberly Kagan, Michael Pregent, and Joel Rayburn — “How Should the U.S. Roll Back and Defeat the Islamic State?”

3. Walter Russell Mead has an excellent article on how we came to this pass.
   http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/11/17/president-obamas-cynical-refugee-ploy/

4. We need a president that will do the right thing, regardless of press, polls, and anti-war types. Look to the brutality of WWII to figure out what works. No mercy. Destroy the enemy at all costs. We’ve become weak and soft. We lost the will to do what it takes.

5. All I see is the Germanic hordes crossing the Rhine in 406 AD.

   Europe’s birth rate is too low.

   The West’s confidence in itself is way too low.

6. Know how we win in the long run?

   Use entertainment and tech to convert the woman and children to a much more moderate and modern form of Islam and even secularze them.

   The answer is spelled out in Chris Buckley’s “Florence of Arabia.” The CIA funds and runs a sat TV network broadcasting shows like Oprah. The novel is funny but I think it is a great idea worth trying.

7. Cornhead Says: Know how we win in the long run?

   Keynes (the economist who really screwed things up) said… in the long run, we are all dead…

   the problems will ALWAYS work out in the long run. And there is no winning or losing, there is just change the evolves one way or another.

   and THAT is driven by demographics, and there is one group that has been effectively exterminated but doesnt know it, doesnt believe it, and wont accept anyone telling that story…

   2.1 births per woman to replace herself and the father factoring in mortality is a demographic standard… / U.S. White non-Hispanic births have been below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman for decades. / The U.S. total fertility rate (TFR) stood at 2.0 births per woman in 2009

   you cant get around this… there is no avoiding it you can ignore it, but that wont change outcomes
   the birth rate for one group is so low its dragged down the whole rate to below replacement necessitating the import of more fertile people from other countries..

   they have even come up with new terms like majority minority to preserve their position as minorities despite their being more of them than the majority… (i am not making this up)

   A Look at the U.S . Population in 2060
   by the Census.gov is an eye opener if you can dig

   In 2043, minority populations will be the majority

   with a certain political class voting WITH the oppressed, they are going to vote more and more freebies, and more and more penalties for the targets.

   its just math…

   in 1790 the black population was 19.3% and whites were 80.7%

   in 1930 the highest rate was achieved 89.8% with blacks down to 9.7%… by 2010 its 72.4%, and 12.6% / by 2043 it will be below 50% (or more)

   they are already now attacking the breeders of white males and those women are VERY confused as to why… but if you were the source of what you been fighting to eradicate, at what point will you realize they have to get rid of YOU to be done with it?

8. Cornhead,

   Gramscian march.

9. What does it say that you, Neo, understood more and made more sense than those to whom we are paying vast amounts of money? I don’t listen to Michael Savitch but I recall him saying something about liberalism being a mental disorder. The denial of reality seems to be part and parcel to the thinking and actions that brought us here. Clearly a large segment of our nation embraces unreality. Problem is, reality exists.

10. K-E,

    The COIN “Surge” worked.

    WW2 worked because we stayed committed to the post-war.

11. Send in the abortionists and planners. Abortion and planning is a human rights (rites?)- approved method for terminating and cannibalizing unwanted and inconvenient human lives. Why not murderers, rapists, and terrorists, too?

12. Eric:

    That’s right. Where’s the follow through?

    What’s the difference between Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. and Kosovo, South Africa, etc.?

    Why not assert “apartheid” or similar, pick a “Mandela” figure, slaughter the natives (white and black), and call it a humanitarian success?

13. AesopFan Says:
    November 18th, 2015 at 3:35 pm

    Walter Russell Mead has an excellent article on how we came to this pass.
    http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/11/17/president-obamas-cynical-refugee-ploy/

    &&

    Mead is usually on target.’

    This time, he’s hit the other side of the planet. He couldn’t be more wrong.

    ISIS is the President’ proxy army. It’s supported via Erdogan and Turkey. Without Turkey, ISIS has no connection — at all — to the outside world.

    Erdogan is 0Bomba’s best buddy forever, with countless ‘hug’ems’ to show for it.

    The MAIN threat of Muslim Syrian refugees is that

    1) They are Muslim

    Their hijrah is intended to OUT BIRTH the West.

    This strategic maternity-ward attack is the MAIN threat.

    2) They provide the human river for fanatical True Believer jihadis to migrate within.

    When combined with the spurious Islamophobia meme you have the perfect repressive mechanism to apply against the kafir in the West.

    Any Westerner defending his family, his society, his nation, is stigmatized as an Islamophobe.

    Meade clearly is on board with this as he tut-tuts Internet protests by the target proles.

    Any such defense taken in an active form becomes the basis of government repression — but only of White males.

    No effective repression of criminal, feral, Muslim jihadis will take place.

    This reality is already seen in Europe — time and time, again.

    Mere Internet postings bring the cops to ones door, if you should protest the settlement of Muslim invaders.

    That’s no joke. Not an exaggeration. It’s already happened. Crime think is a crime.

    &&&&

    This is an all out invasion — without any defensive battles.

    http://www.faithfreedom.org/islam-will-lose-the-west-already-lost/

    The war that has been going on between the West and Islam is obvious to all except those Westerners who live in denial and refuse to believe their eyes.

    What we actually see is a new kind of war the like of which never been fought before. In fact the word ‘war’ may not be the right expression to describe what has been going on.

    In wars, the fighting is in both directions but what we see today is that Islam is fighting against the West while the West is fighting alongside Islam!

14. “I submit that one of the biggest failings of the Klein-like set is an abysmal failure to even begin to understand the mindset of ISIS. “

    Ever listen to Hugh Hewitt interview a journalist?
    He always asks some basic questions to identify the depth of their historical knowledge. One of his questions he asks is what basic texts on the war on terror have they read, the most important of which is The Looming Tower by the New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright.

    I’m guessing Ezra Klein has not read anything like that.

    http://www.hughhewitt.com/embarrass-journalists/

15. With everyone knowing that war hurts women more than men (see hillary and others), there is no way to convince the ladies to wage full war and get it done… They have redefined that and there is no way to convince them that paranoid patriarchal male masculine testosterone based anything is needed… ergo the kind of leaders that the left wants are the kind that give the prizes away to the enemy, make appeasements, and make lots of laws in the international realm.

    Since conservative women, and none feminists have no voice, or matter, they are not part of this point… they dont exist as far as the politics is concerned and they are completey drowned out by their opposition…

    Gender Gap Varies on Support for War
    http://www.gallup.com/poll/7243/gender-gap-varies-support-war.aspx
    Women, by contrast, opted for diplomatic over military action by a 25-point margin, 59% to 34%.
    [edited for length by n-n]

16. I vote for my grandchildren. Collateral damage means absolutely nothing to me, I just don’t give a damn. I would gladly see two billion die to protect my grandchildren from beheading or the many other barbarisms of islam. For me, that is the bottom line.

    Our ‘leaders’ are beneath contempt. If it were in my power I would parachute them into the territory of isis, taliban, or boko harem without hesitation.

17. islam needs to be declared NOT a religion. A vicious ideology that advocates murder of Christians and Jews. Delist it.
    We may not be interested in war, but war is interested in us.
    Pragmatically speaking, we need (and deserve) a slaughter by Muslims. That will get us off our kiesters.

18. ISIS and … those within.
    As to the collaborationist Ezra Klucks:
    You have screwed up our country, prepare to die…

19. I actually have a copy of Florence of Arabia – it’s an amusing read with a seriously bitter twist. Would that we had the nerve, the confidence and the official brains to do something like what was suggested … and the guts to carry it out … since some of those nasty fates which occurred among locals who cooperated with that effort were not pretty. Were, in fact, (IIRC) what happened to perceived opponents of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Caliphate/Whatever-they-are-this-week.
    Oh, but I am talking about our official state organs of intelligence and state. Never mind, then.
    It’s up to individual initiative, I guess. I am not talking much on-line, or even in person about what I am doing, as part of my own initiative. Those of us veterans with a memory of OPSEC practically tattooed on our frontal lobes probably aren’t talking much either. But ordinary involved citizens are taking an initiative. Quietly. You can bet on it.

20. Oh, yes, and what Frog said. NOT a religion. A vicious ideology, which is justification for the worst and most twisted human impulses imaginable, thought up by a murderous pedophile and robber and exploited ever since by his ilk. No wonder it is so popular among prisoners and hormone-addled adolescents.
    Yes, I am a totally bigoted Islamophobe. Deal with it.

21. The immediate military defeat of ISIS is a simple military exercise. It is something we can do regularly as needed.

    Managing the north African and Middle East chaos and competition between tribal, religious, ethnic etc. groups will be much, much more difficult.

    I don’t think that our governmental structures can do it. I don’t think that any of the Presidential candidates (either party) are up to the task. There is no Churchill. Someone with long and deep knowledge and experience.

    And certainly for the next year+ Obama can’t do it.

    So just hope that fate doesn’t put you into a Paris type situation.

    God Speed to the folks in France.

22. Re: ISIS. The only reason why there are no good choices available is because Obama, the MSM, the hard Left and their liberal “useful idiots” won’t allow implementation of them. Until that internal enemy is defeated, the external enemies are essentially untouchable. America’s coming confrontation with REALITY is thus the only ‘solution’. It will be a painful lesson.

23. Yes, I agree with GB. When people say “We” have lost the will for X, what they really mean is that DEMOCRATS (or progressives, they’re almost identical) have lost the will.

    I don’t count myself in the same category with those losers.

24. There is Ezra Klucks and there is Tom Friedamn:
    by Tom Friedman: the enemy is within
    Special Guest Columnist for Ace of Spades HQ

    I was talking to my cabbie in Cairo, making idle chit-chat as we threaded our way through a colorful and boisterous bazaar, what the locals call a souk, when I pointed out how the world is becoming more interconnected every second.

    Then, he stabbed me.

    As the blade slipped between my ribs, it occurred to me the rubber of the knife’s rubber handle was made in Poland, and the steel crafted in Japan. Much like the gaudy wares on display at the souk which my cabbie had paused the car at in order to stab me, my backseat butchering was a glorious melange of the intersection of ideas at the great crossroads of the world.

    As my cabbie continued to stab at my torso, I pondered that this moment was made possible by what I call “the pollenization of possibility.”

    Consider: It required the melding of three cultures, Polish, Japanese, and Egyptian, to produce the perforation in my Minnesota-made kidney. It was as if the grand viziers of thought and the great moguls of trade had conspired for years to come together into the red-tipped point of my itinerant assassin’s dagger.

    You can see this everywhere in the world, in “American” cars with parts made in Japan and largely assembled in Mexico, or in the latest “killer” app, conceived in Silicon Valley but coded in Seoul.

    The pace of cross-pollenization and adaptation is unstoppable and ever-increasing, much like the crazed murder-tempo of my assailant’s unexpected blood-frenzy.

    I hold up my hands in defense, like those “left behind” in the New Economy, trying to protect themselves from the incoming Knife of Change. Though, in my case, I was actually trying to protect myself from the incoming the Knife of Stabbing.

    But, just as ideas from far-away cultures penetrate our society, the blade cuts into me like a viral meme, or perhaps a catchy Bollywood song.

    But one of those songs that plunges deeply into the meat of your palm and severs the nerves to your fingers.

    I cry out to passers-by for help, but just like those left behind by globalization, they are heedless of the changes happening all around them.

    Finally, I catch their attention. Then they begin stabbing me too.

    As the crowd gathers around me with knives and antiquated farm implements, some scratch-made, some from the nuevas factorias of Veracruz, it strikes to me that I am witnessing what I call the “sudden inevitable.”

    In my book The Sudden Inevitable, I trace how events that overtake us have percolated in the collective unconscious for decades, even centuries.

    This guy just cut off my foot with a shovel.

    Ideas are pregnant in the ether before any human speaks them aloud, much like the idea of stabbing me to death has long percolated (I suspect) in the collective mind of my closest confreres.

    And thus, as I lie wet and wriggling upon the ground, this conclave of multicultural avatars pulling off my pants and leaving me naked to the waist for God knows what reason, I think about the quickening pulse of international concourse, and how it matches my own quickening pulse, as my heartbeat becomes fast, weak, and thready due to rapid exsanguination. Something of the world has been lost, and it will not be returning any time soon.

    Rather like my foot, which I see now has been placed upon a table in the souk and is now being offered for sale at the price of one pound, sixty piastres. I’m rather proud that the foot of a simple man from the farms of Minnesota should command such a lofty price in this place, this chattering beehive of a bazaar where the locals come to haggle over bolts of cotton and baskets of taro, and where Westerners come to be butchered and stripped down for their organs.

    And their foot.

    I cannot speak any longer. My microrecorder (made in the Netherlands) is almost full. Oh bugger, they just took that too

25. Let’s cut to the quick:
    There is evil in the White House.
    There is evil in the Democratic Party.
    What will happen when ISIS kills Americans in America? Barack Hussein will declare martial law and deal with us.

26. Panty boy in chief (not intended as an insult to all panty boys) desires to declare martial law and invoke all the EOs that would give him dictorial powers. But there is a flaw, I will let everyone fill in the blank.

27. Harold:
    “Managing the north African and Middle East chaos and competition between tribal, religious, ethnic etc. groups will be much, much more difficult.”

    In fact, we had set up a cornerstone for that.

    State Department, US Embassy in Baghdad, 2011:

    After a long and difficult conflict, we now have the opportunity to see Iraq emerge as a strategic partner in a tumultuous region. A sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq that can act as a force for moderation is profoundly in the national security interests of the United States

    Then we threw away the hard-earned, pivotal, necessary piece.

    Nevertheless, we have a proven constructive point of reference for the counter-ISIS fight: the OIF COIN “Surge”.

    Iraqis don’t believe America wants to defeat ISIS because their point of reference is our victory over AQI with the COIN “Surge” that established the US as the strong horse. They believe we could beat ISIS like we beat AQI but we don’t because we’ve chosen not to. Which, unfortunately, is more or less correct.

    The OIF COIN “Surge” remains the gold standard because the current President has endeavored to regress from the leadership of his predecessor.

    So we know what the right prescription looks like. To enable it, the paradigm of American leadership manifested with OIF needs to be re-normalized and OIF needs to be de-stigmatized.

    Harold:
    “There is no Churchill. Someone with long and deep knowledge and experience.”

    Among the presidential candidates? No. But there is an experienced pool of civilian and military Iraq veterans for this or the next President to draw upon when the OIF paradigm of American leadership is re-normalized.

28. The immediate need is to get Congress to pass a new AUF – something Cruz or Rubio is doing in the Senate. The next thing is for the House to do the same.

    Together, THIS must be seen a strong support for Hollande to declare Article 5 action to defeat ISIS, and force and shame Obama into submission.

    Otherwise, we, America is not serious – and Obamunist capitaulation to evil wins without even an alternative getting aired and debated.

    WE WILL be whacked in months. The example of Paris is that committed Islamist Jihadis can kill hundreds on $10,000. With more and groups and simultaneous attack coordination, thousands – maybe doubling on 9/11s 3,000 casualties.

    Since it is low-tech and cheap, it will happen here too. And the election will be a verdict on genuine defense versus pacifist “whack a mole” maybe BS.

    The longer intellectually strategic war for honest – to identify and name and understand the enemy as Islam – will be to our longer-term benefit. Let the horrifying damage come, because it is inevitable.

29. Whether or not we can manage the chaos in the Middle East is a false premise. It is not our problem. We thought it was, because we thought we needed their oil. Now we know we don’t.

    So, what we need to do is isolate them until they enter the 21st century, or the 25th if it takes that long to get their heads straight.

    It will be messy over there; even tragic. We will probably be bombarded with film at 11 of human misery. Too bad.

    Of course we could whisper our intentions to the Saudis: to the filthy rich Sheiks and other plutocrats in the Gulf states: to the King of Jordan; and to the Sunni/Shia leadership in Iraq. The message would be, “you are on your own”. We will not come to help; you will not send your unwanted to us. If you want to stay in power sort it out; come to terms with your masses and the ideology they call their religion. But, the rest of the world; that part that lives in the 21st century will go about its business. Oh, and we are armed; and dangerous.

30. Of course the easy painless way to defeat ISIS is to elect Bernie Sanders President. The jihadis will die laughing-
    -or-
    elect Hillary President and she will rob them blind.

    Hey, if you think the New York Times and the Dems won’t endorse both these ideas as the only practical methods welcome back from where ever you’ve been.

31. Oldflyer,
    Regretfully, you are wrong. Your proposed withdrawal simply compounds the withdrawals of the Obama folks, and that hasn’t worked very well for anybody except the Evil Ones. Islam thrives when unchecked. Islam is coming for you.
    It is only necessary that good men do nothing….

32. Frog;

    You do not understand. I did not say for us to withdraw from the world. I said isolate them totally. If they come for us, we kill them. But, we do not play in their sand box; and they do not infiltrate our culture.

    As you may know; they cannot even operate their oil industry without western support. They cannot operate their airlines without a large number of western pilots. They cannot design or build a shopping mall on their own. They cannot educate their engineers in their Universities. We hold the hammer; we are just afraid to use it.

    There is a whole world outside of Islam. Let that part wither and die; or drag itself into the modern world. Their choice.

33. Blockades and no fly zones, relatively easy to enforce if one is immune to the tears of propaganda , and then they starve within 3 months, 6 at the most, and next they eat their children, and not my grandchildren. Low cost, effective, what is not to like?

34. The first step in defeating ISIS is to defeat the ideology called Islam. Begin by telling the truth. Islam is a very fragile ideology with no intellectual foundation which only thrives because of collusion between the left and the Muslim radicals who censor anyone who challenges the verity of Islam.

35. You can not destroy islam with the ‘truth’. The followers of islam have been inoculated against truth and the concept of life, liberty, and the individual pursuit of happiness. Everything is based upon if allah wills it.

    allah against all, everyone else for themselves.

36. Matt_SE Says:
    November 18th, 2015 at 3:25 pm

    Personally, I think it may be far more beneficial to allow 10,000 New York liberals to die in a very public and horrific way. In that case, at least they can’t blame Republicans for their problems or have any illusions left about ISIS or Islam.

    Don’t be ridiculous. They’ll blame it on “Republican budget cuts”.

    It doesn’t even matter that the Republicans didn’t cut anything. They’ll just find something where the Democrats demanded an increase, the Republicans opposed it, and voila! Republican budget cuts.

37. Fjordman is a very good writer and does his research covering the reasons for what is going on now.

    he was writing back years before Obama, way before people today see or even know where to begin to understand whats going, and what or how it was being accomplished socially. (like why men are not protecting the women or fighting, and Fjordman was covering Sweden, the country that the west liberals held up as a example – now the gang rape capitol of the west0

    Brussels Journal
    From the desk of Fjordman on Mon, 2006-09-04 14:39

    How the Feminists’ “War against Boys” Paved the Way for Islam
    http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1300

    One of the reasons for this lack of response is a deliberate and pervasive censorship in the mainstream media, to conceal the full scale of the problem from the general public. However, I suspect that the most important reason has to do with the extreme anti-masculine strand of feminism that has permeated Scandinavia for decades. The male protective instinct doesn’t take action because Scandinavian women have worked tirelessly to eradicate it, together with everything else that smacks of traditional masculinity. Because of this, feminism has greatly weakened Scandinavia, and perhaps Western civilization as whole.

    [edited for length by n-n]

38. The truth about Islam

    1. Scholars have unearthed evidence that many if not all authoritative Hadiths were manufactured years after Mohammad’s death. Without Hadiths the Koran is almost uninterpretable and orthodox Islam falls apart.

    2. Almost everything we know about early Islam, its prophet, and its history is based on later Muslim sources and is largely fictional.

    3. The Koran contains statements which are easily falsifiable with elementary scientific investigation. An example is that the Koran claims that it takes two women to remember an event accurately because women’s memories are so feeble.

    There is more, but this is a good start. If Muslims were exposed to people who are honestly skeptical about their beliefs on a daily basis, eventually they would start looking into the flaws in their belief system themselves.

39. @ Dennis
    If you could defeat Islam with reason, it wouldn’t be a religion (or cult, YMMV).

40. @ rickl
    Seriously, the point of that demonstration is not to persuade the zealots; that’s impossible. It is the final act that separates the reasonable people from those who are beyond the pale.
    After that, apologists and deniers become enemies.

41. Some have tried to separate religion which is based on blind faith from science which they claim is based on evidence. That will never do. We know that the hallmark of a good scientific theory is whether it is falsifiable. That same test applies to religious belief. Many religious beliefs are testable and are falsifiable.

    Almost all Muslims believe that the Koran is dictated by Allah. In other words the Koran is verbally infallible. Therefore, since the Koran says that it takes two women with their feeble memories to match one man’s recollection, that is a statement which is testable and is falsifiable. In fact, that statement is false. That means that the Koran was not dictated by an all knowing God as Muslims claim.

42. Great analysis. Post Obama, are there few good choices that satisfy our need to avoid “civilian” casualties.

    In WW2, the allies could care less about civilian casualties. They bombed cities mercilessly, fire-bombed Dresden, nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki and won the war.

    Since the Russians and the French have suffered major attacks by ISIS, they are prepared to adopt a WW2 mentality. Obama, the radical Muslim sympathiser he has proven himself to be, can only watch from the sidelines.

    He is supporting his radical allies by importing hundreds of thousands of ME Muslims (not persecuted Christians) into the US of A, unvetted, and likely fertile ground for ISIS recruitment.

    When will this nightmare end?

43. Oldflyer, the interconnections are hard to overlook. ISIS sells refined petroleum to Syria. Without those sales Syria has no fuel, no energy, and ISIS gets no money. Iran had the same problem, but Barack hussein has fixed that for them. There are all kinds of wants and all kinds of people skirting the barriers to meet those wants, be it arms, explosives, SAMs, medicines, food, foreign exchange.
    Didn’t work very well in Iraq, thanks to the UN corruptocrats.

44. Time to throw something weird into the mix.

    Toxoplasmosis.

    What is that? It is a parasite carried by cats that infects rodents. The parasite infects the rodents brains and causes them to change their behavior to become easier prey for cats. Instead of shunning light, they seek it. Instead of being repelled by the smell of cat urine, they seek it out.

    Humans are easily infected by this parasite and it impacts their behavior.

    Here’s one link that explores how this parasite influences human behavior. It is subtle, but is wreaks severe damage. In my opinion, and this has not been scientifically validated, it mostly causes them to reflexively vote Democrat. I’m serious. How else to explain how this once great nation twice voted for Obama.

    According to this site, 60% of Americans are infected.

    If you think I’m crazy, just Google “Toxoplasmosis”. You’ll probably find this link

45. The war is on, but under Obama we have tried to withdraw. The progs see human-caused disasters (Islamist terror) as a law enforcement problem. There are international laws and agreements which they want to uphold, even though the Islamists see that as one more of our weaknesses.

    Islamism attracts aggressive, sex-starved, males who see the command to kill the infidels as a get-out-of-jail-free card. They are promised martyr status and all the sex they can handle after dying in battle. They are somewhat akin to the young males who likes cage fighting and MMA in Western culture. But these men don’t dream this martyrdom and killing all the infidels stuff up – most don’t really know much about the Quran. They are carefully groomed by the radical imams, who are the real instigators behind violent jihad.

    Their activities are fueled by oil money. ISIS has an oil field where they are selling oil to Turkey and probably to Assad. They also get contributions from various oil rich sheiks who are supporters of the Wahabbist/Salafist/Qutbist (W/S/Q) brand of Islam. At the G-20, Putin (Obama would never do such a thing) reported that 40 nations are supporting the jihadis and he knows who they are. An idle threat? I hope not. Take away their money and the jihadis are nothing but rageaholics roaming around the deserts of the MENA.

    Whatever we do must not only be kinetic but also interdicting their money supplies, and mounting a huge propaganda campaign against the W/S/Q brand of Islam. A far-reaching, covert, black-bag operation targeting radical imams would be effective in slowing the incitement to jihad and martyrdom.

    Isolating the Muslim world might theoretically be possible, but it would be a lot like trying to keep Saddam Hussein honest. There would be cheating because there would be money to be made – as there was in Iraq under Saddam.

    Here’s a link to a war plan against ISIS that I would endorse. Although it is the fantasy of what a new President might do, it would work for destroying ISIS in short order:
    http://tinyurl.com/p773kde
    This would be short and sweet, but the other parts would take a long term commitment, and therein lies the problem. The progs will start sabotaging any war effort the minute there is a mistake or problem. As we all know.

    The question then becomes what do we do after ISIS is destroyed? That’s where it becomes tricky. My suggestion would be to let the defeat be a warning to any other country that shelters jihadis. Either the Muslim countries keep them under control (ala Mubarak in Egypt or Gadaffi in Libya) or we will pay them a visit.

    Also, we have the failed states to deal with – Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, etc. – all cesspools where the Islamist jihadis can shelter. Obviously, there are no easy answers to those problems. But some ME experts with military experience should be able to conjure something up that is effective and doesn’t involve huge expenditures of blood and treasure.

    In summary – cut off the money, cut off the incitement, challenge the beliefs, overwhelming kinetic action when necessary, and plan for a long haul (25+years) effort. Yeah, I know – try selling it to the voting public. A hard sell for sure.

46. Our biggest problem is the ocean of denial and ignorance about Islam that we’re swimming in, here in the West. Even after years of nonstop atrocities and massacres, people refuse to face the fact that Islam is different.

    For example: I was dismayed that my young cousin (27) posted on Facebook the latest Leftist meme — “Too bad there isn’t a seasonal story about a Middle Eastern family that was turned away from sanctuary in the inn, by the heartless…” complete with Hallmark card illustration of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. (The young cousin and her husband are registered Republicans.)

    So I told her (Republican, country club) mother, who sent this reply:

    “[My daughter and son-in-law] are quite liberal in many ways these days. She and I did talk about it yesterday, though. She is very influenced by the stories of individual refugees profiled on the Humans of New York site, but she is open to hearing dialog on just how dangerous radical Islam is. She wanted to argue that they don’t really represent what most Muslims believe, which may be true, but really is kind of irrelevant.

    “Idealism is very prevalent among 20 somethings, as one might expect. Sadly, they’ll grow out of it as age and experience bring things more into focus for them. Can’t really fault them for feeling compassion.”

    Bearing in mind that Mama Bear doesn’t want to hear any criticism of her cubs, I sent this reply:

    “It’s just unfortunate that most Westerners know so little about Islam. I dug into it after 9/11, and discovered just how different, and violent, and alien it is to Western (i.e., Christian) morality. I already had an idea of that because of my work with the United Nations and various women’s Third World NGOs, where we were constantly confronting the intense misogyny of the ideology. That, and killing/forcibly converting “infidels,” are core tenets of the Koran, not a fringe movement.

    “Which means we’re in for a world of trouble, and we in the free world will find this out sooner or later.”

    I was trying to be tactful and get the point across at the same time. The biggest mistake that our friends and neighbors make is to believe that, apart from the name of their god and the prayer style, Islam is basically “just the same” morally and ideologically as Christianity and Judaism. Which as we here know, it most definitely is NOT.

    How to get through to them, though? I forwarded the excellent article on the true nature of Islam that Daniel Greenfield wrote earlier this week (at The Sultan Knish), but I fear most people don’t read these things.

47. Oldflyer Says: [November 18th, 2015 at 8:32 pm]

    “Whether or not we can manage the chaos in the Middle East is a false premise. It is not our problem.”

    You write “isolate” the Muslim plague, but mean a policy known as “containment.”

    My US diplomatic history prof taught a class of 200, and earned a standing ovation at his concluding lecture: he was Assistant to Undersecretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger during the Reagan era. (Eagleburger is the only career Foreign Service Officer to rise to Sec. of State, briefly, under George H. W. Bush, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Eagleburger)

    The Cold War era’s defining strategy was policy containment was launched in Foreign Affairs as “Mr X” by George Kennan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan#.22X.22). It was a policy of waiting out the Soviet Union, and it succeeded.

    Can it succeed against Islam? No. Why? Two reasons: globalization is too penetrating. The world had radio and then TV and film as mass media then, Now it is satellite/cable TV, and internet and mobile phones (minicomputers). How is “isolating” effect of containment practical?

    Second reason: lack of will. The Cold War snuck up on the US in the wake of a prostate planet after World War. That global weakness was an enormous help in organizing mutual defense, resulting in a bi-polar division of the world because of the “new Gennie,” the H-bomb.

    Here is Kennan’s key statement:

    “the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies … Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.”

    Today, the bi-polar world is impossible to rebuild because the world is multi-polar: Chinese, Russia, India, Pakistan, etc, all nuclear armed, and the nodes of interconnectivity too strong. And the problem isn’t the expansion of state power, but terrorism and the passive Jihad of infiltration or Hijrah, which can be stopped with enough political will. Plus, we are inextricably interconnected, economically – unless you want to give up maybe 25% of GDP! Or more.

    There is no will to make such a sacrifice! Not in the US nor elsewhere in the planet.

    Finally, containment worked because the Soviet Empire shared our Enlightenment values of, at least, economic progress.

    The idea of progress is a Christian one – and it is a fundamental one that Salafists (we’re calling it ‘radical Islam’ now) reject and other streams of Jihadism eg, (Khomeinist, Wahhabi, neo-Wahhabist), either reject or deeply and intractably struggle against. They seek theocratic Medieval rule, not material progress which requires liberty.

    Now, I could be wrong on this changed environment and the degree to which parallel strategic possibilities to classic containment are possible or not. Have a read of the classic textbook history of containment that I enjoyed in the 1980s – “Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War” (Rev Exp ed) – by John Lewis Gaddis (then of Ohio State, then Yale, now retired I assume).

    Our post-Cold War architect for US grand military strategy is Thomas P. M Barnett. His 2011 or 2012 speech updating “The Pentagon’s New Map,” says that the world is moving towards a wealthier and more interconnected world of its own force. We – the US – cannot stop it. The only issue is how many lives must be lost to violent death to get there. (SEE Youtube – I still recommend Barnett’s original seminar powerpoint lecture given after 9/11 hundreds of times before landing on C-Span, because there a great deal of 20th and even 19th C history quickly conveyed by previous crises, with the defining American goal of recreating international capitalism on the British model, but more openly, with more equity and bilateral consent, and classic liberal human rights, eg, the UN, etc [ SEE “A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights” by Elizabeth Borgwardt, 2007].)

48. @J.J. I’m sick of them. Sunni, Shiite; they hate each other but both want to destroy is.

    A generation ago, or is it two, the Nazis and the Communists wanted to destroy us. We supported the Communists, while we faced a common enemy. When the Nazis were defeated, we entered into a cold war with the Communists. It sort of petered out when the Soviet empire collapsed, but Putin has revived it.

    The real question is, how do you contain Islam? It has infiltrated the West to a frightening extent, and is using Democracy to extend its power. The rise of anti-Israel sentiment in Europe reflects that power.

    Our President has revealed himself to be a sympathiser of radical islam by his actions, his policies and his words. Will he do anything to thwart radical islam? No. He wants to import it under the guise of a humanitarian effort to help Syrian “refuges”.

    Some bright spark should ask President Obama if he would resign if a Syrian refugee that he let into this country launched a terrorist attack that killed Americans. When it happens, ask again.

49. Neo

    In Syria I also have grave doubts about the makeup of the “rebels”–a word I have come to hate and distrust. And, as in Iraq, if we aren’t committed to overseeing the aftermath of a rebellion (which we most assuredly are not), we should be careful of the forces we unleash.

    
    Let refresh the memory here for some may forgot:

    L. Paul Bremer III: The Democracy of Militias. The Badr Corp which entered Iraq through the Iranian borders was established in Iran in 1982 as the military wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, Badr’s Corp (Failaq Badr) was led by Hadi al-Amiri, the Transportation Minister in the Maliki government, as and League of the Righteous (‘Asayib Ahl al-Haq) militias. Another paramilitary force was the al-Mahdi Army, the military wing of al-Sadr’s Movement. Were the driving force behind such civil and sectarian atrocities in Iraq/
    Thus circumventing Decree Number 91 issued by Paul Bremer that orders the disbanding of all armed militias belonging to parties. The “political process,” laid forth by the US occupation on the basis of sectarian power sharing, resulted into a full-fledged civil war in a bid to redistribute the spoils after sectarian tensions had reached their peak.

    With more than 11 years of US forces existence in Iraq Beginning in May 2004, U.S. authorities contracted with USIS to create the first ERU. The non-sectarian force is supposed “to respond to national-level law enforcement emergencies. That left nothing to see ISIS start as driving force born in Syria before Iraq from Al-Nusrah Front and other opposition groups supported by reginal regimes and US.

    As for Ralph Peters Let not forgot Peters suggested that a reimagining of Middle Eastern and Asian borders along ethnic, sectarian and tribal lines might ease regional tensions.

50. than the one France is currently conducting:

    What they conducting?

    Why they font not goes to the root?

    The root is the Imam, Masjid those terrorists intending where they recruited for blowing themselves?
    Did any one asked why they did not look back to those evils , master mind behind these terrorists recurring machine whom they living in western world living from western tax payer money to cerate and manufacturing terrorists ready blowing themselves and to kill you?

    Please go after them ask you government the revile ask the info for you let see the news outlet telling us who they are where they are how they live on your land enjoying your freedmen and manufacturing terrorists ready to kill you all.

    One xemple for you like this F* Imam is well practised in the art of making contentious or provocative statements. An acolyte of the extremist cleric Omar Bakri Muhammed, who fled the UK for Lebanon, the 47-year-old former lawyer was a founding member of Al-Muhajiroun, which celebrated the 9/11 attacks, and was proscribed along with several other groups that Choudary has fronted, including Islam4UK.

51. Dennis Says:
    November 18th, 2015 at 11:20 pm

    The truth about Islam

    …

    Every thing you’ve posted is already known and accepted by Muslims everywhere.

    All Muslims know that Muslim scholars re-compiled the Koran and all else GENERATIONS after Mohammed died.

    So you’re shooting blanks.

52. Blert said:

    “All Muslims know that Muslim scholars re-compiled the Koran and all else GENERATIONS after Mohammed died.”

    I’m curious how Blert knows what all Muslims know? Remember, you are talking about a billion people most of whom live in third world hell holes. Most of them probably believe exactly what their imams teach them. Many Muslims memorize the Koran and recite it even though they don’t speak or understand Arabic. What do these people know?

    Standard orthodox Muslim theology, theology which is reinforced by the death penalty in many Islamic majority lands, is that the Koran is dictated by Allah himself and has been transmitted perfectly down to present generations. According to standard theology, the compilation Blert refers to is flawless, which means that the Koran is word perfect. It was compiled by Uthman the third Caliph who knew Muhammad intimately and other associates of Mohammad who had memorized the Koran while Mohammad was still alive and could correct them if they made any mistakes. Uthman even married two of Mohammad’s daughters. Uthman burned any copies of the Koran which were less than perfect so what was left were the exact words of Allah himself. That is standard Islamic theology. Here is a site which repeats standard Muslim theology.

    http://www.answering-christianity.com/quran/other_books.htm

    Orthodox Muslims and Muslimahs must believe that women are dim bulbs where it takes two women to stand in for one man as eye witnesses to an event. In a trial, the two women together can correct each other’s poor memories and together can serve as one of the two witnesses required at a trial.

53. In 1979, feminist author Kate Millett went to Iran in the midst of its tumultuous Islamic revolution. She demonstrated with Iranian women in the streets of Tehran. She declared that “religion and clothing are something private” and insisted that “nobody can force” women to wear Islamic-style dress. Millett also trumpeted her vision of global sisterhood at a chaotic press conference. “We are an international movement, the women’s movement,” she said

    Lets look at what the two sides are offering the west and note that every country where the pc left womens ideology is, there is massive immigration issues, and social collapse due to bleeding hearts and now, mass conversion of the women AND men to islam [do note that ex soviet countries could build a wall and act, but they are not western matriarchies protected by pajama boy]

    what are the two sides offering?

    well, the western liberal state is offering the men disenfranchisement, emasculation, ejection from family, hatred in the social sphere, lack of parity, fomenting race hate against them, hatred of judaism and christianity, socialism/communism and a end to freedom, title IX destroying male sports and negating college participation, and a long list of negatives…

    and the eastern Islamic state is offering? respect, status, a place in the home, a huge leftist love bomb for joining, black solidarity, no racism for converts white or black or chinese, families, hatred of judaism and christianity, and all that. [and if unprotected women convert, they get to be protected from gang rape, torture, and so on by men that dont care about their approval or politics!!!]

54. [its happening a whole lot and i am trying to provide links. there is not enough room to provide excerpts and even links may be too much for neo – your gonna have a hard time opposing something that feminists are supporting and converting to]

    so what do YOU think is going to happen given the choices and so on? a huge converstion rate is happening now

    Swedish Girl Converted to Islam ( English Subtitle)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9a5Z8Vp4d0

    Swedish Woman Convert To Islam
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3reUOXSkpzY

    Europeans Increasingly Converting to Islam
    http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2790/europeans-converting-to-islam

    I’m a feminist and I converted to Islam
    http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/14/opinion/muslim-convert-irpt/

    Converting to Islam in America: How a Research Class Enhanced My Understanding of Feminism in the United States
    http://www.american.edu/sis/news/20150608-Converting-to-Islam-in-America.cfm

    Why do Western Women Convert?
    JULIE BINDEL http://standpointmag.co.uk/features-may-10-why-do-western-women-convert-julie-bindel-islam-female-conversion

    Why are so many British feminists converting to Islam?
    http://winteryknight.com/2010/11/03/why-are-so-many-british-feminists-converting-to-islam/

55. JJ:
    “The question then becomes what do we do after ISIS is destroyed?”

    You put your finger on the fundamental shortcoming of Schlichter’s article. He describes one distinct stage of a proposed treatment yet implies he’s just presented the whole cure.

    Perhaps he’s just rounding off his thesis due to the limitation of the medium, but his article looks like a narrow-minded combination of an end-exercise, OOTW, and specialist mentality.

    I suspect it’s the latter due to his conflated contrast of high-kinetic war with lower-intensity counterinsurgency as though they’re an either/or choice for the same situation when they’re different applications tailored for different conditions for different stages. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we deposed Saddam’s regime and the Taliban with high-kinetic wars. COIN was the belated solution for the subsequent post-war.

    He appears to believe that for the military, there’s properly one way of war, which trumps all, and everything else is secondary, OOTW, to the queen of battle. That’s an obsolete mentality that’s familiar from my service. Certainly, the military must always be expert at high-kinetic war. But he assumes a short-term scope with a set piece and a degree of rigidity in the enemy that are unwarranted. Moreover, generally speaking, carrying out policy calls for the military to calibrate across a spectrum and conduct, if needed, hybrid operations.

    His article is worthwhile within a narrow albeit critical focus, but its claim of a whole cure is misleading by neglecting to place its thesis in the larger context.

    You, unlike the author, understand that he’s only described one stage of a treatment. You look at the critical ‘what next’.

    With your sketch of a prescription in the task and conditions of ‘what next’, what stands out most is you more or less described President Bush’s ME policy in the status quo ante in the window before Obama’s course change and the Arab Spring and after the COIN “Surge”.

    JJ:
    “In summary — cut off the money, cut off the incitement, challenge the beliefs, overwhelming kinetic action when necessary, and plan for a long haul (25+years) effort. Yeah, I know — try selling it to the voting public. A hard sell for sure.”

    “Selling it to the voting public” points to yet another compelling reason why we need to de-stigmatize OIF and re-normalize the paradigm of American leadership manifested with OIF.

    Serious, intelligent, likeminded people approaching the same or similar task, conditions, standard will generally arrive at the same or similar prescriptions. Well, you just proposed reinventing the wheel with, in broad strokes, Bush’s ME policy and OIF. (Substitute ISIS for Saddam’s regime, but Saddam’s regime was also terrorist (in breach of UNSCR 687).)

    Trying to sell your ‘new’ invention to the voting public will be a “hard sell for sure” because it looks and operates like a recent world-famous invention that competitors in the marketplace have smeared over with a taboo that they continue to refresh as an active premise. Folks like Ezra Klein who engineered the taboo against the old-old wheel won’t allow your reinvented new-old wheel past their guard.

    The only realistic way to sell your reinvented new-old wheel to the voting public is to attack head-on and break the taboo. Se-stigmatize OIF and re-normalize the paradigm of American leadership manifested with OIF. That ad campaign necessarily starts at the premise level by setting the record straight on the decision for OIF, then reframing the entire cultural/political narrative of OIF, and discrediting anyone who promoted the false narrative of OIF.

    If you don’t break the OIF taboo and discredit the false/BDS narrative (and false/BDS narrators), you’ll be trying to sell a product that’s already banned from the shelves.

56. Fix: SDe-stigmatize OIF and re-normalize the paradigm of American leadership manifested with OIF. That ad campaign necessarily starts at the premise level by setting the record straight on the decision for OIF, then reframing the entire cultural/political narrative of OIF, and discrediting anyone who promoted the false narrative of OIF.

57. Theres the saying ” Be careful in casting out your demons lest you cast out the best things in you”.

    Well the progressive movement in the western world has casted out lots of demons. So many that self defense and self preservation is now off limits in how offensive it is to the poor and downtrodden.

58. and hollande is NOT doing a WWII like Putin

    French President Francois Hollande today promised that “France will remain a country of freedom,” defending his decision to honor a commitment to accept migrants and refugees despite Friday’s deadly terrorist attacks in Paris.

    and even sweden is in the thrall as they are now openly calling for converts..

    One ‘Swedish’ Muslim propagandist who publishes pictures of himself wielding automatic weapons glorifying jihad and calling on other people in Sweden to join the Islamic State praised the Paris terrorists. Posting online, he wrote the killings were “this beautiful revenge… it is in the name of Allah”, reports Sweden’s high-circulation left-wing daily Afton Bladet.

    while the feminist left party has decided to support more of the people attacking them:

    “To counteract the radicalization we must go back to the situation such as the one in the Middle East of which not the least the Palestinians see that there is no future: we must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence,” Margot Wallstré¶m told Swedish television network SVT2T (link in Swedish) a short while after the November 13 attacks, which were claimed by the Islamic State terrorist organization.

    and obama says he will veto any attempts to limit the influx..

    President Barack Obama would veto a proposal from Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives for additional scrutiny of refugees from Syria or Iraq, the White House said on Wednesday.

    while the news today says:
    Terrorists Once Used Refugee Program to Settle in US
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/terrorists-refugee-program-settle-us/story?id=35252500

    EXCLUSIVE – CONFIRMED: 8 Syrians Caught at Texas Border in Laredo
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/18/report-8-syrians-caught-at-texas-border-in-laredo/

    hope its not too long or too much truth to handle… or else procrustes fits you to the bed.

59. THIS lays out what is going on:

    ‘South Park’ Brilliantly Mocks PC Culture
    http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/alexa-moutevelis-coombs/2015/11/19/south-park-brilliantly-mocks-pc-culture

    Notice what rules they are following and why, etc…

    [i would wait, but neo might not cover it, and it relates to the Islam thing as the same cultural rules and so forth control the public dialogue and politicans, which blogs dont]

60. “One ‘Swedish’ Muslim propagandist who publishes pictures of himself wielding automatic weapons glorifying jihad and calling on other people in Sweden to join the Islamic State praised the Paris terrorists.”

    What you wating for?

    Go after him and apply your law or strip his citizenship send him and his familiy back to home land?

    Our handed to Shiite regim in bagdad they will dance and cut his head show him on the news

61. Fallaci’s best story recalls her explosive interview with Khomeini, whom she attacked “because I did not accept to be treated like a maid, like he treats all women.” She questioned why women must wear the chador, a “stupid, medieval rag,” and then took off her head scarf, prompting the shocked Khomeini to flee the room.

62. http://neo-neocon.blogspot.in/2006/09/fallaci-goes-few-rounds-with-khomeini.html?m=1

63. Orson; you note as one reason that isolation–I did say isolation not containment–would not work is “lack of will”. Well, true. No strategy will work lacking will; and there is the rub. No strategy will be easy, and any successful one will take strong will indeed.

    I do not care where Syria gets its oil. I do not care whether Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, can sell their oil. I do not care if they go back to the 7th century economically in line with their religious ideology. My point, and I stand by it, is to make the Islamic world a world unto itself unless it reforms from within. The reason I believe strongly that it would work–given the will– is exactly in tune with your argument; the inter-connectivity of the world. The Royal families, the Shieks, the various Despots would understand that–one the west (and the east) demonstrated the will to truly isolate them economically, technologically, as well as culturally-it could all come tumbling down around their ears. Reform would be bloody and quick.

    By the way; I also believe that if the U.S. had the will–that caveat again–it could persuade, or force, the rest of the world to support the strategy. No one wants to lose the American market.

    Fanciful? Sure. No more so than any strategy of half measures–or carpet bombing.

64. Lots of good comments.

    Back in 2003 one of my primary sources for believing in the invasion of Iraq was Thomas P. M. Barnett’s book, “The Pentagon’s New Map.” It laid out the reason why the West needed to bring the backward nations (mostly Muslim) (which he called the Gap) into the “Core,” which includes the Anglosphere, Japan, Germany, and the “Lesser Includeds” – Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, etc. A quick summary of his ideas can be read here:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon%27s_New_Map

    Iraq seemed the ideal place (decent infrastructure, educated populace, and oil wealth) in the Musilm world to create a new “rule set” that other Muslim countries would want to emulate. It turns out that what Barnett and people like me didn’t see was the incredible power of radical Islamist theology. What seemed to be a promising start, turned quickly to sectarian chaos after we left Iraq in 2012.

    It is now clear that kinetic action is necessary but that cutting off the money, challenging the beliefs, and neutering the instigators (the imams) and staying that course for a long time is even more necessary.

    Christianity was at one time infused with a fundamentalist, warlike sentiment. And much like the Sunnis versus the Shias, it was the Catholics versus the Protestants. The Thirty Years War proved so vicious and barbaric that it brought about the reform of Christianity toward emphasizing peace and tolerance of other faiths. Just as in the Quran there are passages in the Bible that, if interpreted in a certain way, exhort the faithful to make war on those who don’t believe. Those passages have been re-interpreted. So it should be with Islam.

    blert has mentioned that the Quran, though it is touted to be the word of Allah as dictated to Mohammed, is really a compilation of information accomplished by those who inherited the religion from Mohammed. Much like the Bible, which is a compilation of many scriptures by many different Hebrews and Christians which were finalized on 28 August 397 AD by the Council of Carthage. Thus, the literal interpretation of the Quran is open to question.

    To bring the Muslim world into peaceful and tolerant coexistence with the West, the violent tenets of Islam must be reinterpreted. Some people believe such a change is impossible and they may be correct. However, that leads to the conclusion that the only way forward is an earthshattering battle in which 1.5 billion Muslims must be exterminated or converted at the point of the sword. In the globalized world of today, that is not something that I want to contemplate. Better to challenge the faith to reform as El Sisi in Egypt has done or Zhudi Jasser has done here in the U.S. http://aifdemocracy.org/about/staff/founder-president/

    There are Muslim voices of moderation but they are drowned out by those people who believe Islam cannot/should not be reformed.

65. Big Eye Opener

    This Is The Most Disturbing Muslim ‘Refugee’ Video You Will Ever See

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoZwIDlIL5Q

    Dont expect this to be seen on the news!!!!!!

    though i would ask the one lady that is kind of freaking as to what is going on and what she was voting for and supporting prior to the outcome of this 50 year slow game

66. We have become coddled. We are at war, but a 9/11 event is a one-off. Imagine such an event once every year, or every six months. Imagine that in the past 14 years we have had 20 to 30 nine-elevens. At what point does a country say it’s had enough?

    Those who decry violence are

67. (sorry for the interruption)

    Those who decry violence because “violence doesn’t solve anything” are grotesquely misguided.

    In fact, violence solves quite a lot.

    It solved the invasion of the Moors at the Battle of Tours in the 8th century. It ended slavery in the U.S. More recently, it stopped the expansion of the Third Reich under Hitler and saved millions upon millions of Jewish lives. It ended Japanese aggression in the Pacific. It ended the attempted communist takeover of South Korea. The list goes on.

    It should always be a last resort, but when one’s enemy will not listen to diplomacy, it is a resort, nonetheless.

68. Artfldgr:

    You write that I’m “gonna have a hard time opposing something that feminists are supporting and converting to.”

    What a strange statement. Virtually every day I oppose things feminists agree with. Apparently you haven’t noticed.

69. Not all is looking up in the Caliphate. The French, notwithstanding their generally pusillanimous behavior, can be perfectly ruthless when they think their national interests are threatened — remember the Rainbow Warrior? The Russians are always ruthless. (No, Artful, I did not need you to tell me that.) I would not at all be surprised to see a joint Spetsnaz-Foreign Legion or RPIM (the French Commando Brigade) operation in Raqqa.

70. Eric — you are, of course, correct in that OIF was legally, morally, and strategically justified. However, that does not excuse the abysmal lack of follow-through by the Bush administration. Where was the Office of War Information? Where was the American Military Government? Where was the US Constabulary? What kind of nonsense was negotiating (or more correctly, failing to negotiate) a Status of Forces Agreement with the “Iraqi Government?” We didn’t even allow the Germans to form a government until four years after the War, or grant them full sovereignty until 10 years after the War.

    We kept hundreds of thousands of troops in Germany until a few years ago, and nobody, not even the Left, objected. When I got to Germany in 1970 (25 years after the War!) we had just reduced our troop strength in half, to 300,000, and we were told even then that our mission was to “keep the US in, the Russians out, and the Germans down!”

    They didn’t even have to dig through the archives and dust off old records — the manuals for the AMG are on the Web!

    While the Bush Administration started off well, we have to admit they didn’t end OIF well.

71. Way too much thinking being expressed here, not very much action.
    Cowardice in the face of evil?
    Let’s get on with it.
    We do not have to be perfect about it.
    We just need to do it.
    Without handwringing before, during, or after.

72. Frog

    Agreed. The problem is that the National Dialogue no longer considers that “civilized.” So perhaps we are doomed to failure, but at least we will have failed in a civil fashion (/sarc).

73. Dennis Says:
    November 19th, 2015 at 6:31 am

    Blert said:

    “All Muslims know that Muslim scholars re-compiled the Koran and all else GENERATIONS after Mohammed died.”

    I’m curious how Blert knows what all Muslims know? Remember, you are talking about a billion people most of whom live in third world hell holes.

    &&&

    Islam is a top-down religion — with (today’s) truth established by imams.

    ALL of the factions agreed that their scholars got it right — centuries ago.

    Just as most Protestants deem the King James Bible to be Gospel, and it was codified in the 17th Century.

    This is universally known.

    For you — or any kafir — to intellectually challenge Islam — is a total non-starter.

    You are arrogant in the extreme to think you’ve hit on the solution.

    Religions never terminate based upon logic.

    They terminate when the faithful lose faith.

    That leap is not logically made.

    It wasn’t logically entered into in the first place.

    Read up on Dilbert’s Moist Robot Theory.

74. Dennis..

    As for women’s testimony in Islamic law:

    There are disputes in applied doctrine.

    Most often a woman’s testimony is deemed worthless – entirely.

    Some situations require four (4) women.

    Some situations require one man and two (2) women

    Two women — on their own are not deemed sufficient to testify.

    These figures are — of course — in contention between various scholars and factions.

    As a practical matter, in actual modern Islamic law, women are almost never permitted to testify… with the exception of testifying as to birth specifics. (As if such could be in contention.)

    Realistically, women have no legal standing. All that they may do is buttress their husband’s testimony. But, since a wife never disputes her husband’s testimony, anyway — what’s the purpose ?

    In a case of husband vs wife she has no rights at all. There is no case. A wife has no standing against her husband or ex-husband, period.

75. JJ said:

    ” Just as in the Quran there are passages in the Bible that, if interpreted in a certain way, exhort the faithful to make war on those who don’t believe. Those passages have been re-interpreted. So it should be with Islam.”

    I’m afraid I don’t follow the analogy. Just because Christianity was able to reform does not mean that Islam is capable of doing the same thing. They are entirely different religions. Why should we expect similar outcomes?

    I defy anyone who makes a false moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam to produce a passage in the Koran similar to this statement by Jesus found in Matthew 5.

    “…43″You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ 44″But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous”

    Here’s another passage whose equivalent I would love to find in the Koran:

    1 John 4:8New International Version (NIV)

    “8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

    I’m also curious what the battle between the Catholic church and Protestant groups during the 30 years war has to do with the Sunni and the Shia? The situations were entirely different.

    I’m eagerly looking forward to reading the passages in the Koran which will enable Islam to follow the same trajectory as Christianity.

76. Dennis, I’m not a religious scholar, not even a Christian. I sense that you are a strong Christian. My beliefs are similar to the Baha’i beliefs, but am not a practicing member of any religious group. I doubt that anything I say won’t be challenged by you or many others. Religion is personal to everyone and different for everyone.

    With that said, here goes. I’m aware that all of the admonitions to war and violence are in the Old Testament. Jesus changed all that. He stood the Old Testament on its head. However, as Christianity evolved it went back to using Old Testament scripture to justify making war on enemies. The Protestant revolt against the Catholic Church was a disagreement over the interpretation of the Bible, which, due to the development of the printing press, had become available for reading by lay persons. War raged off and on between the Catholics and Protestants until the 30 Years War in the early 1500s brought them to a willingness to live in uneasy tolerance of one another. Not total tolerance, as there were skirmishes after the 30 Years War. The IRA violence in Ireland and England being the most recent. For the most part Catholics and Protestants tolerate each other quite well.

    The Shia and the Sunni have a disagreement over who inherited the leadership of the Umma, but they also have different interpretations of the proper way to worship. Not exactly like the Catholics and Protestants, but in general, both have their theological differences. The Sunnis and Shias often are at war with one another, but they will unite to fight the infidels.

    Islam is a religion grafted onto a government (Sharia), which is tribal in nature. At one time Catholicism was a religion that allied itself with governments and was tribal in nature. Christianity evolved. Islam hasn’t.

    I’m no Scholar of Islam, but have read a number of books on the subject and have known a couple of Muslims up close and personal. Here is a quote from a website: http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/tolerance.html

    “Although the majority of Surahs (90 out of 114) were recited during the first 13 years of persecution in Mecca, it is interesting to notice that none of them contains commands to fight and kill.[43] It is after the Hijra, the establishing of the first Muslim community in Medina, that the teaching on attacking religious others unfolded.”

    That shows there is some authority for tolerance in the Quran. Muslim authorities believe the later verses, which preach violence and conquest, take precedence over those earlier verses. Why can’t that be challenged? If the Quran is, as blert says, actually a compilation of those who came after Mohammed, why can’t that be challenged?

    There is a doctrine in Islam that recommends changing verses in the Quran when the changes are beneficial to the Umma.
    “Zamakshari, a famous Muslim scholar, commenting on this verse, wrote: “To abrogate a verse means the God removes (azala) it by putting another in its place. To cause a verse to be abrogated means that God gives the command that it be abrogated. … Every verse is made to vanish whenever the well-being (maslaha) (of the community) requires that it be eliminated … We bring a verse which is better for the servants (of God), that is, a verse through which one gains a greater benefit, or one which is equal to it in this respect.” Also from the above link. This provides a doctrine for Islam to reform itself.

    The work of Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim, who advocates for the new interpretation of Islam that separates the Mosque from the state and commands Muslims to live in tolerance and peace with other peoples, indicates to me that Islam can be reformed. It may well take an existential crisis for them because there are a billion Muslims living in poverty and ignorance who only know what their imams tell them. If it becomes an issue of the survival of the religion, the imams could change their teachings and presumably the Umma would follow.

    The idea of finding ways for Islam to reform has far more appeal than killing/conquering 1.5 billion people. But I could be wrong.

    T

77. We kept hundreds of thousands of troops in Germany until a few years ago, and nobody, not even the Left, objected.

    The Left was on Stalin’s side. They were ordered to support the Western pig capitalists.

78. The Protestant revolt against the Catholic Church was a disagreement over the interpretation of the Bible, which, due to the development of the printing press, had become available for reading by lay persons.

    The Protestant revolt is outlined in Luther’s thesis list.

    Which included Catholic and Pope related corruptions, like the modern day Green Credit scam.

79. That shows there is some authority for tolerance in the Quran. Muslim authorities believe the later verses, which preach violence and conquest, take precedence over those earlier verses. Why can’t that be challenged? If the Quran is, as blert says, actually a compilation of those who came after Mohammed, why can’t that be challenged?

    It was challenged by Muslims. They were killed, mutilated, and beheaded.

    Next question.

    Also the Yazidi at one time was considered an “Islamic heresy”. Meaning, parts of Yazidi beliefs are not “Christian” per say, but Islamic and Zoroastrian, as well as borrowing the Christian factions that existed in the ME was Christian.

    Btw, when your head has been cut off, any “authority” you think you had is over.

80. J.J.,
    Understand that most of us Conservative Christians do not see Jesus of the New Testament as separate from the God of the Old Testament. Now some of the more liberal Christians seem to because they interpret Jesus’ Saying not in the context of the Old Testament and Jewish society, but almost in a vacuum and at times from a context of first century Greece-Roman society from which they tell us Gay marriage is approved by Jesus because the pagan world of the first century approved of homosexuality! Those liberals also seem to not particularly like the writing of the Apostle Paul either.
    Back to the “War” thing: https://carm.org/should-christian-go-war

81. JJ:
    “It turns out that what Barnett and people like me didn’t see was the incredible power of radical Islamist theology. What seemed to be a promising start, turned quickly to sectarian chaos after we left Iraq in 2012.”

    End of 2011, but the Iraqis and Iranians were adapting to US shifts with Iraq before that.

    I disagree. You mostly had it right in the 1st place.

    As Richard Saunders points out, the US simply wasn’t engaged with Iraq long enough for an enduring nation-building project. Analogous to “radical Islamist ideology”, recall that we believed we were losing to the Communists in the early 1950s. Qutbism looks a lot like Communism with similar operational tenets. At that point, until Eisenhower set the policy in concrete, America had not decided yet to uphold and build a world order indefinitely with all our faculties activated with the US military indefinitely deployed in world-war force in Europe and Asia, ready to battle the enemy anywhere in the world at any time.

    Not unlike Iraq, with fits and stumbles, and even an all-out war (Korea) that far dwarfed the Iraqi insurgency, the peace operations in Europe and Asia were taking shape by the 1950s – but were still fragile and under serious regional threat.

    A decade is barely enough for the 1st stage of nation-building under placid, relatively simple conditions, let alone a complex challenge like Iraq. Despite all that happened there, Iraq was on track by 2008-2009. Because of what happened later, it’s now obscured that the progress the COIN “Surge” and Anbar Awakening achieved in a short period was astounding.

    However, exceptional 1st-stage progress didn’t mean several decades and several stages of nation-building were compressed into 2-4 years or 8 years. Iraq still had a long way to go with critical milestones to turn over.

    If you count from the COIN “Surge”, then our nation-building was only on track for about 4 years. If you consider that Obama changed course with Iraq early in his presidency, then we were only track with Iraq via the COIN “Surge” maybe 2-3 years depending on the date you pinpoint that Maliki adapted to Obama’s unsubtly signaled shift from Bush.

    Which is to say, the main cause of the post-US breakdown of Iraq was not “radical Islamist theology”. That’s an oversimplification.

    Certainly, the terrorists were an opportunistic player in Iraq upon their resurgence in Syria and thrust back into a vulnerably regressing Iraq, but the causes were mechanical. They took on sectarian form given the parties involved, but the factors were mostly secular in nature. In other words, the factors in the breakdown of Iraq under different labels would look familiar to IR political scientists from classroom hypotheticals.

    The risks was warned to Obama. Obama didn’t listen or worse, he did listen – as a former activist myself with a similar academic background, I can extrapolate that Obama was aware, perhaps even expectant of the likely outcome of the premature US withdrawal from Iraq.

    If Obama had stayed the course from Bush like Ike stayed the course from Truman – not just physical presence but political presence – and Allawi had replaced Maliki, or even if Maliki had stayed on for another term, the situation most likely would be different.

    Blaming what happened to Iraq on “radical Islamist theology” is a cop-out and I’m surprised that you settled for that.

    The terrorists have been opportunistic and effective – after all, they’re activists – but they weren’t the cause. Blame for various Iraqis is half right because they made poor choices along the way. The other half of the blame? The leader of the free world screwed up.

    You mostly had it right in the 1st place. For a window of time, Iraq was on track. But the wrong man was elected US President in large part from the false narrative of OIF. Then the leader of the free world screwed up with Iraq in large part because the President used the false narrative of OIF as a ME policy guide.

82. Blaming what happened to Iraq on “radical Islamist theology” is a cop-out and I’m surprised that you settled for that.

    JJ has a tendency that people of his class and demeanor, such as the Law Enforcement Officer communities that he feels an affinity for, are his allies and will defend him when the time comes. That is why he doesn’t look for enemies within his lines, he seeks foreigners that are different, as enemies outside of the circled wagons.

    However, people like me have chosen to specialize in the other directions, looking for “domestic enemies” rather than foreign enemies. Foreign enemies are very easy to spot after all. Bush II’s campaign in iraq and afghanistan exposed a lot of the forces there to human intel analysis.

    But the wrong man was elected US President in large part from the false narrative of OIF.

    The American people had one last chance to break from their fate by atoning for Vietnam. Once that chance was wasted, they will never obtain another.

    Democracy is its own downfall, in time. The enemies are always within, as well as without.

    The Left’s power was always greater than what people thought or wanted to believe. Even more so than the blindness towards Islam’s 1400 war against humanity.

83. Richard Saunders:
    “While the Bush Administration started off well, we have to admit they didn’t end OIF well.”

    Thanks for raising the issue.

    If you will undertake – as I recommend – a zeitgeist narrative reframe in order to de-stigmatize OIF and re-normalize the paradigm of American leadership manifested with OIF for prescription’s sake versus the likes of Ezra Klein, then after setting the record straight on the decision for OIF, the 2nd step is to criticize Obama’s disengagement from Iraq.

    The 1st step is the relatively easy part.

    Setting the record straight on the decision for OIF is easy because it’s a simple fact pattern. The controlling law and policy of the operative enforcement procedure and the determinative fact findings of Iraq’s breach of ceasefire that triggered enforcement are straightforward. The false narrative of OIF is demonstrably false, and my explanation is purpose-designed to counter it.

    The 2nd step is harder than the 1st step because it’s conjectural, relying heavily on accounts rather than straightforward law and policy and dispositive facts.
    —
    Which brings us to your questions … actually, the Bush administration didn’t end OIF at all.

    See the answer to your questions at An irresponsible exit from Iraq. I suggest reading the summary in the bottom half of the post first, then read through the linked sources in the top half.

    Some key points:

    1. From the beginning – and I mean 1990 – the Iraq intervention was structured in policy then law as the US-led enforcement of UN resolutions. That was the structure for the peace operations as well. As such, Bush’s post-war decisions tracked with the post-war UNSCRs and UN (aspirational) custom. A table of links to the UNSCRS is linked in the post.

    2. With your comparison to our peace operations with West Germany in mind, the success of the COIN “Surge” was considered strong enough to convince the US, Iraq, and UN to transition from the 1-year UNSCR ‘occupation’ authorizations to a presumably more stable (and customarily preferred) bilateral arrangement between the US and a restored-sovereign Iraq.

    In hindsight, that assessment looks premature, but like I said, the progress made with the COIN “Surge” and Anbar Awakening in a short period, while buried now by later events, was astounding at the time. You can see it in the contemporary accounts and decisions.

    3. The anti-OIF movement in America, especially inside the 2008 presidential race, did adversely influence the 2008 SOFA negotiation. However, that influence went to concessions to the IG, not a hard deadline for withdrawal.

    Along with the 3-year assessment window, an added benefit of the 3-year duration was the Obama administration could in theory negotiate better terms than the Iraqis had wrangled in 2008 by taking advantage of the leverage from the anti-OIF movement in the US presidential race.

    The 2011 withdrawal date sounded hard but it was subject to conditions which meant the open expectation of continued American presence. See the non-binding but long-term guidepost-setting Strategic Framework Agreement.

    The 2008-2011 SOFA was viewed in theory as a transitional arrangement that would bridge the UNSCRs and a long-term bilateral arrangement formulated with a better concept of Iraq’s trajectory – though yes, as Obama exercised it, the range of options for Bush’s successor included no follow-on bilateral arrangement.

84. Ymarsakar:
    “The American people had one last chance to break from their fate by atoning for Vietnam. Once that chance was wasted, they will never obtain another.”

    It’s goes against the grain for people like JJ and me to accept ‘poolside’. We repeated an oath when we were young American men that we were naive and/or idealistic enough to take seriously.

85. The work of Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim, who advocates for the new interpretation of Islam that separates the Mosque from the state and commands Muslims to live in tolerance and peace with other peoples, indicates to me that Islam can be reformed.

    The two branch of extremist Islam is Wahhabis & Why Wilayat al-Faqih (Right & Left)

    As for other part of Arab nation they are far from these two regimes in Saudi & Iran.

    During Iraq & Iran war both side starting build their muscles on Muslims, Saudi saw Afghanistan and East Asia the place where their Madrassah flourishing Iran looks west to expend.

    So we ended now both Islamise branch Right & Left (Saudi regime & Iranian Regime) staring reginal war or struggle who will dominate the region which see ISIS & Shiite Militias both fighting on vast geographical rea I control.

86. J.J. said:
    “Dennis, I’m not a religious scholar, not even a Christian. I sense that you are a strong Christian.”

    I appreciate the complement – backhanded obviously- but thanks anyway. Western Civilization was based on Judeo-Christian morality and really had nothing to do with my personal views. Whether you are a Christian or not you are the beneficiary of Western Civilization and have a stake in its continued existence as do I. When you make faulty analogies between Islam and Christianity, those faulty analogies strengthen the enemies of Western Civilization and weaken those who are trying to defend it.

    The impression I get from commenters like yourself who are not Christian is that you assume that the actual contents of the holy books are not very important, that all religions are interchangeable and will all evolve in a similar manner over time. That is simply not true. Religious people believe that the messages in their holy books are divine messages and any possibly evolution of a religious community and its culture is limited by the message in the holy books. The only way Islam could evolve in the same direction as Christianity is if Muslims started emulating Christian beliefs and Christian morality. I don’t see that happening since the message in the Koran and Hadiths is diametrically opposed to everything in the Bible either in the New or in the Old Testament.

    While the violence in the Old Testament was limited in scope to a specific time and a specific place describing the birth of a tiny nation, Israel, the violence in Islam codified in the Koran and Hadiths is open ended covering all parts of the globe and is to last until the end of time. Another major difference between the Old Testament and Islam is that Israelites rarely if ever tortured their enemies and they rarely fought other groups primarily capture slaves whereas the Koran and hadiths are full of admonitions to torture and enslave non-Muslims.

    I was hoping that you could produce some passages from the Koran which matched Jesus statements of peace and love but obviously none were forth coming. Whether you are willing to admit that those differences matter or not is entirely up to you, but they are crucial. Your equivalence between the Bible compares its most fearsome passages with those in the Koran and Hadiths but the Bible both in the Old Testament and the New Testament is full of positive messages of God’s love which are entirely missing in the Koran and Hadiths.

    The war between the Protestants and the Catholics was regrettable but it was a productive war which opened the World to modernity. The battle was not just an argument over interpretation of some Bible passages although exegesis was important but it had more to do with human freedom and with the formation of modern nation states. The church needed reformation badly but unfortunately the Reformation was led by a brutish anti-semite named Martin Luther who did a great deal of damage as to Christendom which at times has outweighed his positive contributions. In contrast, the war between the Sunnis and the Shias has produced many deaths and much destruction but has produced nothing positive.

87. Well, I raised my head above the parapet and have received incoming. Since I’m only an armchair warrior at this point in time with not a great deal of quality intel to guide me, I can only reply to Eric and Ymar that I get it that we disagree. Heck, if everybody agreed all the time there would be no need for editorial pages or blogs. So, since it I’ve had a long day and am in no mood to further defend my opinions, we will have to agree to disagree.

    By the by, for anyone who is interested in some good intel on ISIS, there is a book that will be available soon that has a great deal of information. It is: “The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State.” By William McCants

    Until that book is available this article in the Atlantic gives a taste of what ISIS is all about. (Hint it isn’t al Qaeda – it’s much worse.)
    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

88. Dennis:

    This may be what you’re looking for.

89. “I submit that one of the biggest failings of the Klein-like set is an abysmal failure to even begin to understand the mindset of ISIS. They have an apocalyptic religious vision and a very long view, and their goal is to fulfill that vision.”

    Are we talking about ISIS here, or Klein? ‘Cause it works either way.

90. Neo said:

    “This may be what you’re looking for.”

    Thank-you for the link.

    I actually knew the answer when I asked the question since I did a similar study myself on the subject a few years ago. I was challenging JJ to get him to admit that there is a qualitative difference between the message in the Koran and in the Bible. According to the Koran, Allah’s love is always secondary, conditional on our doing things which please him. The Biblical concept that Allah loves us unconditionally is totally missing in the Koran and Hadiths.

    People often claim that the New Testament is a God of love while the Old Testament is a God of violence. When I actually researched the Old Testament I found that that is not the case at all. The Old Testament overflows with God’s unconditional love for Israel and through them to the whole World. While I was surprised, it makes sense to me since I believe the God of the Old Testament is exactly the same God we find in the New Testament. There is sanctioned violence in the Old Testament for sure but for the most part the violence is limited in time and place to the founding of Israel and later to squabbles between Israel and its immediate neighbors.

91. One other thing I intended to mention which I forgot is this passage of Allah’s negative love:

    3:32 Say: “Obey Allah and His Apostle”: But if they turn back, Allah loveth [hubb] not those who reject Faith.

    Since Allah doesn’t love unbelievers, neither do Muslims. Not only are there passages in the Koran telling Muslims that Allah doesn’t love unbelievers, but there is also at least one passage which commands Muslims themselves not to love unbelievers either. When I have have challenged Muslims on this topic they admit that they do not love unbelievers. You know that friendly Muslim you think is your friend – the one who you think loves you and who would never hurt you? What you don’t know is that if that same Muslim is devout and follows the Koran the love you imagine you share is entirely one way from you to him/her. The Muslim has a friend for sure but not you not really.

92. blert said:
    “For you – or any kafir – to intellectually challenge Islam – is a total non-starter.

    You are arrogant in the extreme to think you’ve hit on the solution.”

    Muslims care very much about what other people say about their religion. That is why they take offense so quickly when anyone “slanders” the prophet or their religion. Islam in the West is a hot house plant which has been carefully protected and nurtured by the left.

93. Dennis, I don’t have time today to address your comment. Except for this. You and I disagree about historical events and comparative religion. You seem to believe that my interpretation is inferior to yours because you are a Christian and I’m not. Based on that frame of reference we will not agree, no matter how deep and long we might debate. I agree to disagree and withdraw from the debate.

94. JJ,

    In other subjects, you’re just whoever you are. Free from expectations.

    This subject area is your wheelhouse.

    We’re not usually going to dive much deeper than a ‘back of the envelope’ sketch. This is a popular blog, not school. We’re not briefing a CO. But based on our other discussions here, including our agreements, and your background for which I have a cousinly affinity, I still expect better from your ‘armchair’ strategic analysis than the kind of blinkered shortcut I expect from other commenters.

    In any case, of the several points you made, the point that stands out in this thread isn’t your surprising cop-out explanation of Iraq’s regression. It’s your suggested prescription for the ISIS problem, building on the Schlichter article, that essentially restores the status quo ante with President Bush’s ME policy upon the COIN “Surge” until President Obama’s course change and the Arab Spring.

    You’re right that your suggested prescription is “a hard sell for sure”, because folks like Ezra Klein shunt it outside the Overton Window using a taboo derived from a stigma premised on the false narrative of OIF.

    Selling your prescription will require the preliminary step of digging out and discrediting the false narrative (and narrators) of OIF at the premise level in the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist.

95. There are 3 sets of holy texts in Islam. The Quran or the Koran, the Hadiths, and the Suras.

    The Hadiths and Suras contain more than 50% of the total text bulk, so the Koran constitutes far less of the material than people think.

    The Koran itself is split between Mecca and Medina portions. Mecca was where Mohammed tried his con using the peaceful conversion trick, he got about 100 converts in about 10-20 years. When he moved to Medina, he adopted jihad and got the entire Arabic peninsula’s tribes under his religion in his life time.

    That’s the difference people don’t want to hear. Jihad is more successful, conversion by the sword is absolutely recognized as more useful and effective under Islam than any other method. And if people don’t want to convert you, then they aren’t going to use “jihad” against you to begin with.

    But for those that live under Islam, Holy War is total war. It includes economic raids and slave raids. It includes demoralization campaigns and infiltration. It includes everything and anything. This is a religion, a political system, and a culture designed to produce conquerors in absolute bulk.

    It is not something Westerners really know how to handle.

96. J.J. Says:
    You seem to believe that my interpretation is inferior to yours because you are a Christian and I’m not.

    J.J
    You hit the rock down:
    “Old Testament on its head. However, as Christianity evolved it went back to using Old Testament scripture to justify making war on enemies”

97. Ymarsakar
    your note Quran or the Koran, the Hadiths, and the Suras.
    telling your are making things rather telling the truth

98. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo

    My sources are triangulated more towards the military history, rather than the study of Islam. For that I have to look up Warner’s executive summaries.

    http://drbillwarner.com/#books

    A correction on the previous, not sura but sira.

99. telling your are making things rather telling the truth

    Don’t understand what you are trying to communicate. Are you using some kind of translation program? Why don’t you wrote it in your native language.

100. Eric — I may have mentioned this here before, but it bears repeating: I have gotten excellent jaw-dropping and “Uh-uh-uh”-ing from my lefty acquaintances by simply saying, “You do know that it was official U.S. policy to overthrow Saddam Hussein, passed almost unanimously by Congress, including Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998,” don’t you?

101. Dennis — it should be added to your excellent discussion that Israel’s order to exterminate whole peoples (herem) was limited to the Canaanite tribes, because they practiced infant sacrifice (this has been confirmed by archeological evidence) and open sex-orgy fertility rites. The rules of war were completely different with respect to other peoples.

     Now that I think about it, maybe an argument could be made that the herem rule applies to the Islamists, with their child suicide bombers and mass rapes?

102. Richard Saunders,

     There’s plenty more of that.

     Bush law and policy on Iraq were not novel. Instead, they updated and restated standing terms, most of which were enacted during the Clinton administration. In fact, the best source for understanding the Iraq intervention is President Clinton, not President Bush.

     Go to the President Clinton Perspective for links to Clinton administration primary sources on the Iraq enforcement.

     The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, and Clinton and Gore statements on the Clinton policy for Iraqi regime change are quoted and linked in this section for the humanitarian grounds of OIF. Scroll past the HW Bush quotes for the Clinton and Gore quotes.

     The Democrats and fellow travelers’ memory wipe of Clinton’s Iraq enforcement has been blatant Soviet-photo-cropping-level propaganda. Clinton’s Iraq enforcement was headline news throughout his administration, still fresh in 2002-2003, and even cited by Clinton in his initial endorsements of OIF.

     It’s no coincidence that my OIF FAQ explanation, which is purpose-designed to reset the narrative and counter the false narrative for the zeitgeist, is chock-full of Clinton (and Gore) references. My explanation is oriented as President Bush faithfully carrying forward the case against Saddam and enforcement procedure for the ceasefire mandates from President Clinton, which is simply the truth of the matter.

     I encourage you to teach my OIF FAQ explanation to your Democratic acquaintances. It’s meant for them most of all.

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