Michael Totten on Isis’ next target
Obama, leading from behind. Way behind.
Lebanon is different from previous ISIS targets:
ISIS has announced that Lebanon will be the next state to fall under the sway of its “caliphate.” According to Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper, the only reason ISIS hasn’t attacked yet in force is because they haven’t decided on the mission’s commander…
A majority of Lebanon’s population is either Christian, Shia, or Druze, and all three populations rightly see ISIS as a potentially genocidal threat to their very existence. Even the Sunnis, though, fear and loathe ISIS. Other than the nominal sectarian sameness””ISIS also is Sunni””Lebanon’s culturally liberal Sunnis have little more in common with ISIS than the French or Italians do.
A serious invasion of Lebanon by ISIS could unleash a bloodbath that makes the civil war in Syria look like a bar fight with pool sticks and beer mugs. It would be tantamount to a Nazi invasion.
Totten tries to look on the bright side:
The only good thing that might emerge from an attempted ISIS invasion is that the eternally fractious Lebanese might finally realize they have enough in common with each other to band together for survival and kindle something that resembles a national identity for the first time in their history.
Foreign armies don’t do well in Lebanon over the long term.
And the dark side:
If ISIS makes any headway at all in that country, the rest of us will see just how barbaric they really are when they violently encounter large numbers of people unlike themselves. And the odds that the West will get sucked even deeper into the great war of the Eastern Mediterranean will only loom larger.
Let’s hope ISIS is just trash talking when it says it’s planning a trip to Lebanon.
Maybe Israel will want to go after ISIS like they attacked Hezbollah in 2006.
In this report, Michael Totten also notes that the Saudis are funding a three-billion-dollar weapons package that the French will send to Lebanon.
Since Hezbollah now has by far the strongest army in Lebanon, it’s likely that they will seize these weapons shipments. It’s also likely that Hezbollah will then defend only itself, not Lebanon more broadly, and that ISIS will destroy the Christians and Sunnis.
What will Hezbollah do with three billion dollars worth of French arms? Why, they’ll attack Israel, of course.
So we should be arming the Christians and the Druze. (Let Iran worry about the Shia.)
We won’t do that, though, because America is being ruled by enemy traitors.
I don’t believe for a minute that ISIS is trash talking.
Steve Says:
Maybe Israel will want to go after ISIS
No ISIS not after isrel or jews they just killing thier folls muslims
No, they’re not talking trash. They have an entirely pragmatic reason for invading Lebanon; encirclement. First of Damascus and then of Israel. Hitting an enemy from more than one direction, so as to make them stretch their resources is basic tactics. Lebanon, lacking a united front, makes for low hanging fruit.
Lebanon is a house divided, isis is capable of taking it down.
No, they’re not talking trash
US Defense Secretary saying ISIS is ‘Social Media Fueled’ He added with confident that the be defeated
http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nbc-news/us-defense-secretary-isis-is-social-media-fueled-402953795775
They mean it. And, they are crazy enough to try and do it. The only good thing coming out of this is that some lefties are taking pause at this… the brutality is so horrific. However, that doesn’t mean they will want us to be involved, or to actually fight to victory. This doesn’t end well.
Who’s talking trash? Not ISIS, not Putin, not Hezbollah, not Iran, not ASSad. The trash talkers are all right here, inside the Beltway. And they truly speak only garbage, lower on the scale than trash.
Any GOPer Senator that approves an Obama nominee on the grounds POTUS is entitled–yes! entitled– to select his own should be summarily shot (That’s heartfelt hyperbole only, dear FBI).
Let not forgot guys this group and who ever under their piarot flag initiated in Syria with help and US Aids to Bashar regime change with Qatari and other gulf billions turned out mass grown over Iraq with proxy Iranian regime that US helped to be in power.
Obama, leading from behind. Way behind.
Given the quality of Obama’s leadership and effects of his governance, the further behind the man is, the better.
ErisGuy Says:
March 1st, 2015 at 5:37 am
Obama, leading from behind. Way behind…. with strategic patience!
There were times when people would call: BS!
We’re not in such times …
Too good for too long.
TWICE!
Dangerous to rational think and rational speak when dealing with mad monks …
Rabbi Sacks :
“…we in the West had forgotten the concept of an enemy. Liberal democratic politics and market economics create a certain kind of society, a specific way of thinking and a characteristic type of personality. At their heart is the concept of the rational actor, the person who judges acts by their consequences and chooses the maximal option. He or she believes that for every problem there is a solution, for every conflict a resolution. The way to achieve it is to sit down, negotiate, and do on balance what is best for all.
“In such a world there are no enemies, merely conflicts of interest. An enemy, says Harris, is simply ‘a friend we haven’t done enough for yet.’ In the real world, however, not everyone is a liberal democrat. An enemy is ‘someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the enemy always hates us for a reason, it is his reason, not ours.’ He sees a different world from ours, and in that world we are the enemy. Why do they hate us? Answers Harris: ‘They hate us because we are their enemy.’
Source for above: Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks