Tag Archives: ISIS

International news, national news

U.S.-born ISIS fighter is dead

All the hand-wringing over the use of drones to target terrorists who might be American citizens makes me angry.

U.S. airpower struck at a U.S. citizen who had been working with al-Qaeda in Yemen. Our ordnance killed him and civil libertarians and others lamented the lack of “due process” given to the young man before the missile blew him away.

Too bad for that.

Now comes word that another young American, someone named Douglas McCain, was killed in a battle among terror groups in Syria. McCain had been recruited by ISIS, which is fighting governments in Syria and Iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/26/world/meast/syria-american-killed/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Will there more hand-wringing over this one? Probably not, given that he died at the hands of another extremist group. Suppose, though, he’d been killed by U.S. forces. Suppose further that those forces knew that an American was shooting back at him and that he intended to kill whoever he could hit.

Would we have legal and moral standing to kill someone who had renounced his country and taken up arms with the enemy?

Absolutely.

I’m as progressive as anyone on many issues. When it comes, however, to “protecting the rights” of Americans who turn on their country, all bets are off.

My curiosity goes only so far as to wonder what drives Americans to join forces with enemy combatants.

I don’t know the first thing about Douglas McCain and what lured him into the embrace of a hideous terrorist organization. To be honest, I don’t particularly care to know.

What’s left to ponder only is that someone who had declared himself to be an enemy of the country of his birth is now dead.

Whether he died at the hands of other bad guys or at the hands of our soldiers wouldn’t matter to me one little bit.

 

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Strange bedfellows, indeed

What may be about to happen in Syria just might re-define the term “strange bedfellows.”

This one utterly blows my ever-loving mind. The United States apparently is about to start launching surveillance flights over Syria to help pinpoint the whereabouts of ISIS fighters battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, the guy we threatened once to hit with airstrikes after he crossed the “red line” of using chemical weapons on his own people.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/215935-report-us-to-conduct-surveillance-flights-over-syria

ISIS is running rampant in Syria and Iraq. The terrorist organization has beheaded an American journalists, threatened to bring its mayhem to American shores, pledged all-out war against Israel and promised to overthrow the Iraqi government we helped install.

The group personifies evil.

It’s also fighting Assad’s wicked regime in Syria. Assad is another enemy of the United States. President Obama has called on him to step down. He has pledged support to insurgents fighting against Syrian government troops. One of those so-called “allies” appears to be ISIS, if that’s what we’re led to believe.

How can that possibly be happening?

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Remember that cliché?

You want more? Syria now has offered to help the United States by providing intelligence data on the movements of ISIS within that country’s border. No word yet on whether we’ve accepted the offer of assistance.

My head is about to explode as I ponder this amazing tangle of relationships.

Someone help me out. Please.

 

Intgernational news, national news

Let's hear plan? No, wait … that'll tip off the bad guys

These guys are killin’ me.

Critics of the president of the United States now say they want to hear his plans, in detail, on how he intends to “finish off” ISIS, the terror group running rampant in Syria and Iraq.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/215847-ryan-wants-to-hear-obamas-plan-to-finish-off-isis-militants

Do you get it? They want Barack Obama to reveal to congressional Republicans the precise manner in which he intends to battle the hideous terror organization. Then what? Will they blab to the world whether the president is on the right track or wrong track? Will they reveal to the ISIS commanders what they’ve learned? Will they tip our hand, giving the bad guys a heads up on where we’ll attack and how much force we’ll use?

I get that the critics want to be kept in the loop. I also get that they need to some things about how an international crisis is evolving.

There seems to be a limit, though, on how much a commander in chief should disclose to his political adversaries — let alone his allies — on how he is deploying military and intelligence assets to do battle with a sworn enemy. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., noted that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey are speaking out, but he wants to hear directly from the president.

Mr. Chairman, the defense boss and the Joint Chiefs chairman are speaking on behalf of the president. I’m betting they’re saying what he wants them to say.

 

 

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Professor Gingrich lectures on ISIS

Good Saturday morning, students.

Professor Newt Gingrich is going to lecture you on the link attached here about how little President Obama understands about the international terror threat being posed to the United States and, of course, he implies that he — the professor — gets it.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/22/opinion/gingrich-isis-obama/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

I don’t deny that the professor is smart. He knows how to win elections, he knows how to rouse them rabbles. He’s just not that good at governing, as his stint as speaker of the House of Reps demonstrated back in the late 1990s.

Here’s in part what he writes about the president’s remarks on the beheading of American journalist James Foley by ISIS terrorists: “I urge you to read President Obama’s full text. It isn’t very long. The most delusional line is his assertion that ‘people like this ultimately fail. They fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.’ Of course it is freedom and the rule of law that have been rare throughout history, and tyranny and lawlessness that have been common. ISIS and the ideology it represents won’t just wear themselves out.

“One has to wonder whether the President understands how serious a threat ISIS presents. ISIS is a fact. It is a religiously motivated movement that uses terror as one of its weapons. Beheading people is nothing new in history.”

One has to wonder? No, one need not wonder whether Barack Obama “understands how serious a threat” ISIS is to the rest of the world. He’s living with it. He is hearing constantly from his national security team, his diplomatic team, the Joint Chiefs of Staff — and from critics such as Professor Gingrich — precisely how dangerous this group of monsters is to the United States.

Gingrich has posed some fascinating notions about ISIS’s reach into mainstream cultures, such as Great Britain. He’s correct to suggest we’d better take this organization seriously.

However, he ought to stop there. Let’s not presume that the president of the United States doesn’t understand these things. The nation has one commander in chief at a time.

At the moment, it is not Professor Newt Gingrich.

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U.S. responds correctly to ISIS threat

The Sunni extremists seeking to overrun Iraq have executed an American journalist, released video of his gruesome death and threatened to do the same thing to others until the United States stops its air strikes against military targets in Iraq.

The U.S. response? More air strikes.

It is absolutely the correct response to this hideous threat.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/20/world/meast/iraq-crisis/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

James Foley had been held for two years by ISIS terrorists before reportedly being beheaded by his captors. Foley has been saluted and eulogized as a courage chronicler of events in the Middle East who’s paid the ultimate price for doing his duty as a journalist.

ISIS has been characterized by experts as an organization far worse than al-Qaeda — and Americans know first hand what kind of outfit al-Qaeda has become.

ISIS’s advance on Iraqi installations and its assault on people needs to stopped. That is why President Obama has ordered the air strikes that reportedly have done grave damage to the group’s military capabilities.

For as long as ISIS continues to threaten to do harm to Americans and innocent Iraqis — namely Christians — then the United States has an obligation to protect these interests. We have paid too much in our own blood and money to let ISIS run rampant in Iraq. Obama says our nation’s ground combat role in Iraq is over, but the aerial campaign — along with the humanitarian effort to aid Yazidis and Kurds — is worth pursuing in an effort to pound ISIS into oblivion.

If ISIS responds with another execution, well, then the attacks should increase in ferocity.

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'Bipartisan foreign policy' must return

Holy cow! Texas Gov. Rick Perry is making some sense as it regards U.S. foreign policy.

Perry has penned an essay for Politico Magazine in which he says the following about the growing conflict in Iraq between the Iraqi government and the ISIS terrorists seeking to take control of the country: “The danger for the United States and other Western nations may still seem remote. And for many Americans, understandably, just about the last thing we want to think about is more conflict in Iraq and what it might require of our country. But we cannot ignore reality. We have come to a seminal moment when America’s action or inaction could be equally consequential. If anything is left of the old bipartisan tradition in American foreign policy – that basic willingness to unite in fundamental matters of security – we need to draw on that spirit now in a big way.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/rick-perry-op-ed-iraq-110088.html#ixzz3Ahd3u8t8

I’ll repeat part of it. “If anything is left of the old bipartisan tradition in American foreign policy … we need to draw on that spirit now in a big way.”

Amen to that, Gov. Perry.

I’ve long lamented the sniping and bickering regarding foreign policy that in its way gives aid and comfort to our enemies. Democrats did it to Republican presidents, and Republicans are now doing it to a Democratic president. The great Republican U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan used to say that partisanship “stops at the water’s edge.” It now splashes into the water and the waves ripple far and wide.

Perry, of course, said much more in his Politico essay. He argues that U.S. air strikes must save Irbil from ISIS terrorists, as it is home to a U.S. consulate in Iraq.

The governor argues against “rehashing the causes of today’s crisis” and says it’s now time to look forward to what we can do to bring it to an end. The targeted air strikes against military targets in parts of Iraq appear to be working. I am concerned about the so-called “slippery slope,” and whether we’re going to re-engage in a ground war — something that Gov. Perry actually called for as he ran for president briefly in 2012.

He seems to have backed away from that notion and is preaching a more bipartisan approach to solving a foreign-policy crisis.

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'Go' on air strikes … but with caution

Count me as one American who supports the air strikes against ISIS terrorists in Iraq.

Also, count me as one who is concerned about the potential for falling down that proverbial slippery slope.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/08/politics/obama-iraq-turning-point-political/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

President Obama’s decision to strike military targets in northern Iraq is necessary to protect Iraqis and Americans against ISIS, a group known to be far worse than al-Qaeda. The strikes are intended to destroy military installations, munitions and, of course, actual terrorists.

Let’s hope they do their job.

It’s the possible “what’s next” that gives me concern.

The president says Americans aren’t going to re-enter the battlefield against those seeking to destroy the Iraqi government. I’ll take him at his word.

It is absolutely clear that Americans no longer want to fight the Iraq war, which was launched in March 2003 on information regarding weapons of mass destruction that proved to be totally bogus. It lasted nearly a decade, costing billions of dollars and thousands of Americans casualties.

So, it is with some concern about the future that brings this particular statement of support for the attack from the air.

Please, Mr. President, do not resume the fight on the ground.

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Air strikes 'authorized'

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Here we go once more.

The commander in chief “authorizes” the use of military force but leaves the door open to possibly not actually using it.

http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2014/08/07/obama_authorizes_renewed_airstrikes_in_iraq_107354.html

The enemy this time is in Iraq, the Sunni Muslim extremists seeking to overthrow the Shiite government. President Obama today announced a humanitarian mission to help those who are stranded in northern Iraq by the onslaught of the Sunni fighters.

What’s next? The president said he has “authorized” the launching of targeted air strikes against those who would threaten a small detachment of U.S. forces sent to protect American consulate officials in Irbil.

A part of me wants the president to make good on the threat. However, a bigger part of me hopes the Iraqi government can push the insurgents back, defeat them on the battlefield and forgo the use of U.S. military might in a conflict our ground forces ended more than a year ago.

As RealClearPolitics.com reported: “‘As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq,’ Obama said.

“Even so, he outlined a rationale for airstrikes if the Islamic State militants advance on American troops in the northern city of Irbil and the U.S. consulate there in the Kurdish region of Iraq. The troops were sent to Iraq earlier this year as part of the White House response to the extremist group’s swift movement across the border with Syria and into Iraq.”

No one should want the United States to re-enter the fight in Iraq. However, the United States, with its investment in lives and money already deposited in Iraq, needs to protect its interests in that country.

If air strikes are needed, then we must not be reluctant to exert our considerable force.

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Iraq crisis produces huge scramble

It’s becoming harder to keep up with all the competing interests in the burgeoning crisis in Iraq.

Consider the complexity of it:

* The Sunnis want to take the government back from the Shiites. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Muslim. The current Iraqi prime minister is a Shiite.

* The insurgents fighting the government, led by ISIS, are deemed to be more violent than al-Qaeda, which has disavowed any association with ISIS.

* Iran is an Islamic republic governed next door to Iraq by Shiites also, but the Iranians detest the United States, which is involved up to its eyeballs in trying to broker a political solution.

* U.S. officials now are considering asking Iran for help in negotiating a deal.

* ISIS also is involved in the Syrian civil war, with rebels seeking to overthrow the dictatorship run by Bashar al-Assad.

* President Obama has ruled out “ground troops” returning to Iraq, but is sending in about 300 “advisers” to assist the Iraqi military in its fight against ISIS.

* The Kurds in northern Iraq also want a say in a “unity government,” which could include Sunnis and Shiites.

I need to keep sitting down. My head is spinning.

How in the world does a regular human being navigate his or her way through this mess?

http://time.com/2916436/kerry-back-in-iraq-meets-kurdish-leader/

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Ask first, strike later?

Very soon, perhaps, we just might be able to learn how sincere congressional critics of President Obama are in their stated effort to be accountable for key decisions.

The president is weighing whether to launch air strikes against the ISIS insurgents seeking to take control of Iraq. Obama’s critics in Congress, namely Republicans, want him to “make a decision,” lead, take charge. They also want to have a say in whatever military action occurs.

The president, meanwhile, is considering whether to ask Congress. Does he make the decision to strike, then ask, then proceed — hopefully with an affirmative vote?

Will Obama seek approval for Iraq strike?

Or does he just act as commander in chief of the armed forces and hit the Iraqi insurgents hard in an effort to stop their advances on our allies fighting on behalf of the Iraqi government?

If the president takes the initiative, he’ll be criticized for acting like a “Lone Ranger” and for ignoring Congress. If he decides to ask Congress for authorization, he’ll be criticized for being wishy-washy.

Which is it, ladies and gentlemen of Capitol Hill? Do you want the president to act, or don’t you?

If someone were to ask me, I’d say that if there’s a chance of crippling ISIS with air strikes, the president ought to order them — without asking Congress for its authorization. The way Congress has performed in recent years, House members and senators would take weeks just to get organized to debate and then vote.

In this armed conflict, time is not our friend.