Tag Archives: Islamic State

International news, military news

Americans may be targets, too

Word out of Iraq is that an air strike likely has wounded a key Islamic State leader.

To whatever extent Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is injured remains unclear. I hope he dies a painful death.

http://time.com/3574879/isis-leader-airstrike-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi/

Indeed, the question now ought to surface about whether Americans or other foreign nationals who’ve joined ISIL are being targeted by the air strikes led by the United States of America.

My answer? Big bleeping deal. Anyone from another country who joins this monstrous terrorist outfit and then takes some kind of secret oath to kill “infidels” from the land of their birth forfeits immediately — in my mind — their rights of citizenship.

That surely includes Americans.

The air strikes are having their desired effect on slowing ISIL. U.S. air power has accounted for most of the damage — and the casualties.

If Americans who’ve joined the fight against their own country get caught in the barrage, well, that’s the price they will pay for going to war.

International news, military news

Why the masks, bad guys?

Growing up watching TV and movie westerns, I came to understand why the bad guys — bank robbers, train robbers, cattle rustlers and the like — wore masks.

They wanted to protect their identity from the sheriff’s, marshals, posses and the assorted white-hat good guys looking to apprehend them or to, well, shoot ’em dead.

I am struck in the present day, therefore, about why these international terrorists keep parading around wearing masks.

The hideous pictures of the Islamic State monster we’ve all seen as he’s preparing to execute those journalists come to mind. FBI and Interpol apparently know the identity of the individual, but haven’t released his name for law-enforcement reasons.

We see other images of terrorists parading around in pickups armed with machine guns. The terrorists are wearing hooded masks.

Al-Qaeda “soldiers” have been recorded participating in training exercises. They’re firing those automatic weapons and acting like soldiers. Again, they’re masked. We can’t see who they are.

I won’t assume for an instant that these individuals are hiding their identities because their so-called “conscience” tells them that terrorizing the world is a bad thing and that they should be ashamed.

However, I will assume they’re hiding behind those masks because of cowardice.

Cowards, sad to say, are a more dangerous enemy than those who are unafraid to reveal their identities. They do their filthy deeds under cloaks of secrecy, then peel the masks off and go about their business right along with the rest of civilized society.

This is a treacherous foe we’re fighting. The masks only affirm their treachery.

 

International news, military news

Key U.S. ally needs to join the fight

Where are the Turks?

Turkey is a critical ally of the west, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, possessing a significant military apparatus and a reputation as fearsome fighters.

Yet the Turks haven’t joined the fight against the Islamic State in a meaningful way.

http://news.yahoo.com/strikes-pound-jihadists-us-led-coalition-meets-173455057.html

The U.S.-led coalition of nations is continuing its air campaign against ISIL. The Central Command contends that the strikes are beginning to have an impact on ISIL’s advance. White House press secretary Josh Earnest cautions reporters that the air campaign is still in its early stages but that it’s beginning to hurt ISIL.

Still, the Turks — whose country borders both Syria and Iraq — hasn’t yet joined the fight.

Granted, Turkey is allowing U.S. pilots to fly through its air space en route to hitting targets in Syria and Iraq. The planes are launching from U.S. bases inside Turkey. That’s good news.

However, the Turks need to join this fight and become the ally they say they are.

Other Muslim nations have become partners in this fight. Turkey no longer can just talk a good game. It needs to suit up and start hitting the enemy … hard.

International news, military news

VP says he's sorry to Turkish leader

Vice President Joe Biden has apologized to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for remarks he made that supposedly implied that Turkey intentionally let weapons slip into Syria and into the hands of Islamic State terrorists.

I am dubious of the need for the vice president to say he’s sorry. I’m mostly dubious that what he said actually implied any intent on the Turks’ inability to stop the flow of arms from their country into Syria.

Biden apologizes to Turkish leader

He had said that Turkey had let fighters migrate from Turkey into Syria carrying arms and munitions. Erdogan took the vice president’s remarks as suggesting the Turks did so intentionally.

Biden said that wasn’t what he meant and he has “clarified” his statement to Erdogan. I am hoping we’ve made peace with our critical ally.

Therein lies the reason for the apology in the first place.

Turkey is allowing use of its air space to launch strikes against ISIL targets in Syria. The Turks also are planning to provide actual military support as well. Indeed, the Turks arguably are the strongest military power (excluding Israel) in the entire Middle East. Turkey has demonstrated over many, many years to be a fierce, resilient and capable military force in any conflict in which it has been engaged.

The U.S.-led coalition now fighting ISIL in Syria and Iraq will need the Turks’ know-how and ferocity if it intends to destroy the heinous terror organization.

Thus, the apology.

International news

Security issue crosses a new border

Well, it seems that border security isn’t just an American problem.

Vice President Biden said recently that Turkey has allowed fighters to cross into Syria to join the Islamic State in its fight against the world. His statement drew a sharp rebuke from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who has demanded an apology from the vice president.

http://thehill.com/policy/international/219780-turkish-president-demands-apology-from-biden

Erdogan’s take? He said, according to The Hill: “‘Foreign fighters have never entered Syria from our country. They may come to our country as tourists and cross into Syria, but no one can say that they cross in with their arms,’ Erdogan continued, saying the country had prevented 6,000 suspected jihadist members from entering the country and deported another 1,000.”

This sounds vaguely familiar.

There might be a serious semantic problem that needs to be clarified.

Critics of the Obama administration keep harping on the “porous” southern border with Mexico, yet ignore that U.S. border agents are rounding up illegal immigrants daily and have been returning them to their home countries in record numbers. Is the border really “porous” if we’re catching people coming here illegally? Just asking.

Now we hear about border security issues in one of the most dangerous places on Earth. Syria years ago erupted into civil conflict. It’s been bloody and ruthless. Neighboring nations ought to be locking down their own borders with Syria, particularly with news of the thousands of foreign fighters joining the hideous forces waging battle against the tyrannical regime of Bashar al-Assad.

So, what did the vice president say? He criticized Turkey and Arab nations for supporting Sunni militant groups that turned out to comprise fighters from around the world.

I’ll give the vice president the benefit of the doubt on this one. He may have been asserting that Turkey needs to do a better job of securing its borders with a nation at war with itself. These conflicts have ways of spilling over into neighboring nations.

So, if the Turks are our allies, then they need to demonstrate their commitment to joining the fight by locking down their border and ensuring the foreign fighters don’t enter the Syrian battlefield from Turkey.

Uncategorized

U.S. not alone in this fight

Barack Obama wants it known that the United States is not fighting the Islamic State one-on-one, nation vs. cult.

The president of the United States said on “60 Minutes” that the country he leads is just a leader in the fight that comprises an international coalition of nations battling a despicable terrorist organization.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/barack-obama-isil-111395.html?hp=l2

I get that.

The harder sell will be to Americans who are likely to perceive that since we’re “leading” the air strikes against ISIL in Syria and Iraq that it, indeed, is our fight to win.

I’m willing to welcome the rest of the world to join us in this war against this clearly defined evil force.

There must be no illusions about how long this conflict will persist. As we’ve learned so painfully, the death of one key terrorist leader such as Osama bin Laden does not by itself necessarily weaken an organization he would lead. Al-Qaeda received a serious blow to its command and control when the SEAL and CIA commando team smoked bin Laden in May 2011. Others have surfaced to take his place.

As the world has learned, ISIL has emerged as a serious world threat.

Thus, the world must fight this menace. That is what the president seeks to do, build a worldwide coalition of nations willing and able to fight ISIL to the death.

It is not our battle to wage on our own.

International news, national news, political news

We are not engaging in a religious war

The Values Summit is underway in Washington, D.C., and the usual cavalcade of kooks is drumming up something akin to a religious war.

The international war on terror, they imply strongly, is a war between Christians and Jews against Muslims.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/ted-cruz-values-voter-conference-111363.html?hp=f2

Let’s hold on here.

It is a war pitting civilized human beings against cult followers.

Michelle Bachmann, the lame-duck Minnesota congresswoman, kept harping on what she called “Islamic terrorists.” So did lame-duck Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and a roundtable of “experts” who contend that Muslims pose an existential threat to our way of life.

Give me a break.

Another conservative American president, George W. Bush, was quite astute back when this war began immediately after 9/11 to declare that America is not waging war against Islam. He singled out the terrorists who have perverted a great religion to suit their insane political cause. Does anyone remember when President Bush visited a mosque in New York immediately after touring the wreckage of where the World Trade Center stood?

The Islamic State is not a religious organization. It is a cult. It is a cabal of sociopathic murderers who seek to use religion as a pretext to commit heinous acts of terrorism on innocent people.

They are the enemy. The do not represent Islam any more than, say, the crackpots at Westboro Baptist “Church” in Topeka, Kan., represent Christianity.

The task now is to persuade the goofballs on the right to quit trying to make this a religious war.

It is no such thing.

Uncategorized

Bully for the Brits; shame on Congress

Two nations separated by an ocean are engaging the air war over Syria in entirely different manners.

The British Parliament came back into session at the behest of Prime Minister David Cameron to debate and vote on whether the United Kingdom should join the coalition fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Parliament voted to get into the fight.

On this side of the Atlantic, the U.S. Congress is, well, on recess.

http://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell/watch/congress-on-recess-as-airstrikes-continue-333908547996

Which legislative body is being more responsible and responsive to a burgeoning international crisis?

I doubt you should think it’s the Congress of the United States of America.

The Brits have this one down correctly.

Prime Minister Cameron was right to call his colleagues back into session. Parliament was right to debate the issue and then take a critical vote.

President Barack Obama operates in a different form of government, in which the legislative branch is co-equal with the executive branch. Lawmakers in both congressional chambers operate under their own sets of rules. Democrats set the rules for the Senate; Republicans do the same in the House of Representatives.

I get that these folks have to campaign for their offices. Still, why have they spread hither and yon across our vast country at this time — while our young servicemen and women are risking their lives while trying to put down a despicable terrorist organization?

International news, military news, national news

ISIL is a cult, period

Let’s quit trying to suggest that the Islamic State has anything at all to do with religion.

As in Islam, from which it draws its filthy name.

I’ve made a pact that I’m now going to refer to ISIL as a “cult.” I’ll conceded it’s not an original thought. I’m appropriating it from someone who said it on a news-talk show the other day. If I could remember who said it, I’d credit him specifically.

ISIL doesn’t represent anything about Islam.

I shall concede that I am not a Muslim scholar. I have enough trouble trying to understand my own Presbyterian faith, so I cannot pretend to know much at all about Islam.

However, I am quite comfortable lumping ISIL with other infamous cults.

The worst of them in recent times, for me at least, is the Jonestown cult that committed mass suicide in its Guyana jungle compound in 1978 after gunmen murdered Congressman Leo Ryan and others who had gone there to investigate what was going on with the cult gathering organized by the late Jim Jones.

I would rank ISIL as worse than the Jonestown cult, given the nature of the beheadings they’ve shown the world and the manner in which they treat Muslims, Jews and Christians.

As I have noted already, one group victimized by the ISIL cult has been women in general. Thus, it gladdens my heart to hear about the young major in the United Arab Emirates leading a recent air strike against ISIL in Syria. The major, I hasten to add, is a woman. (See the previous post on this blog.)

President Obama has noted already that “no god” condones the kind of violence that ISIL has brought to others. Indeed, the term “Islamic State” is an insult to a great religion.

Do these monsters represent “religious extremism”? No. They represent something far worse.

International news, military news, national news, political news

ISIS's 'worst nightmare' answers the call

2 Comments

This story absolutely, positively knocks me out.

Major Mariam Al Mansouri has flown a combat mission striking Islamic State targets in Syria.

Al Mansouri is a major in the United Arab Emirates air force.

The major is a woman!

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/world/meast/uae-female-fighter-pilot/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Al Mansouri might be, in the words of CNN.com, the Islamic State’s “worst nightmare.”

The Islamic State — aka ISIS or ISIL — is at this moment the world’s No. 1 terrorist organization. It is a Sunni extremist cult that beheads prisoners and brutalizes women, denying them any semblance of respect.

These terrorists are animals. President Obama has declared his intention to “degrade and destroy” the terrorist organization.

Accordingly, he and Secretary of State John Kerry have enlisted several nations to join in a coalition to fight ISIL/ISIS. The United Arab Emirates is one of them. Among the service personnel ordered to fly combat sorties against the Islamic State is the aforementioned Major Al Mansouri.

“She is (a) fully qualified, highly trained, combat ready pilot, and she led the mission,” Yousef Al Otaiba told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” according to CNN.com.

This is fantastic. A female UAE air force officer has led a combat mission to destroy military targets manned and operated by sworn enemies of women all around the world.

The delicious irony is way beyond measure.