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Entry tags:
ISIS et al
Dear Mr. President,
Please allow me to propose a strategy for dealing with ISIS, since you've said you don't have one but seem to be reaching for the "fire" button for a war that does not have clear national objectives. Please try this one instead:
"Dear Arab world: You sow what you reap. You arm, finance, and encourage Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaida on the one hand but look to us to bail you out from ISIS and friends on the other. What chutzpah. Until you decide that terrorism and brutality are not acceptable even when directed against Jews and westerners, you're on your own. Let's see how that works out for you."
Seriously, why are we even considering helping Syria??? Yes, I know there is a humanitarian crisis. There was one before ISIS too, at Assad's hands. Government-directed humanitarian crises have a long and sad history in the middle east.
The state sponsors of terror will never change their ways if they know they can get our help when those terrorists turn their gazes palace-ward. This is not our fight, and it'll be good for them to learn a lesson, even though there is a civilian cost. We should stay out of it.
Please allow me to propose a strategy for dealing with ISIS, since you've said you don't have one but seem to be reaching for the "fire" button for a war that does not have clear national objectives. Please try this one instead:
"Dear Arab world: You sow what you reap. You arm, finance, and encourage Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaida on the one hand but look to us to bail you out from ISIS and friends on the other. What chutzpah. Until you decide that terrorism and brutality are not acceptable even when directed against Jews and westerners, you're on your own. Let's see how that works out for you."
Seriously, why are we even considering helping Syria??? Yes, I know there is a humanitarian crisis. There was one before ISIS too, at Assad's hands. Government-directed humanitarian crises have a long and sad history in the middle east.
The state sponsors of terror will never change their ways if they know they can get our help when those terrorists turn their gazes palace-ward. This is not our fight, and it'll be good for them to learn a lesson, even though there is a civilian cost. We should stay out of it.
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We should be strengthening Israel's position as a regional power, and not flinching at completely eliminating Hamas and Hezbollah as we have during the past 6 or 7 administrations.
A read of Hamas' charter makes it clear that they, the Islamic Brotherhood, Hezbollah, and ISIS are part and parcel with each other. Instead every American president has preached compromise in the hope of achieving peace in out time (to quote both a State of the Union address by President Obama, and Neville Chamberlain).
The real problem in Syria is there is no one worth backing in the country.
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But I don't think any of that means we should be helping Syria. Those guys are thugs who have stoked hatred against Jews and against the west all along. If some of that come back to bite them now, well, maybe they deserved that.
Is your argument that we have to deal with ISIS in order to accomplish the end of dealing with Hamas/Hezbollah? I don't see that the the one will help with the other; Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and others have been supporting them since long before there was an ISIS. Why would that change?
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That we haven't done anything about Hamas makes it even worse if we go after ISIS -- we'd be saying that Syrian blood is redder than that of our ally who is fighting a defensive war.
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And I think about where Israel is in all this.
"I am Gray
I stand between the candle and the star
We are Gray
We stand between the Darkness and the Light."
Hamas' charter makes it clear that it's goal is to bring the land of Israel under "the Shadow of Islam." This is the regional goal of ISIS.
If Israel falls, the darkness advances unimpeded.
I am always reminded of these lines when, in parshat Korach, it says of Aaron "ויעמוד בין המתים ובין החיים ותעצר המגפה."
"He stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stopped."
The world does not understand this. They think a reasonable solution, a political solution is possible. They have lost the capacity to believe there is such a thing as palpable Evil, that does not respond to reason, that does not 'give' in negotiations, that can only be resolved by being destroyed. They don't want to believe it, and I think they hate us because we understand it and they don't want to.
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Hamas is an existential threat to Israel, the only bit of light in the region. We should care about that. If the US is going to enter the fray at all it should be to deal with that. ISIS is causing trouble for Syria and Iraq, neither of which is a friend to either the US or Israel. I don't see how letting them all shoot at each other (without US involvement) hurts our interests. Worse, if the US takes on ISIS, it's even less likely to also take on Hamas and Hezbollah.
So what am I missing? How is the US taking on ISIS good? I don't claim to be a skilled long-term strategist; if I'm missing something, please enlighten me.
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But Israel is an interested party, both because Syria shares a border with it, and because the fighting is breaching that border. The fighting in Syria is uncontained. Hamas and ISIS are both transnational.
Your course, I think, would ensure an ISIS victory. My guess is that the next move would be a two front war involving Hamas and ISIS, who strike me as natural allies. I think that would be bad for Israel.
So I guess that I don't find much to oppose in the US operating against ISIS, but I think that needs to be coupled with support for a militarily robust Israel that is allowed to win its wars, because otherwise any victory against ISIS is pyrrhic.
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Ah. Yes, you are right that I was missing that. Thank you.
So I guess that I don't find much to oppose in the US operating against ISIS, but I think that needs to be coupled with support for a militarily robust Israel that is allowed to win its wars, because otherwise any victory against ISIS is pyrrhic.
And that's a very real concern, unfortunately -- the world's governmental bodies, including the US, have a pretty crappy record of actually letting Israel defend itself and win its wars.
(Though this time there's another problem, too. Netanyahu went from standing firm to effectively surrendering (! from a position of strength!) pretty quickly. WTF? I do not understand why he is giving Hamas anything without steps toward demilitarization. That looks crazy from over here.)
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