The Ultimate Enemy of ISIS
The president’s request for the authorization to use military force against the Islamic State has landed in a Congress as divided as the country.
That division was mirrored in the disparate receptions Obama’s resolution received from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
To the Times, Obama’s AUMF is “alarmingly broad. It does not limit the battlefield to Syria and Iraq.”
Moreover, Obama “seeks permission to attack ‘associated persons or forces.'” This would give the White House “virtually unrestricted power to engage in attacks around the globe as long as it can justify a connection, however tenuous, to the Islamic State.”
To the Journal, Obama’s resolution ties America down the way the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver. It authorizes war on ISIS for only three years. It would prevent another U.S. army from being sent to Iraq or Syria.
“Rather than put shackles on his generals,” says the Journal, “Mr. Obama should be urging them to mount a campaign to roll back ISIS as rapidly as possible from the territory it holds.”
But the country seems nowhere near this hawkish.
Viewing nightly on cable news the hardships endured by the Wounded Warriors of our two latest and longest wars has cooled the arbor for new crusades.
About the character of the Islamic State, there is no disagreement.
“A brutal, vicious death cult,” Obama called it.
But about whether ISIS is an “existential threat” to us, or if this war is really our war, there is no agreement.
North of Syria, along 500 miles of border, sits a Turkish army of half a million with 3,000 tanks that could cross over and annihilate ISIS in a month. Former Secretary of State James Baker suggests that the U.S. offer air, logistics and intelligence support, if the Turks will go in and snuff out ISIS.
But not only have the Turks not done so, for a time they looked the other way as jihadists crossed their border to join ISIS.
If the Islamic State, as Ankara’s inaction testifies, is not viewed as a threat to Turkey’s vital interests, how can it be a threat to ours?
There are reports that the Saudis and the Gulf Arabs would be more willing to participate in a war on ISIS if we would first effect the ouster of Bashar Assad.
Everyone in the Middle East, it appears, wants the United States to fight their wars for them. But as they look out for their interests first, it is time we started looking out for ours first.
Foremost among those interests would be to avoid another $1 trillion war, with thousands of U.S. dead and tens of thousands of wounded, and a situation, after a decade of fighting, as exists today in Afghanistan and Iraq, where those we leave behind in power cannot hold their own against the enemies we defeated for them.
That an Iraqi army we equipped and trained at a cost of tens of billions would disintegrate and desert Iraq’s second city, Mosul, when confronted by a few thousand fanatics, was a debacle.
Why should Americans have to recapture Mosul for Baghdad?
And why do these “democrats” we install in power seem to perform so poorly?
Under Saddam, Iraq fought an eight-year war against a nation three times as large and populous, Iran. Yet, Saddam’s army did not run away as the Iraqi army we trained and equipped ran away from Anbar.
What did Saddam Hussein have to motivate men that we do not?
What is it that makes some people in the Middle East volunteer and fight to the death, while others refuse to fight or run away from battle?
For, as the Journal writes, “The Associated Press reported Tuesday that U.S. intelligence officials now say foreign fighters are joining Islamic State ‘in unprecedented numbers,’ including 3,400 from western nations out of 20,000 from around the world.”
Why is this?
The Islamic State has plugged into the most powerful currents of the Middle East. It is anti-American, anti-Zionist, anti-West, Islamic and militantly Islamist. It promises to overthrow the old order of Sykes-Picot, to tear up the artificial borders the West imposed on the Arabs, and to produce a new unity, a new dispensation where the Quran is law and Allah rules and all Sunnis are united in one home whence all infidels – Jews, Shia, Christians – have been driven out. Hateful as it is, ISIS has a vision.
Hezbollah, Iran, Assad, the Houthi rebels, all Shiites, understand this.
They know they are in a fight to the death. And they fight.
But it is the Sunni Arabs, the royals on the Arabian Peninsula and the sheiks on the Gulf, to whom this should be a fire bell in the night.
For ISIS is out to dethrone these perceived royal puppets of a detested America and to reclaim rightful custody of Mecca and Medina.
The Shiites are already in the field. The Sunni are going to have to fight and win this war against ISIS, or lose it all.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 CREATORS.COM
Read more by Patrick J. Buchanan
- Whose Job Is It to Kill ISIS? – February 5th, 2015
- U.S.-Russia Clash in Ukraine? – February 2nd, 2015
- The Persians Are Coming! – January 26th, 2015
- Against Terrorism – But for What? – January 22nd, 2015
- Is War in the Cards for 2015? – January 1st, 2015
t. mauel
February 12th, 2015 at 11:04 pm
If the Saudis are so worried about ISIS why are they supporting them covertly?
Caesar_Saladin
February 12th, 2015 at 11:52 pm
I find an interesting strain of dual thought in the comments of many (not necessarily here) when the likes of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or (insert you favorite Middle Eastern nation-state) is mentioned.
On the one hand, I see numerous comments about how the Saudis are dragging us down, how the Saudis financed and helped cover up the 9/11 attacks and blah blah ad infinitum and we should go bomb them or throw off the oil dependence from them and go our own away, or any number of anti-Saudi (and anti-Muslim-nation) sentiments.
HOWEVER… here they are with the group (ISIS) that is poised to take down those very regimes they are complaining about, and THEY are the bad guys now.
Are they (in Rush Limbaugh's terms, the 'low information people') wanting to trade one thuggish regime over another, or is it simply a question of siding with the lesser of two evils?
Along with this, if Joe the Plumber is so incensed and outraged by the excesses of ISIS (and three are more than enough to turn your stomach) why don't we see more Americans making their way to the region to join an anti-ISIS outfit and get into the fight? If it's really an issue of 'good vs evil' as this conflict is being cast, shouldn't we be seeing huge numbers of 'good' fighters streaming to the region? We saw hundreds- if not thousands- of Americans joining others of many nations making their way to Spain, often illegally and at great personal risk- to fight against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War of the 30's- how is this fight any less important?
I am as anti-war as the next commenter here, but it does strike me as odd that those who speak the loudest about how 'evil' ISIS is are the last ones to volunteer to go fight them- if they volunteer at all.
In the end, the Islamic State- from a Muslim point of view- was a good idea poorly executed. Very poorly executed. Unfortunately, whatever forces take the field against them will also be fighting for a good idea- ostensibly, peace in the region- but in the end I fear that, too, will be poorly executed.
didi
February 13th, 2015 at 4:55 am
AQ, ISIL, a.s.o. know that hey cannot defeat the West militarily. Their tactic is to lure mainly the US into spending itself into bankruptcy by fighting them on the ground. Their tactic has been successful. Will Congress ask who will pay for this new war against ISIL? I bet that it will not.
jojo
February 13th, 2015 at 6:06 am
Don't cry croc tears for USA! How forgetful Patty is. Israel Firsters proposed to Bill Clinton–that it was necessary to destroy 7 middle east countries. Only one remains.
I caution ISIS. You been set up and used. Once used, you will be dealt with a death blow.
follyofwar
February 13th, 2015 at 7:13 am
Yesterday on C-Span Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was a guest. I watched as he was one of only ten in the House not to vote to condemn Russia for aggression. I almost thought I was listening to Buchanan. Rohrabacher is against the US/EU overthrow of the legal government in Kiev, said we should be siding with Assad, talked about the stupid artificial borders in the Middle East set up by the British/French imperialists, said the countries surrounding ISIL should be doing the fighting – not us, is in favor of a Kurdistan state, and even promoted medical marijuana. While I probably disagree with him on many things, it's nice to hear that at least one GOP congressman is not drinking the poisoned Beltway Kool-Aid and is not a puppet of the neo-cons.
Jaime
February 13th, 2015 at 10:42 am
Probably because the Saudis, perfidious as they are, think they can control their monster.