So last week, before our President headed out for a vacation, he authorized the United States Armed Forces to conduct limited attacks, that Senator John McCain called “pin pricks”, against the forces of the Islamic State, the new Caliphate, which stretches from Syria to the gates of Baghdad. The first strike dented a piece of towed artillery. One piece of artillery out of hundreds that ISIS\/ISIL have in their possession. They have former Iraqi tanks and they have car bombs made from our Hummers. But, hey, we got that one artillery piece. On Friday, a drone took out a mortar emplacement and some F\/A-18s took out a seven-vehicle convoy.<\/p>\n
On his way to the helicopter for his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, the President warned us that US involvement in the war in Iraq was going to take time. But we knew that – the last President told us the same thing. He’s right, it will take a lot of time at this rate. The ISIL released some messages for the president soon after he left for some golf time, they said that they’ll be flying the Caliphate’s flag over the White House, “Today Mosul, tomorrow Seattle” was the quote.<\/p>\n
Our troops kicked their asses all over Iraq just a few years ago, but the message from ISIL the other day says that they defeated our troops in Iraq and ran them out.<\/p>\n
Let’s look at at Hamas in Gaza for a minute – because some of them are drawing a breath now, they think they’ve defeated Israel once again. By all accounts, Israel destroyed their capability to attack Israel, but Hamas is still holding out for a ceasefire as if they had a bargaining chip left – the only bargaining chip they have is their use of the media against Israel.<\/p>\n
Now let’s look at Iraq in 1991 – the US destroyed Saddam Hussein’s capability to attack any other country besides his own, so that’s what he did. And then he’d shake his saber a little and the US would send thousands of troops to operate the prepositioned war machines in Kuwait. The US and UK ruled the skies over Iraq, but that didn’t stop Hussein from taking potshots at our pilots with surface-to-air missiles. <\/p>\n
In the 80s, Iraq and Iran threw waves of human flesh against each other for days at a time costing tens of thousands of lives each time as if no lessons had ever been learned from World War One. Neither side gained an inch, but they both declared victory when the shooting stopped.<\/p>\n
Now this ISIS\/ISIL\/Islamic State\/Caliphate beast is rolling across Iraq, raping and beheading children, taking slaves, sending tens of thousands of refugees into the mountains under threat of death or enslavement. These creatures are like no other army we’ve ever faced in our history. Even the Japanese knew when they were beat – but it wasn’t a “limited war” that got them to that point.<\/p>\n
The problem with fighting these animals is that they never know when they’ve been defeated – unless they’re dead. Can anyone seriously think that once they have their Caliphate and their Islamic government that these people who have been murdering women and children, destroying their own religion’s icons, shrines and mosques that they’re going to go back to stocking shelves at the local market or serving coffee at some sidewalk cafe in Damascus? <\/p>\n
Yeah, I know public opinion on a strategy spans from “leave them alone and let them settle it politically” to “nuke them from orbit”, neither of which is very helpful. But limited warfare doesn’t work – look how well it didn’t work on Saddam Hussein in 1991 – we stopped killing Iraqis when the short term political goals were met instead of making the hard choices and beheading the government – because the media was making us look like bullies.<\/p>\n
We have to get over our squeamishness for total warfare. We have to embrace our inner-William Tecumseh Sherman and our inner-George Patton and get back to the business of waging war against our enemies instead of waging a public relations campaign. A public relations campaign we can’t win any way we try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"