{"id":57491,"date":"2015-01-06T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T14:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=57491"},"modified":"2015-01-05T17:30:12","modified_gmt":"2015-01-05T22:30:12","slug":"destroy-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=57491","title":{"rendered":"Destroy; I do not think it means what you think it means"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Christian Science Monitor<\/a> reports that the Obama Administration is in a war of words about what their intentions are in regard to the war against the Daesh\/ISIS\/ISIL\/Islamic State. The President says that his intent is to “destroy” the organization, that we should make no mistake about that. But his staff says otherwise;<\/p>\n

[Retired General John Allen, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL] offered his own thoughts as to why he believes that the goal of \u201cdestroying\u201d IS might not be the best choice. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnnihilation requires a great deal of investment, resources, and time,\u201d he told Der Spiegel. He then took another tack.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe defeating, dismantling, and degrading\u201d of IS will result in \u201cultimately destroying the idea.\u201d <\/p>\n

Destroying the idea of IS \u201cis the long-term objective,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So what is the difference between this and destroying the organization itself?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can only destroy [IS] when we destroy the attractiveness of the brand itself,\u201d Allen said. \u201cWhen you can defeat the idea, then you have destroyed the organization.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To me, “destroy” means that the battlefield is littered with parts of bloody corpses, that the idea of an Islamic State died with the last gasp of the last jihadist. When we destroyed Hussein’s Army in Iraq, there were no more living Iraqis in Kuwait – their “ideas” went with them, we crushed their jeeps under our tank treads, we blew up their Type 56 antiaircraft guns with C-4, we used thermyte grenades on the AK47s that they threw down on their run to Basra. We knew how to destroy an enemy, but then there were no American politicians in Iraq or Kuwait in those days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Obama Administration is in a war of words about … Destroy; I do not think it means what you think it means<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}