We’re losing the war…
[I apologize to my friends on Facebook, where I usually share these posts. Facebook has made it impossible to share. You can follow me on Google+. I recommend cancelling your Facebook accounts and creating Google+ accounts, if you haven’t already.]
While drone surveillance and attacks and Special Ops are a better military solution than “boots on the ground,” there’s no doubt that ISIS, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups will only be defeated if the countries affected wage effective war against these militant Islamic groups. The key word is “effective.” Remember that ISIS received a big boost when poorly trained Iraqi forces ran for their lives, often in their underwear—equipment left behind, much of it American, is now in ISIS’ hands. That has to stop. Western presence is justified there for equipping and training local forces so that these fiascos aren’t repeated.
That said, the West isn’t doing nearly enough to hurt these groups where it’s most effective—financially and personnel-wise. I’m reminded of World War Two where indifference, peaceniks, and anti-Semitic sentiments conspired to give Hitler a free hand in Europe. We don’t need another Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, but we shouldn’t bury our heads in the sand either and hope Islamic nations will destroy the extremists in their midst without our help. The recent Twitter action, for example, while a good start, is a drop in the bucket. The West needs a concerted effort to stop all finances flowing into the illegal insurgent groups. Funds must be frozen and their propaganda machine must be dismantled. We can be good at that, and it’s the least we can do.
ISIS, in particular, has shown it’s in a genocide mood. You can even be a devout Muslim and aid worker helping your suffering brothers and sisters, but if you don’t swallow the extreme ideology of this obscene perversion of Islam, you’re dead. And Allah help you if you’re a Christian, Jew, or Shi’ite or some other Muslim sect and believe anything different. It’s ISIS way or no way—you’re fair game for the butchers’ knives and firing squads. Whatever they call it, that’s genocide. They have no respect for history either. The scenes of destruction of Middle Eastern heritage, in fact, show that ISIS followers are just thugs and murderers, mad dogs that need to be put down.
I’m sure some of you lauded the outcome of a recent battle for a free and democratic internet. This was a battle so that a few ISP providers can’t differentially charge for high-speed service—more speed for those who can pay big. While it’s a shallow victory at best—corporate America has always been exploitive and privileged on the internet via its T1 lines, its access to huge databanks and server farms (Flash Boys chronicled how that can get out of hand), and its data-mining practices—this ruling (nixing legislation sponsored by the GOP’s corporate sycophants—who else?) doesn’t touch on the issue that concerns me most: Does a free and democratic internet mean we have to allow terrorists to abuse it?
The internet is part of a bigger problem, of course. Western leaders seem ineffective, inept, stupid, and myopic with their policies on terrorism. Netanyahu’s speech before Congress demonstrated how egregious the results can become. While a Palestinian state is no longer the main issue in counterterrorism, Israel—at least Bibi and his governing party—continue to pick at that sore with new settlements and treating Gaza and the West Bank as their very own hellish District 9s (see the movie—you’ll feel sorry for the aliens). To be sure, Bibi is desperately trying to win an election and will do just about anything he thinks will ensure his political survival, even puckering up and kissing GOP asses and insulting a sitting U.S. president. Israel doesn’t make friends in the Muslim world; they’re very successful in making enemies. They’re doing a pretty good job of that here in the U.S. too.
But Netanyahu’s myopia is more chronic than that—it’s approaching macular degeneration! ISIS is practically next door. Iran isn’t Israel’s immediate problem. It’s even ironic that they’re worried about Iran having the bomb when they’re the only country in the region that does (far away Pakistan and India with their large Muslim populations, especially the former as haven for Taliban, should be more threatening to Israel than Iran right now—they have bombs already—but Israel didn’t complain about them, seeing it as an India v. Pakistan problem). In fact, Bibi could play it a lot smarter by pitting Shi’ites v. Sunnis. Radical Islam is a veritable ice cream shop of flavors, with various sects, nationalities, and ancient tribal conflicts, although the radical part represents a very small albeit murderous percentage. Bibi’s myopia might just be Israel’s downfall.
That doesn’t mean the West can’t pit Shi’ites v. Sunnis, trumping Netanyahu; we can, even if Bibi can’t is blind to the opportunity. I really don’t understand how Iran (all Shi’ite) and Iraq’s Shi’ites don’t feel threatened by the Sunnis who lead ISIS. Irani militia are becoming more involved, of course—maybe too little, too late. Not stepping up their participation makes no sense. Sunnis, in general, don’t like Shi’ites, and vice versa. When they settle their differences (unlikely as that seems), we should start to worry. In fact, I worry more about traditional, despotic, and duplicitous states like Saudi Arabia, a Sunni stronghold and secretly supporting ISIS, whose ferocity against the West is matched by its ferocity against anyone who’s not Sunni. Saudi Arabia spawned the 9/11 terrorists—the “religious schools” financed by Saudi nobility only teach hatred of the West. That means they’re not our friends, period. The recent Saudi honoring of an Islamic cleric, who preaches hatred against the West, is more evidence for that duplicity, in case you needed any more.
American politicians have to develop some smarts along these lines. They have to become less stupid and naïve. Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu ranks high on the list of things this tan-challenged idiot has done to undermine American democracy. The defunding of DHS as an attack against Obama’ immigration intiative, continuous attacks on Obamacare, and the rest of his anti-Obama campaign can only hurt the GOP in 2016. At best, the GOP is acting masochistic; at worst, it’s acting suicidal. In any case, they’re stupid. Don’t get me wrong. Official stupidity is a bipartisan ill. Petraeus should be locked up without a key for a much longer time for lending his little black books to his mistress (I don’t know whether he’s Democrat or Republican, but what he did is stupid!). Other less recent cases have occurred that affect national security. Official stupidity can’t be tolerated. It undermines the war on terror, in particular. Petraeus and others should go to prison for aiding and abetting the enemy and endangering American lives and others; Boehnner should be locked in a padded cell sans tanning bed. I just don’t get it. How do they get away with this crap?
A note in passing: The New York Times blew it again by coming down on Hillary Clinton for not using a government email account. While ill-advised (Hillary fits in the stupid category for offering political opponents any possible distraction away from their exuberant incompetence), for the security reasons noted above, it was incumbent on State Department members with government email accounts to archive her emails—she broke no rules, in other words. She left office in 2013 BEFORE the law was passed that the Times was referring too. Yellow journalism still lives on? Still think the media’s liberal? The Times has proven time and time again that it’s sensationalist at best and in corporate America’s and one-percenters’ support structure at worst, so the report on the emails wasn’t surprising. I’m sure that Fox News can carry on where the Times left off. I wouldn’t recommend what Hillary did, but only Rice and Powell before her even used email in their State Department functions. Foggy Bottom has always been a wee bit lagging in IT security. Stupid, and it’s time to change that, of course—the war on terror clearly involves State.
The Clinton and Petraeus cases represent abuses of the public trust, Clinton much less than Petraeus and others, and are associated with the use of electronic media, so another action I would take is to extend Twitter’s idea. Twitter isn’t the only social media site that terrorists use to propagandize, recruit, and finance their scurrilous agendas. ISIS, in particular, has become adept at using everything available to it. We must stop that. I’m not advocating government control of internet content—heaven forbid!—but I am advocating government determination of terrorist files, accounts, and websites and its recommendation to the service providers to cancel the same, weight given to those recommendations by a threat of fines, prosecution, and shutdown, if appropriate. The government could start with more of an innocuous hands-off policy at first—if Google and other internet data collectors can determine that I’m interested in Product X and flash an ad for X up on my social media account, they can damn well do something about X, like cancelling it, if it’s terrorist related. To not do so is treason!
I’m tired of hearing about terrorists using the internet to recruit. Teenagers are super-impressionable. They can be brainwashed in many ways, but the recent wave of ISIS recruits from Europe and the U.S. must be stopped. In particular, young girls who think they can find love with some murderous jihadist are foolish and more grossly misled than any who have relationships with the serial killers or other criminals in our prisons. The older Boston Marathon bomber’s wife is another foolish American girl who belongs in jail for being an accomplice, unless you believe she’s quite the super-chef who needed five (5) pressure cookers to prepare her lamb and falafel (one can argue the whole family needs to be in jail—currently the wife and sisters are here in NJ, planning Allah knows what). The Islamic Caliphate that ISIS wants to establish is a throwback to the Dark Ages when women were considered property, exploited, mutilated, and killed. A place in a Charles Manson-like commune is preferable to joining ISIS, al Qaeda, or the Taliban.
I’m also tired of hearing about terrorists, like those Boston marathon bombers, finding easy recipes to construct homemade WMDs. How many ways can we attack, maim, and kill? Let me count the ways by going to the internet. And I’m tired of seeing hate groups of any kind, foreign or domestic, getting a free ride on the internet, putting up propaganda and illustrating all these killing methods. If we can go after identity thieves, cyber bullies, and porn traffickers who exploit the internet, we can certainly go after those who would use the internet to spread murder and mayhem. All of that is criminal activity; it must be declared to be so and stopped. And that is how we can win the war with the terrorists!
And so it goes….
