I'm glad we agree; but "crushing" is easier said, than done

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Dec 12, 2015 at 07:13

Thanks, Daniel. I'm glad we're somewhat in agreement. One this is for sure, though -- I HAVE BEEN turning into a cranky old man lately, hearing so much nonsense about the Middle East spouted off by world leaders and the press. It's all just such a headache

What I said about the futility of defeating ISIS (Yes, ISIS -- not Islamism) militarily, hails back to my Vietnam War days, when we were futilely trying to crush a popular uprising with military force. Nixon dropped more ordinance on North Vietnam in a space of a few weeks, than all sides had dropped on one another in all of World War II; but all of this merely won us the "privilege" of sitting down with the Communist side to discuss the terms of our surrender. We seem to be trying to repeat this performance against the "Caliphate"

We have come to use the terms "ISIS, ISIL, IS, the Islamic State, the Caliphate and Da'esh" interchangeably. Technically, "ISIS and ISIL" pertain only to Iraq and the Levant; so yes, it would be possible to crush Da'esh in this limited context -- even so, we could do so with only the degree of success with which we "crushed" Sadaam Hussein (whose ex-officers are the backbone of ISIS in Iraq), or that we "crushed" the Taliban in Afghanistan. We even had the ISIS "Calif", Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in prison after "crushing" Sadaam, only to release him later. This "crushing" business is much easier said, than done.

Even if we could crush ISIS in Iraq and Syria, we still have to deal with them in Libya, Afghanistan and other places. They are an international group, and the "Caliphate" is a universal Islamic idea.

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