{"id":8244,"date":"2015-02-27T06:02:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T14:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8244"},"modified":"2015-02-25T09:51:06","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T17:51:06","slug":"make-the-isis-caliphate-a-jihadist-kill-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/make-the-isis-caliphate-a-jihadist-kill-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Make the ISIS Caliphate a Jihadist Kill Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo via FrontPage Magazine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

President Obama\u2019s proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS comes at a time when Iran and ISIS are fomenting disorder and destruction throughout the Middle East. Despite the enmity between these two species of jihadism, both pose serious threats to our interests and security and those of our allies in the region.\u00a0The president\u2019s stubborn refusal to strengthen his dubious negotiations with Iran by approving Congress\u2019s more\u00a0punishing sanctions, along with his pledge not to use force against the mullahs, is guaranteed to make Iran a nuclear power that will dominate the region. And nothing in the AUMF will achieve his alleged \u201ccore objective\u201d to destroy ISIS. Quite the contrary\u2013\u2013\u00a0it will squander an opportunity to concentrate and eliminate tens of thousands of jihadists.<\/p>\n

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Iran\u2019s regional power and reach are increasing every day. The collapse of Yemen to Iranian-supported rebels proves prophetic an Iranian member of parliament last November. \u201cThree Arab capitals (Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad) have already fallen into Iran\u2019s hands and belong to the Iranian Islamic Revolution,\u201d he bragged, and implied Sana would be number 4. As for ISIS, it is setting up franchises in Libya, Afghanistan, Egypt and Algeria, contrary to Obama\u2019s claim that it is \u201con the defensive\u201d and \u201cis going to lose.\u201d\u00a0More troublesome, so far some 20,000 foreigners from 90 different countries have journeyed to northern Iraq to fight for the new caliphate, creating the danger that ISIS-controlled territory will become what Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was in the decade before 9\/11\u2013\u2013a training camp for jihadists planning to attack the West, this time filled with recruits possessing passports from Western countries.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s responses to these serious challenges have been criminally na\u00efve and incompetent. He has downgraded terrorist attacks\u00a0to crimes a \u201cbig city mayor handles,\u201d\u00a0and blames the media for hyping the terrorist threat. He denies that jihadism has anything to do with Islam or anti-Semitism, most recently when he said that\u00a0the murder of Parisian Jews in a kosher<\/i> deli was perpetrated by malcontents who decided to \u201crandomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli.\u201d\u00a0He preposterously asserts, contrary to years of data from\u00a0Pew polls<\/a>, that \u201c99.9% of Muslims\u201d want \u201corder, peace, prosperity.\u201d He indulges Orwellian misdirection like \u201cstrategic patience,\u201d a euphemism for inertia, retreat, and appeasement. And he relies on the magical thinking of diplomatic \u201cengagement\u201d to transform Iran\u2019s Islamic\u00a0Republic\u2013\u2013for 35 years a relentless enemy of our country, killer of our citizens, and fomenter of global terrorist violence\u2013\u2013into a \u201cstrategic partner\u201d whose nuclear capabilities will be limited to peaceful use.<\/p>\n

Just as bad, from the beginning of his presidency he has ceded the moral high ground to the jihadists by apologizing for the alleged historical crimes of America against Islam that presumably have driven the denizens of the \u201creligion of peace\u201d to murder, enslave, rape, behead, crucify, and torture those deemed enemies of Allah. His recent fatuous historical analogy between the Crusades and Muslim terror, and his embarrassing ignorance of the Spanish Inquisition, are merely reiterations of groveling statements he made during the infamous 2009 \u201capology tour,\u201d when in Cairo he told the Muslim Brothers he invited to sit in the front row that the \u201ctension\u201d between Islam and the West resulted from \u201ccolonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now we have the AUMF against ISIS, which astonishingly is valid only for 3 years, and subjects the authorization to this limitation: \u201cThe authority granted in subsection (a) does not authorize the use of the United States Armed Forces in enduring offensive ground combat operations.\u201d\u00a0No doubt this proviso is a political sop to the quasi-pacifist, anti-war left, not to mention gratifying neo-isolationist\u00a0Congressmen on the right. And it is probably pleasing to millions of Americans who are sick of fighting in the Middle East. But these shortsighted preferences and politics are what a farsighted leader must challenge and overcome. Just think of Churchill\u2019s relentless fight in the 1930s against disarmament, pacifism, and appeasement if you need a historical example. And in what alternative universe does telling your enemy what you won\u2019t<\/i> do help you to win?<\/p>\n

In fact, the prohibition against ground troops misses an opportunity to destroy thousands of the most committed jihadists who are now concentrating there, something critical for slowing down the movement\u2019s momentum. We need to remember that a passionately ideological movement like Islamic jihadism depends on a hard core of fanatics. William Sherman understood this psychological truth during the Civil War.\u00a0For the Union to prevail, he wrote, \u201cWe must kill three hundred thousand . . . and the further they run the harder for us to get them.\u201d Any mass movement based on passionate belief depends on the true believers and bitter-enders, the ones most willing to kill and die.\u00a0The bulk of the rest, even if they share the beliefs and support the cause, will go along only while the movement is successful, and will give up when the true believers are destroyed and momentum stalls.<\/p>\n

Jihadism, of course, is different because it is a tenet of a religion with 1.6 billion adherents and a 1000-year record of military success and dominance that wasn\u2019t checked until the 17th<\/sup> century, a success predicated on doctrines and dogmas still fundamental to Islam.\u00a0Hence we cannot definitively stop the jihadist threat the way the Southern slavocracy or 20th<\/sup> century fascism was. But we can deal it a serious blow that diminishes its glamour, buys us some years of relative peace, and shows the region that the U.S. is the strongest tribe who will help its friends and punish its enemies.\u00a0Remember what happened after our military quickly destroyed Saddam Hussein\u2019s army, the largest in the region? Libya\u2019s Ghaddafi abandoned his WMD program, Syria ended its 29-year occupation of Lebanon, and Iran suspended its development of nuclear weapons, at least until we returned to our current posture of retreat and appeasement.<\/p>\n

Defeating the ISIS jihadist franchise, then, means committing enough American troops to the\u00a0caliphate\u2019s territory to kill as many jihadists as possible. Yes, the \u201cinternational community\u201d will squeal, but so what? When has Vladimir Putin\u00a0or Xi Jinping ever been deterred by complaints and scolding from foreign media, progressive professors,\u00a0NGO\u2019s, and U.N. functionaries? When do China and Russia agonize over the anger of the world\u2019s Muslims the way the West constantly does? Putin handled his jihadist problem in Chechnya by killing up to 160,000 people and shelling Grozny. China continues to wage a repressive culture war against 10 million Uighurs and their Islamic faith. But that hasn\u2019t elicited from the Muslim world\u00a0the condemnations and violence that greet satirical cartoons or preposterous rumors of mistreated Korans. Russia and China pursue their interests without regard for the world\u2019s opinion, and so should we\u2013\u2013particularly since our interests, unlike Russia\u2019s or China\u2019s, are consistent with a world governed by law and respectful of human rights.<\/p>\n

But won\u2019t we get bogged down in yet another endless war? Not if we don\u2019t make our goal the transformation of Iraq into a liberal democracy, or pursue some other three-cups-of-tea fantasy. But what happens after we depart? If this time we leave behind sufficient forces and bases to patrol the area, we will be able to keep groups like ISIS from metastasizing. Doesn\u2019t that mean an open-ended commitment? But we already have had for decades several deployments of U.S.\u00a0forces abroad. Right now there are about 12,000 troops in Kuwait, nearly 50,000 in Japan, 28,500 in South Korea, and 38,500 in Germany, with another 60,000 scattered across the globe. We have had troops in Europe and Japan for 70 years, and in South Korea for 62. For 4 decades during the Cold War, 250,000 U.S. troops were stationed\u00a0just in West Germany, facing not glorified gangs, but a nuclear-armed Soviet enemy and its 1.8 million soldiers. That\u2019s what you have to do to protect your global interests and security when you are the world\u2019s sole guarantor of order.<\/p>\n

Committing 100,000 of the world\u2019s best warriors to the fight would seriously degrade ISIS\u2019s forces and its ability to hold territory, let alone expand. It would kill off thousands of future jihadist infiltrators of the West. It would also concentrate the minds of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and put the mullahs on notice that all options are not just rhetorically, but actually on the table. But if we continue down the feckless, appeasing road Obama is driving us, we will soon have a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, Iraq and Syria turned into Iranian client states, Israel facing a nuclear-armed genocidal enemy, and a jihadist statelet in northern Iraq. And what follows those developments will make the current disorder look tame.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com<\/strong><\/p>\n

URL to article: http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/2015\/bruce-thornton\/make-the-isis-caliphate-a-jihadist-kill-zone\/<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2015 FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine President Obama\u2019s proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS comes at a time when Iran and ISIS are fomenting disorder and destruction throughout the Middle East. Despite the enmity between these two species of jihadism, both pose serious threats to our interests and security and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[28,59,842,22,230],"tags":[975],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-28Y","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9862,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-three-headed-hydra-of-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":8244,"position":0},"title":"The Three-Headed Hydra of the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Trump has inherited a matrix of problems that primarily stem from Iran, Russia, and ISIS. The abrupt Obama administration pre-election pullout from Iraq in 2011, along with the administration\u2019s failed reset with Russia and the Iran deal, created a three-headed hydra in the Middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ISIS"","block_context":{"text":"ISIS","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/isis\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8163,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-dangers-of-obamas-cognitive-dissonance\/","url_meta":{"origin":8244,"position":1},"title":"The Dangers of Obama\u2019s Cognitive Dissonance","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine There are many moments from the past 6 years that demonstrate the criminal incompetence of this president and his administration. 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