Blogs For Victory

Libya turned out disastrously and, of course, Obama completely threw away the victory President Bush had won in Iraq. We all know the fate of Afghanistan will likely be an Islamist take-over shortly after our final departure and, now, it is clear that we’re not doing nearly what is necessary to beat ISIS:

While it seems ISIS’s advance on the cities of Kobani in Syria and Baghdad in Iraq has been stalled, it is not clear if the Islamic State’s territorial gains can be speedily reversed. The threat ISIS poses to both Iraqi forces and coalition assets, moreover, is increasing.

Video footage released by ISIS fighters in Iraq suggests the fundamentalist militants have now acquired Chinese shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles which might be responsible for the recent downing of Iraqi helicopters. One American official, speaking to The New York Times, characterized the weapons as “game changers.”

There have been many temporary successes in America’s war against ISIS, almost all of them offset by troubling setbacks. Nearly three months into Operation Inherent Resolve, it is not entirely clear what has been accomplished…

Nothing, but that is only because nothing related to ISIS was contemplated – the military action appears to have been no more than a very reluctant action by Obama with a mind towards shoring up his deteriorating poll numbers in the United States. So far, one American military life has been lost in a non-combat incident and while we might think that fortunate, it still doesn’t do much for the man who died. What are we to put on his head stone? Died heroically in an attempt to goose Obama’s poll numbers out of the basement?

The fundamental problem here is that Obama – and all liberals like him – refuse to accept that our world is, in fact, governed by force. The sillier liberals – like Obama – simply hold that this is not the case while more rational liberals (a tiny minority of the whole) believe that not only that it should not be, but can be changed to the point where it is governed by mutually acceptable agreement. It is a staggering failure of intellect for liberals to hold these views, and the disastrous results have been seen now for a century.

As this year is the centenary of the First World War, it is worthwhile to note the failure of Britain in the commencement of that war. To be sure, it was the German military machine which precipitated events, but those events would not have come to pass – even at the last moment – had Britain advised Germany that offensive action by Germany would result in a British declaration of war. The British government – which was lead by the Liberal party at the time – knew full well what the German war plan was: an immediate and overwhelming attack on France via Belgium. They knew this for certain as early as 1911, three years before the event. Careful study of German war preparations by the British military left no doubt in any informed mind of what was coming. A British declaration of warlike intent coming four or five days before the actual German overt act in Belgium would have given Germany’s political leadership – headed up by the Kaiser who really didn’t want a war – the opportunity to hold back the German army. This sort of warning was not issued for two rather typical liberal reasons: 1. It was thought that people determined upon force could be dissuaded by the prospect of diplomatic talks without an overt threat of war and 2. it was feared in leading Liberal party circles (correctly) that such a declaration would break up the government, thus resulting in some liberals losing their political offices. Because of this, no warning was issued until after the guns went off, by which point no German political leader would risk sounding the retreat.

A bit more of a realistic appraisal of the facts would have led to different results. It got even worse in the run-up to the Second World War when the failure to understand that people arming to the teeth and proclaiming their superiority to all other people simply will not be deterred from aggression short of an unmistakable determination for war by the threatened side. But it has also been plenty bad since then – with America getting the worst of it in both Korea and Vietnam because we simply would not face up to the facts of war; to the fact, that is, that only the clearest intent of unleashing unlimited violence against an aggressor has any chance of preventing aggression…and once the guns go off, only the most ruthless application of power upon the aggressor will convince them to quit.

For Obama, the way out of things like ISIS is to figure out what is ISIS’ grievance and then negotiate with them until they’ve got most of what they want, but surrender enough to make it palatable to all other players. It must be understood that it is not necessarily bad to negotiate with ISIS – when Churchill said, “jaw-jaw is better than war-war”, he was right…but the key to “jaw-jaw” is to have the threat of massive war if agreement is not swiftly reached. In other words, maybe we decide that living with ISIS is within the tolerable eccentricities of mankind and all we’d really want is for them to contain themselves to some particular territory and cease aggressive actions and stop massacring non-ISIS people. It wouldn’t be necessarily bad to present them with this option – but unless they are convinced that failure to comply will result in the extermination of ISIS, they’d have no reason to engage, save as a ploy to gain a bit at the table in preparation for taking all on the field. Personally, I don’t think there’s any way to reach the savages of ISIS – but, I wouldn’t be opposed to giving it a try, as long as we’re all clear that waves of B-52’s arrive five minutes after the failure of negotiations.

The real trouble is that we’ve got Obama for more than two more years. As he hasn’t learned the lesson to this point, it is highly unlikely he’ll learn it, now. From what I can tell, he still thinks he’s right and is on the right track. All he needs to do is to convince these people that we’ll give them everything they want, just as soon as they learn the lesson Obama was taught in college: the use of force is wrong. So, he’ll keep plugging away at it – while dropping a few bombs here and there to keep up hicks in line – as things continue to go south. The next President will have to pick up the pieces – but if the next President is like Obama (and all Democrat possibilities are just like him as far as this goes), then it’ll just get worse and worse.