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Originally Posted by Dr Winston O Boogie jr
It sounds to me that you believe that we are currently doing nothing. I don't think that's the case. President Bush talked about the fact that this was going to be a very kind of war. He said that we often not be aware of things happening. Just because you don't see tanks and missiles and men in uniform shooting bad guys does not mean that we are doing nothing.
This is part of the ongoing war on terror and most of it will be fought behind the scenes by covert operatives. ISIS is just the current battle. We will degrade and destroy them and unfortunately, another radical group will pop up. I really don't think that this is a winnable war. It is more like our war on crime. We know that there will always be crime but we will never stop fighting it. The same goes for terrorism.
Like I said, in some ways a lot of people would feel better if they saw our soldiers on the ground over there. They would feel that we are at least "doing something." But doing something just to do something even if it's the wrong thing would be foolish. It may also be that in a clandestine operation like this, it might be foolish for the president and congress to state it's objectives and strategy plainly and openly. Like I said we may never know what's going on and that will make a lot of us very uncomfortable.
Maybe boots on the ground will have to happen. I personally believe that we are not going to destroy ISIS without boots on the ground at some point but I don't have all of the information. Maybe the Iraqi and Syrian armies can destroy this threat with only our support such as the air strikes that seemed to be pretty effective. That would be ideal. But do't think that just because we don't see ground operations that we are doing nothing.
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No, I never said nor meant to imply that we are doing nothing. The Intel Community, SOCOM and certainly the US Navy is doing a lot. I also agree that just to “do something” would be foolish …ie see my earlier points about the need to have an effective strategy. I also complete agree that clandestine ops are best left out of the news … something that politicians of both parties always find hard to resist when there’s been a major operational success (eg killing Bin Laden). The problem is publicity reveals sources and methods which should be avoided at all costs because revealing them renders them useless for future ops.
I also think the phrase ‘war on terror’ has always been a misnomer. If you think about it, terror is actually nothing more than a tactic. Bush was afraid to call the war what it is – a war against Radical Islam. A lot of it will need to be done behind the scenes … no disagreement. But, and here’s the rub, if we ever want to win this war we at least need to be honest about it. We need to call it what it really is because the people have to understand that, plus why we’re doing it and why it’s critical. This is where President leadership plays the most prominent role.
To do the job right, IMHO, and in addition to lots of covert action, winning will take full scale military action but this time with the ROE significantly liberalized so that we don’t just defeat ISIS temporarily but liquidate them and the cancerous culture they have spawned. To paraphrase a former President who laid out a simple but effective strategy for winning the Cold War, and with regards to the current War Against Radical Islam, our goal has to be “We win, they lose.”
A final comment … not having a strategy at this point, with ISIS having been around for a year or longer now, is not indicative of a “thoughtful approach” or deliberative consideration of options. (This is obvious since it seems to change in reaction to the news with the latest morphing from “managing ISIS” to “chasing ISIS to the Gates of Hell”). No, the lack of a strategy is dithering and dereliction of duty. The failure to do this puts all of us in danger, with no distinction to party, ideology, race, creed etc. All Americans will be impacted, even if a lot of them don’t realize that yet.