President Obama’s speech on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11 was flat, uninspiring and void of meaningful content. He did not project the air of a man who has any idea of what he is doing. And the chances are very good that he does not.
Watching him last night reminded me of what Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, California: “There’s no there there.” The president was an empty suit standing in a hallway mouthing somebody else’s words.
The problem in Iraq and Syria is that there are no good guys to back. There is no such thing as “moderate” Islam. It does not exist. Even Democrats have observed that if ISIS is destroyed, it will only be replaced by something as bad and maybe even worse.
The president also gave no indication that he will seek any authorization from Congress, which is a dereliction of his constitutional duty and makes him even more of a go-it-alone cowboy than he ever accused George Bush of being.
After all, it was President Obama who over and over again reminded us that he had ended the war in Iraq. It was over, done, finito. If he wants to go back in there, that’s a new war and he needs fresh use-of-force authorization from Congress.
The president said last night that “ISIS is not Islamic.” But the first “I” in “ISIS” stands for “Islamic.” What about that is remotely difficult to understand?
Then there’s Sura 9:5, in which Allah through his chosen prophet commands his followers:
“Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere for them.”
There is not a lot of ambiguity there either.
In other words, the Islamic State hasn’t hijacked Islam. The Islamic State is Islam – pure, unfiltered, undiluted. It is not Islam distorted, it is Islam personified.
Obama went on to say, “No religion condones the killing of innocents.” What he’s not telling you is that in Islam, if you don’t believe in Allah, you’re not innocent. You’re an infidel who deserves to have his throat cut. There are no innocent infidels, so Muslim fundamentalists feel perfectly justified in killing us all.
So how should we respond to what ISIS is doing in Iraq and Syria?
First, pull all American personnel out of Syria and Iraq for their own safety. And let’s get as many Christians out of there as we can and grant them asylum here in the U.S. No Christian is safe in Iraq or Syria (or any Muslim land, for that matter) at this point.
Second, let’s just stay out of Iraq and Syria altogether. We have spilled American blood and spent billions of American dollars to stabilize that region and give Muslims a shot at nation-building. It did not work. It would be fruitless to try again.
I actually agree with the president when he says ISIS is something the folks in that region are going to have to deal with. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar have all the incentive they need to go after the Islamic State because ISIS is after their oil fields.
The reason the king of Saudi Arabia is appealing to us for help is that he doesn’t want to spend his own treasure and blood to protect his oil interests; he wants us to spend ours. No thanks. This mess is in their front yard, and they should form their own coalition and clean it up themselves. We have plenty of oil here in the US to be completely energy self-sufficient and end our reliance on Middle Eastern oil. We just need to cut our oil companies loose to go get it.
Third, we only attack the Islamic State if they attack Israel or us. Then we hit them with everything we’ve got, and do exactly as Ted Cruz suggested, “bomb them back to the Stone Age.” The red line over there is the border of Israel. The red line over here is our own border. If the Islamic State crosses either one, the threat should be neutralized swiftly, decisively and overwhelmingly. Because force is the only language the Islamic State understands.
