ISIS and its attempts to provoke

The rest of the world has looked on in horror as these murderous bastards have beheaded innocents, murdered townsful of people, and kidnapped more. It’s pretty clear that it has a goal in mind: to draw its enemies into a war on turf of its choosing. It has escalated its atrocities in an unending effort to infuriate citizens around the world and persuade them to clamor for their governments to make them stop. These efforts are aided by the press, which covers each cruelty thoroughly and feeds it to us on our evening news.

In some places it’s working. Sadly, one of those places is the US Congress. Take Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for example. On “Face the Nation” a few Sundays ago he said this:

“Foreign fighters flow with passports that can penetrate the United States or our Western allies, so you’ll see Paris on steroids here pretty soon if you don’t disrupt this organization and take the fight to them on the ground.”

[snip]

“You’re going to need boots on the ground, not only in Iraq, but Syria. And there’s got to be some regional force formed with an American component somewhere around 10,000 American soldiers to ally with Arab armies in the region and go in to Syria and take back territory from ISIL. That’s what will make it stop.”

Senator John McCain is equally bellicose. Back on February 19 he said:

“I’m talking about 10,000 in Iraq,” said McCain. “Then we need to say that our objective is to eliminate Bashar Assad as well as ISIS in Syria, and we recruit other Arab nations with Americans, but not too many, to fight against ISIS and Bashar Assad in Syria and coordinate those movements with air power guided by air controls.”

In my view these Senators and their colleagues who agree with them are being sucked in by ISIS/ISIL. I’m not sure whether they really see that outfit as an existential threat — if they do they’re fools. ISIS has roughly 20,000 fighters. No matter how well funded they’re not likely to defeat the US Army, the best and most elaborately-equipped army in the world, one which numbers over 550,000, if it really came to that. If they just feel that someone has to do something to stop the atrocities, I can agree that that’s a laudable goal, but I’m not convinced landing an expeditionary force in Iraq or Syria to take them on is the best way to achieve it. Also, Senator McCain’s idea of “eliminating” Syria’s Bashar Assad might not sit well with other potential allies in the region; is he suggesting that America should just go into countries willy-nilly and get rid of their leaders if those leaders aren’t performing up to John McCain’s exacting standards of behavior? That’s no way to win friends and allies, Senator.