Common Sense - ISIS, Caliphate, & the New Normal

 ISIS Terrorism Chart & Map ripped from the New York Times  

In the last year we've seen: the ISIS aligned Boko Haram massacre in Nigeria in December; an ISIS inspired Paris Charlie Hebdo massacre in January; the ISIS pledged Al Shabab Kenyan school massacre in April; another ISIS massacre of civilians in Kobani in July; the ISIS October bombing in Ankara.  Within the last 30 days we've seen: the ISIS credited downing of a Russian airliner killing all aboard; an  ISIS bombing in Beirut; the ISIS enabled Paris massacre; American True Believers pledged to ISIS precipitating a massacre in San Bernardino. All this in addition to the uncounted beheadings, crucifixions, slavery, rapes and other routine horrors that are a daily reality within the ISIS controlled Caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

In his comments at a press conference after the most recent Paris massacre President Obama - "vowed not to "relent" against ISIS, saying Sunday that the world will not accept attacks on civilians in places like Paris as the "new normal."

On Sunday, December 6th, in the wake of the San Bernardino killings, President Obama spoke from the Oval Office about the administration strategy to deal with ISIS related terror. In contrast to earlier, carefully crafted language about degrading and containing ISIS/ISIL, he upped the ante saying "We will destroy ISIL" Immediately after making that firm declaration, he qualified it by saying what we would not do:

"We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria.... The strategy that we are using now -- air strikes, special forces, and working with local forces who are fighting to regain control of their own country -- that is how we'll achieve a more sustainable victory, and it won't require us sending a new generation of Americans overseas to fight and die for another decade on foreign soil."

Let's just accept the President's rhetoric at face value and play this out. Let's even go along with his odd assertion that we should implement additional regulation on guns and ammo to thwart terror, despite the fact that the regulations he advocates would have done absolutely nothing to prevent nor limit in any way what we saw in San Bernardino (or any other terrorist attack in the United States).

Here is the problem - despite the President's platitudes, until and unless we destroy the ISIS "Caliphate" the terrorism we have seen in the last year will absolutely continue to be the "new normal" indefinitely into the future.

We are engaged in a very significant counterterrorism operation with ISIL. We have always been engaged in a very significant counterterrorism operation with ISIL.

"We at war with ISIL... In the same way that we are at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates around the globe...”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest

"At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia..."  George Orwell 1984

"First, we will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these terrorists. Working with the Iraqi government, we will expand our efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions so that we’re hitting ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on offense. Moreover, I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria as well as Iraq."  - President Barack Obama - 9/10/14

So now we are at war with the ISIL Sunni terrorist rebels in Syria and Iraq in support of the Post-Maliki Iraq government (after we helped pressure him out),  which aligns us with the Shia Iranian regime, Syria's Assad regime, and Russia.

"In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge, which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened..."  - George Orwell 1984

"... after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope. But I'm confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out."  - President Barack Obama - 9/10/2013

And one year ago, we were aligned with Sunni Syrian rebel in opposition to the Shia Assad regime and their allies Iran and Russia.

Defense Secretaries Past, Present and Future - Robert Gates at the MPSF Speaker Series

During Steve Croft's softball 60 Minutes interview with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the President reflected on advice he received from Robert Gates shortly after coming into office:

"I remember Bob Gates, you know, first thing he said to me, I think maybe first week or two that I was there and we were meeting in the Oval Office and he, obviously, been through seven presidents or something. And he says, "Mr. President, one thing I can guarantee you is that at this moment, somewhere, somehow, somebody in the federal government is screwing up."

I expect that Gates was cautioning the new President about the inevitable surprises and disappointments of governance as opposed to how the President used the anecdote in this interview. To whit -  the President used it as a fig leaf to dismissively hide and deflect attention from the politically convenient disinformation campaign orchestrated in his administration and delivered via Susan Rice a few days after the attack on our embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Might have been a good opportunity for a follow up question from Steve Croft as opposed to simply accepting the popular "mistakes were made" non-answer. But I digress...

Regardless how his advice was misused, one of President Obama's best decisions was to keep Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense and avail himself of the benefit of his experience.

Gates has an extraordinary history of public service, including leadership roles in the Air Force, CIA, and serving in the administration of seven presidents. I had an opportunity to hear the former secretary of defense Robert Gates speak in Marin at the invitation of the MPSF Speaker Series. I've been to a few of these events over the last couple of years and always come away impressed (although some more than others).  He spoke for about an hour and then responded to questions gathered from audience.

I thought some of his more interesting comments came during Q&A and I'd share them here.  I do not have the benefit of a recording or transcript - so the comments I am attributing to Gates are from memory and paraphrased.  In no particular order a  few of his thoughts on our presidents, the presidency and challenges that face us:

Live Blogging the Live Bloggers Final Presidential DebateBinder Full of Bloggers Edition

UPDATED: 23-Oct-2012

Welcome to the The Final Presidential Debate of the 2012 Election and the latest edition in the continuing saga of "Live Blogging the Live Bloggers blogging the Debates!"   The Dividist fondly recalls when he conceived this series to cover the first 2008 Republican debate, lo those many years ago, and first asked the question:

"There are plenty of live-bloggers covering the debate tonight, but who is covering the live bloggers? The Dividist rushes in where other, more sensible bloggers, fear to tread."

Tonight's debate is scheduled for 8:00 PM EST at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. But that is not important. This will be the last debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney before the election two weeks from now. That is not important. It is going to be focused on foreign policy. Not important.  The second debate went to President Obama on points. The first debate was forfeited to Romney when the President failed to show up due to a scheduling conflict.  The VP debate happened in there somewhere and Joe Biden smiled a lot. Tonight is the rubber match. None of that is important. The debate will be competing directly with the 7th game of the National League Championship Game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals (Currently no score after one inning).  Not important.

What is important is that my Chicago Bears are playing the Detroit Lions on Monday Night Football during the debate.  So... in aggregate we can expect no one in California, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin, nor any real NFL or MLB fans will be watching this debate.What is wrong with these people? Can they not read a football schedule?   Do they not want people to watch these debates?  Wait... I wonder...

FULL DISCLOSURE:  The Dividist will be pretending to watch the debate, will try to live blog the live bloggers blogging the debate, but will really be watching the Bears game. So this is likely to be more lame than usual. Proceed at your own risk.

As always, we select a variety of bloggers from across the political spectrum,and attempt to live blog their live blog efforts. I don't know who we will include, in the past we've used used  Daily Kos from the left, VodkaPundit or HotAir from the right, look to either Reason or Cato for a libertarian point of view and the Moderate Voice, and/or Donklephant as a centrist blog.  Andrew Sullivan is  a reliable live-blogger, as is Chris Cillizza's Fix. Since this one has a foreign policy focus, we'll also monitor the Economist.

If past is prologue we will likely guess wrong about which blogs to monitor and will be scrambling once things get started. Refresh your browsers for latest content once the debate is underway. Because of the derivative nature of this enterprise, I do run quite a bit behind the actual debate. Just setting expectations to lower the bar.

The Dividist has not bothered to look up the polling on the expectations game.   The President has all the experience in Foreign policy in this debate. He killed Osama Bin-Laden. The expectation is there is no way he can lose a foreign policy debate. So he probably will.

Da Bears & Da Candidates have taken the field ...