Path to Defeat

Fourteen years after Pearl Harbor, World War II had been over for a decade.  The Germans (the western half of them) and the Japanese were no longer a threat.  Both were on a path to becoming powerful economies and much freer countries.

Fourteen years after 9/11, the War on Terror is still going though it is mostly a loss.  The costly victory of Iraq has been flushed away and now an Islamic State has arisen.  The United States has approved a treaty that isn't a treaty with Iran that will remove sanctions and free billions of dollars in assets to a leading state-sponsor of terrorism.  Does no one remember how well a far less generous nuclear deal with North Korea turned out?  Europe is being flooded with waves of Muslim refugees who, strangely enough, are 70% adult males.  Isn't it usually the women and children who flee while the men stay and fight?  Millions of 'refugees' will soon be scattered throughout Europe and a percentage of those will prove to be ISIS agents out to cause mayhem.  Heck, ISIS announced exactly that intention back in February.  Our Middle Eastern allies, such as they were, in Iraq, Yemen, and Egypt have toppled or are in crisis.  Libya, thanks to our intervention, went from a nominally stable dictatorship that was no longer a threat to a failed state crawling with Islamic fighters allied with al Qaeda.  In short, the situation is much worse than when the war began.  But Osama bin Laden is dead!  Our current strategy is an obvious loser.  It was weak under Bush and positively catastrophic under Obama.

 

During the Civil War, it took Lincoln years to find the right general.  On paper, Grant didn't look as good as many of the generals who had preceded him but he proved to be the right man for the time.  In the Cold War, it wasn't until Reagan that the right strategy was found against the Soviets.  Once implemented, the Evil Empire collapsed surprisingly quickly.  Obama may think the War on Terror has come to an end but the other side has not surrendered.  They are ascendant.  Will the next president be the right one to turn this war around?  Not if she's Hillary.  Hillary is one of the architects of the Libyan disaster.  I've not heard any nominee correctly identify our enemy.  Bush refused to do so and Obama had the Apology Tour during his first year in office.

 

Islam has been at war with the West for more than a thousand years.  During that period, it has had its high points and low points but it never lost sight of the goal: subjugation of the world under an Islamic Caliphate.  Thanks to the fecklessness of the West and a new strategy of stateless soldiers, Islam is making inroads.  Everything we have done since 9/11 has had no impact on the enemy's resolve.

 

I fear it will require a radioactive smoking crater in place of a US city for us to finally take the enemy at their word and fight to victory.