ETCETERA
NIGHTCAP
We Need To Go On The Offense
By Harry Kirsbaum
think we're all sick of seeing behead-
ing and burning videos. We're sick of
the braggadocio and the gleefulness
that the ISIS butchers show when they
wield a knife or pull a trigger or strike a
match.
It seems every day we are assaulted
with another video more brutal than the
last. Every morning we wake up dread-
ing turning on the television to find out
what horrors took place while we slept.
In the past few weeks, much has
been discussed about President Barack
Obama's reluctance to use the term "Is-
lamic"when identifying terrorist groups
in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Obama was holding meetings a
couple of weeks ago with representa-
tives of 60 nations in Washington, D.C.
"Our war is not against Islam," he said.
Of course — everyone in the room
knew that. But they also knew that they
weren't attending this summit because
of a rampaging gang of Jehovah's Wit-
nesses.
Every terrorist group Obama men-
tioned is rooted in a perverted form of
I
Islam, and to completely avoid the term
"Islamic"when referring to them is as
awkward as using it all the time.
And all those nations agree that
something needs to be done about this
threat. Hell, even Al Qaida would agree.
The root causes of extremism are
found in "the anger that festers when
people feel that injustice and corruption
leave them with no chance of improving
their lives,"Obama wrote in a recent Los
Angeles Times op-ed."The world has to
offer today's youth something better'
Of course, there is a problem when
3,500 people living in Europe and North
America are swayed by social media
to join ISIS in Syria. But that problem is
rooted in the tens of thousands of ISIS
fighters who are already killing, behead-
ing, burning, producing recruitment
videos and raising their black pirate flag
in Syria, Libya and Iraq.
But enough about semantics.
Speaking as just another American
who is watching pure evil on the news
every day, call it Islamic terrorism,
Islamist terrorism or terroristic extrem-
ist extremism — what are we going to
do about it? We can't wait much longer,
and we can't just fly sorties, either. We
need to go on offense.
ISIS is not a group that asks permis-
sion to set up shop in a country like Al
Qaida in Yemen. It conquers its own
territory and raises its own pirate flag
to claim it as part of the next Islamic
caliphate.
ISIS does not fight from the shadows
like the terrorists did in Afghanistan
and Iraq with IEDs. It wants territory. It
proudly wears uniforms. It's right up our
alley.
So far, ISIS has overpowered most
military forces it has engaged. But
there's a difference between engaging
American-trained-and-supplied Iraqi
troops, and taking the fight to Ameri-
can troops and their well-trained allies
themselves. In part, I'm speaking about
the 350 Marines at the Ain al-Asad air-
base, west of Baghdad, who are training
Iraqi soldiers how not to act like Chip-
pendale dancers.
ISIS assaulted the base rather unsuc-
cessfully a few weeks ago, and I can only
imagine what might happen to these
"violent extremists" if they get within
range of our highly trained Marines who
can unleash a special kind of hellfire if
given the opportunity.
Some can say they are trying to coax
us into a war, and we shouldn't take the
bait. But this is a different animal.
If they truly have the means to kill
people and harvest their organs for sale
in other countries to support their cause
like the Iraqi government claims, then
ISIS is more comfortably entrenched
than we all thought.
The danger is there, and it's just grow-
ing to intolerable proportions. We need
to get a Gulf War coalition in the form
of Bush 41, or as the last resort, take the
fight to them ourselves.
Although some may call this a Whack-
A-Mole solution that really doesn't solve
the"root cause" of the problem, it's kind
of hard to gain territory, film death-porn
videos or harvest organs when you're
taking a big life-ending chance by stick-
ing your head out of your hole.
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