ISIS released a video yesterday showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burned alive. They also have continued their brutal campaign of murdering gay people through stoning and defenestration. Allahu-frackin’-Akhbar.
The Jordanian Government responded quickly and decisively, announcing the immediate execution of ISIS prisoners in its custody. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine Emperor Golfpants responding with such decisive action. Indeed, I expect the State Department will soon be denouncing Jordan for ‘escalating tensions’ or some such nonsense.
It is important to remember that the ISIS savages who are burning people alive, beheading infidels, selling women into sex slavery, and brutally murdering gays are the ideological brethren of the terrorists our Emperor is hellbent on releasing from GITMO.
It is a puzzlement that the civilized world continues to allow ISIS to exist at all.
But instead, the progressive left is pretty much by deed, if not necessarily in word, in ISIS’s corner. Leftist website Gawker is openly sympathetic to the terrorists on this one. Human Rights Watch is, likewise, is discouraging Jordan (and other nations) from being too tough on ISIS because that might make them even meaner. (Leftist logic at its finest.) The shrill, aging, leather-faced attention whores of Code Pink are also siding with the terrorists (as usual). And the libertarian whackjobs at Reason have shown that, on this one, they have no disagreement with the far left whackjobs.
To Obama and the American Left, the only Dangerous Extremists are people who want to balance the budget and restrain the President to the Constitutional limits of his authority.
So if we can’t repsond with force to people who murder children for watching soccer, hurl gay men off buildings, enslave people and behead people like its nothing, what are we supposed to do? Send them a cake? Flowers? Tell them to stop being so naughty?
These people are crazy-they have no morals and no sense of where the moral lines should be. They are thugs and murderers and the left like they were with Hitler wants to bury it’s head in the sand and pretend like they really aren’t that mean.
Pretty sure nobody in the HS is hurling gay men off buildings while yelling “Jesus Loves you!” But if you polled gays in the US the Christians would be viewed as more of a threat than the Muslims.
The left is just screwed up.
there is a political alliance between islam and Marxism. they have the same objective; world-wide conquest. the only difference between them is one has a god.
I found Reason a few months back and enjoyed it. But then Sheldon dropped that little present, and I stopped reading it. Mind you, Sheldon go savaged in the comments section, but still. Not a group I want to associate with.
In my experience, libertarianism is political hipsterism. Libertarians can usually be called something else- “left libertarians” are just progressives who may be a bit least keen on government intervention. “Right libertarians” are just small-government conservatives and constitutionalists. “Pure libertarians” are anarchists, pure and simple.
The cardinal sins of libertarianism are, in my book: opposition to overseas military action, belief that borders should be erased, and a general opposition to limits on freedoms, even if they are necessary limits. Libertarians go so far beyond the pale that even the Founding Fathers would think they are insane.
We have screwed ourselves by using the gobbledygook that we call “asymmetric warfare” as a requirement to handicap our own troops.
Clearly, ISIS is not a civilian friendly outfit. Also, they don’t do their war and mayhem by the Geneva Protocols. Therefore, the war on ISIS must be waged by those who can read the population and ferret out the radicals. It calls for a Tito or Franco, not the UN or Obama.
The House of Saud is now led by a place-marker. Al-Sisi has reestablished military rule in Egypt. Bashar Hafez al-Assad is using ISIS against his civil war enemies and expending no particular effort on the people of Syria. The US destroyed the established order in Libya and it has sunk back to being the land of the crazies. Iraq is the next to fall to ISIS. Iran ….
This is a regional test of will power among oppressors. Nothing resembling western order will come out of it. We have armed and trained the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians and left a lot of stuff in Iraq which has been snatched up by ISIS. The Russians, North Korea, the Belgians and others are pouring arms to various factions throughout the region. ISIS is our existential threat and we should actively support those dedicated to wiping it out. But this war has no front and the Afghanistan method of protecting the perimeters of designated areas makes us sitting ducks. It is time for forces of the powers in the Middle East to dirty their own hands and sort this thing out according to their rules, not ours.
I am pretty much libertarian on all issues, but I understand that even if the U.S. had never set foot in the Persian Gulf these Islamic fundamentalist serial killers would still have their sites set on destroying America.
Libertarians seem to be opposed to all groups that embrace discipline and obedience. They worship the individual above all else- any placement of the Many before the One, even if it is voluntary, is viewed with contempt. And the thought of the government initiating force under any circumstance is abhorrent to them, even if they claim, “Well of course the government can declare war.”
Yet here’s the rub: if a right is not safeguarded by the threat of force, how can it be real in any practical, appreciable way? I can say that I have a right to life, but unless I have the means and ability to defend my life from an aggressor, or somebody else does, my “right to life” is immaterial before the aggressor’s will and ability to end it.
So, in the end, we haven’t really grown beyond “Might makes right.” Well, not in the original sense. But it could be said that “Might makes or breaks rights.” Libertarians may talk about how great diplomacy is, and how we can solve all problems without force, but the fact of the matter is, so long as there are those who deny the existence of inalienable rights, those inalienable rights must be asserted through the bullet.
King Abdullah II apparently is going to “go medieval” on ISIL and aL-Quida, releasing his Bedouin sadaukar.
Reason is deceptive because it’s Left leaning Libertarian, not right. I was also deceived when I first found it a couple of years ago.
We should have left & still should return a residual but effective troop size of at least 10,000 in Iraq to deal with the land pirate heathens ISIS. No more, no less.
We still have Iran to bomb before it gets nukes. That must be the target. It can’t be ignored any longer. As it was by Bush & now Hussein Obama.
@ Marc: Like I said, there were at least three perfectly good justifications for war with Iraq. We could’ve declared war for humanitarian reasons to help the Kurds. We could’ve declared war because of them violating the cease-fire agreement on a nearly-daily basis. We could’ve declared war on them for violating other countries’ sovereignty. When the “undiscovered” nukes failed to materialize, our casus belli fell apart.
Sean, even Saddam’s generals thought he had a stockpile of chemical weapons. As our troops were approaching Baghdad, the Iraqi generals were demanding the weapons be released for use.
And read the fricking declaration if war! All those reasons were in it!
@ Sean, Objectively, the facts are that Saddam was purposely bluffing, as arabs often do, alluding to possession of a nuke program allowing people to think he had a program. It knew that Iran had an evolving & viable nuke program. The fact that Saddam, even to the last second didn’t come clean with his bluff points directly as to why we invaded Iraq. This is all documented now. However; it’s completely ignored nowadays as people are sick of it all.
In hindsight we rightfully see the Iraq War as a mistake. Countries make mistakes. But once someone is committed to a path it needs to be followed through.
Though the reason for war fell apart, this was irrelevant at the time. Though it would have been a good reason to pull out after installation of an obedient ruler.
I’m just conversing on all this. I didn’t originally address the Iraq War at all. Only briefly alluding to a failure to leave troops behind as we’ve done so many times before, to keep the peace.
I will say; if I had been in charge when it was clear that there was no nuclear program & that what was left of Saddam’s chem stockpile was remnant & rusty – I would have closed the nation building down instantly & pulled out leaving the residual force & a puppet potentate.
>We still have Iran to bomb before it gets nukes. That must be the target. It can’t be ignored any longer. As it was by Bush & now Hussein Obama.<
Yeah, let's bomb a country with a population that has the potential to make it a secular republic as opposed to a theocracy. Nice plan. *eye roll*
I actually agree with Helio.
Tommy the god of leftists is equalism.
Saddam did have chemical weapons given to him by the US to use on Iran, he used them on moslems in his own country to make them behave. Moslems have always been savages but now quoting Churchill about moslem savagery will get you thrown in a UK jail, while moslems gang raping indigenous white girls get community service.
The father of the murdered pilot has called for the annihilation of ISIS. I like the word “extermination” but I agree with him.
The west doesn’t have the will or the stomach to take on the job so I like Helio’s point: let the ME sorted out by their rules. The west (including the US) is utterly unable to win a war anymore.
I liked Jordan’s initial response: promptly hanging a couple of ISIS goons. I worry, though, that ISIS may be trying to lure Jordan into a destabilizing war in Syria (I think Dr. K made that point).
Of course, we’ll leave our borders wide open and openly dis the one democratic nation in the entire region.
I hope King Abdullah kicks the shit out of these assholes in a way that hurts them and demoralizes them – something that we can never seem to do because we play by rules. He needs to demonstrate wrath.
(useless trivia: King Abdullah II was on Star Trek as a background character with no speaking roles)
Sean L: I think the libertarian assumption is that “unfettered free-market forces” would always eventually win in a computer simulation, if the simulation runs long enough.
The problem, of course, is that in the time it takes for “natural market forces” to “self-correct” temporary failures (like, say, North Korea!) people can die of starvation or easily-preventable diseases; kids can grow to be adults without learning to read; religious terrorists can cross borders and take over a nation, etc.
@ Throbert McGee: I agree that the free market is the best solution to our problems- compared to all the other ones. But it’s a question of how long it would take to correct a problem, and many libertarians that I’ve had interactions with seem almost blindly faithful in the free market to solve all problems- eventually.
What I’m saying is, the market is good, and ought to be left alone to operate as much as possible. But there are circumstances in which the market cannot readjust the system quickly enough to keep people from getting hurt- and sometimes, in rare cases, the market’s solution may even result in people getting hurt. Humans being humans, we are very good at hurting each other. And when individuals alone aren’t strong enough to protect themselves and others from the accidents of life and the irregularities of the system, there needs to be some body able to step in.
That, I think, is how the Founders envisioned the government: not as the source of all good for all, but as a line of last defense to help the citizenry when things get out of hand. That, first and foremost, is the duty of the government as set out in the Constitution: enforce the laws, protect the people, and not insert itself into the daily lives of the people. That doesn’t strike me as terribly intrusive, but some libertarians seem to think even that to be too much.
“It is a puzzlement that the civilized world continues to allow ISIS to exist at all.”
A ‘civilized world’ presupposes that the leadership consists of rational adults. When the leadership is developmentally-arrested teenagers, well. . .
Sean L, I suppose it’s been fun for you, knocking down your Libertarian straw men, but the time has come to end this “straw man” fallacy. You know, the same argument that Progressive leaders and certain members of the Media use against conservatives and Republicans. Pick the most extreme view and portray it as the view of everybody in that particular group, discounting the fact that everybody is an individual. Shame on you.
A ‘civilized world’ would have stepped-in much-earlier as Yugoslavia started to disembowel itself.
A ‘civilized world’ would have placed Iraq under-Mandate for a generation-or-two, with a Satrap-Proconsul installed with plenipotentiary-powers to Rule, not referee.
A ‘civilized world’ would declare al’Qaeda, ISIL, and their ilk as “outlaws” beyond the protection of the Law, …with lots of Summary Hangings just as with 17th and 18th-century pirates who were declared the “Enemies of All Men”, and treated as-such.
“International Law” has made base-lawlessness by national and self-appointed quasi-national groups all the more easier; “Can’t interfere, National Sovereignty you-know“, (/plummy Brussels Eurocrat-voice) “…will of the People”, (/jaded Leftie Community Organizer)
@ Juan: Okay, so do you or do you not agree that many libertarians 1) Hate, or are at least antipathetic towards the military and service-members 2) Believe that trying to secure the border is wrong, and illegals should not be punished for breaking federal law 3) Favor the legalization of polygamy, if not incest 4) View police as inherently evil?
These are positions espoused by libertarians writing for high-profile libertarian sites and publications. Pardon me, but I have no interest in associating with people who count among their ranks seditious whack-jobs who wish Chris Kyle had been killed by al-Qaeda, and compare him to Adam Lanza.
Sean L. Please look up “Straw Man Fallacy”.