RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
Instapundit and Allahpundit write today about The Fraud’s statement that he does not have a complete strategy against ISIS. The comments in both posts are informative and insightful. Mine, with edits here, follow, two of them, at Instapundit:
First:
Strategy against ISIS: hand successor admin the worst possible conditions.
Strategy for ISIS: invite to join the UN.
The point is, no grand national strategic goal (and here) (and here), of which address to ISIS would be just a part, and not even a major part. I’m sure the perception of awash in drugs is accurate. Also awash in fear, elemental lack of intellectual power (fried by years of drugs and promiscuity) and demoralizing realization that they cannot fundamentally transform the nation. No one can.
There is one constant for them, however, as they state repeatedly: there is no military solution to the problems in the ME. On that sword they gladly will fall, and with sharp irony, because that very sword would precede the only solution — occupation (and here) — to the problems of the ME. Poor dumb bastards. Just not intelligent at all.
There is another swirl of paint in the picture: 25-year-old female staffers fresh out of Princeton, etc., wringing reports and proposals dry of facts/phenomena on the ground, producing top-level conclusions/policies (e.g., Harf-ing) in academic style, caveat-ed to nothingness, and referring to plans and events which have no physical/organizational referent and never will.
I get an image of Hitler studying his maps, making policies, announcing plans, ordering divisions and diplomats around to solve problems … but no divisions or diplomats exist to be ordered around while policies decided and plans announced rest on wishes rather than flesh, blood and steel.
One would have to be saturated in drugs, as Hitler was (cocaine and methamphetamine), to not, in such circumstances, run screaming out of the bunker/White House and off a bridge into a river, hopefully, for one, a very high bridge.
Even superannuated George Soros, a type with which humanity ever deals, is anxious (means, narrowing, feeling reality closing in). His class is not trying to do anything now except make a mess because they know both the goals they sought (globalism by personal and class domination) and the plots they laid to accomplish them are as naught. Claiming a horse race as a presidential achievement, yet! Reality closing in indeed.
Second:
I think Allahpundit in the referenced Hot Air post almost gets it, but not quite. The Fraud is playing a semantics game, as usual, working off the difference between degrade and defeat. The Fraud means here that his staff (20-something female Ivies) has a strategy to *degrade* ISIS — what we see, what they call degrading ISIS, what Harf and others have bulleted, but which actually is supplying ISIS materiel, time, space and energy — but not yet a strategy to *defeat* ISIS, namely, a *complete* strategy, which they intend never to have.
Defeating ISIS they have kicked down the road, indefinitely, and then probably only as a maybe, because it would require full-spectrum warfare, which The Fraud and staff absolutely never will do. Degrading ISIS they think or just say they are doing, but, as events show, they are empowering ISIS.
US Armed Forces, of course, could strategize to degrade AND defeat ISIS and get both jobs done in a matter of months. ISIS is not superman. But to make that effort worthwhile — third time a charm? — Iraq and perhaps Syria or parts thereof would have to be put under long-term US/Coalition military occupation, such as in Japan, but much longer, for which I would invite Russian participation and Indian because both should be long-term allies of the US facing the major capable enemy, China. Related.
The strongest response to those who represent words as accomplishments and plans as evidence pushes through their bullet points to facts on the ground, or better yet, to ur-phenomenologies of the geo-political Gestalt in area(s) where facts are percolating. No fact stands still to be measured, nor can any be made to. Nothing is in stasis. Everything is in dynamis. To analysts and observers, phenomenology is more valuable than facticity.
Upon arriving at a TAC, GOA MacArthur would listen to the commander’s briefing, thank him and his staff, and say, “OK! Let’s go to the front.” Once when his G2 remonstrated with him that the front was in motion, unpredictable and dangerous, MacArthur replied, “Thanks, Charlie, but if I can’t see ’em I can’t fight ’em.”
With that in mind, and with respect to the Middle East and Africa — and also, for example, China, Russia, India, Poland and the Intermarium, Japan, South America, Germany and SE Asia — one collects web-based sources of facts and, even more importantly, of phenomenologies. One develops among those sources one’s most dependables. The point is, one drives through the speeches and bulleted briefings, heads to the front and observes what is going on as seen or participated in by those who are there.
Update 1:
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, beget:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for life regret.
Rephrasing by Jerome Graham with apologies to Robert Herrick.
Update 2: Ed Driscoll: [The Fraud] Is The Vehicle Through Which Bin Laden Succeeded.
Update 3: GEN (R) Petraeus: The Islamic State Is Not Our Biggest Problem In Iraq
Update 4: Sultan Knish: De-Islamization Is The Only Way To Defeat ISIS
Update 5: Scott Johnson: John Kerry’s Absolute Idiocy.
Update 6: Pope Francis’ Encyclical Is About More Than Climate Change.
Update 7: Daniel Greenfield: The Left Is Eating Itself.
Glenn Reynolds notes the phenomenon via an incident at Scripps College
Update 8: Charles Hill On The Iran Deal
Update 9: Kurt Schlichter: Liberals Use PC Words Because They’re Convenient To Them. Here Are Words To Use Instead.
Update 10: The Distributional Effects of U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits [spoiler: helps rich, hurts poor]
Update 11: With battle losses/time interval like this, get a grip guys, Russia is no threat at all. They have learned nothing from their leadership/camp hygiene failure in Afghanistan.
Update 12: The American posture would be to ally with Russia in Syria, take out both Assad and ISIS, hold Iran at her border and beat her out of Iraq, help al-Abadi quiet and impartial-ize Iraq, invite India to join their alliance, tell other MENA governments to shut up and get out of the world’s face or else and then the three amigos, Russia, USA and India, pivot to face down humanity’s big and serious enemy; China.
Update 13: Putin’s Syria Play Means West Must Rethink Everything
Update 14: Institute For The Study Of War: ISIS’s Global Strategy: 2015
Update 15: Petraeus, who was just at Bilderberg, has joined lefties to push gun restriction/confiscation. Good grief!
Update 16: What To Do About George Soros
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
