U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has released in USA Today a manifesto that details his view on U.S. foreign policy and ISIS, the Islamic terrorist state that has
gobbled up large chunks of Iraq and Syria, in the process creating the “orphans
and widows” President Barack Obama hopes to house, among other places and with
the concurrence of Governor Dannel Malloy, in Connecticut.
Following the ISIS inspired
attack in Paris, France, jihadi websites proclaimed that the warriors of
Muhammed, blessings be upon him, would similarly attack the United States. “The
American blood is best,” some boasted, “and we will taste it soon.” Islamic scholars in India strongly condemned the attack.
Mr. Murphy pledges
to “do everything and anything to prevent an attack on U.S. soil,” with one
notable exception. Under no conditions will he support the introduction of U.S.
boots on the ground to engage ISIS. Mr. Murphy supports “airstrikes against
ISIL [ISIS], tighter immigration laws to keep terrorists out, and a political
process to build inclusive Sunni-Shiite political systems.”
Precision air strikes,
Mr. Murphy surely knows, are less effective and more dangerous to innocent
civilians without some U.S. boots on the ground to gather information and guide
the strikes. Some boots on the ground would also be necessary to train the
indigenous forces that Mr. Murphy feels would be capable of defeating ISIS.
This has been tried once and found wanting. In the past few years, the Obama
administration has spent $26 billion, according to Mother Jones,
not a neocon production, training troops that quickly disappeared into the
terrorist woodwork once the JV ISIS team began rolling in northern Iraq, accumulating very expensive U.S. supplied munitions in their lightening quick putsch.
It has been
impossible, for roughly 1,383 years, to fashion a “political process to build
inclusive Sunni-Shiite political systems…” It takes a wildly fanciful
imagination to picture what such a successful process might look like. Sunni
and Shia have been at sword points since their theo/political split shortly
after the Islamic prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, died in the
year 632. These troublesome differences are hard wired into the understanding
of Islam throughout the world. Bringing them together in some fictional
“Sunni-Shiite political system” is far less possible than destroying ISIS
through the introduction of U.S. boots on the ground.
Even President Obama
recognizes the necessity of American military participation in Iraq. Following
the ouster of Saddam Hussein and his Sunni minority in Iraq, the ruling Shiite majority politically isolated the Sunnis and, when some means could not be
found to bring together what Muhammed, blessings be upon him, and time had torn
asunder, President Barack Obama shrugged his shoulders and, true to his campaign
pledge, walked off the Iraq stage, opening the door to ISIS, which proceeded to
ravage northern Iraq, beheading Christians, burning their churches and forcing abducted
female children to marry valiant Islamic warriors, some of whom recently
arranged the murders of 132 Parisian concert attendees.
In building an “inclusive
Sunni-Shiite political system,” it may be important to consider the Sunni/Shia
distribution throughout the world. The preponderance of the world’s Muslims,
85-90 percent, is Sunni; about 10-15 percent is Shia. Sunnis represent a
majority in Southeast and South Asia, China, Africa, and most
of the Arab world, while Shiites dominate in Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan,
and Bahrain; they represent a politically significant minority in Lebanon
as well.
Despite a century
and a half of plunder and conquest on the part of militant Islam, Mr. Murphy,
who has made several trips to the Middle East, asks us to believe that “it was
the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq that provided the primary impetus for
the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
ISIS may be the only Islamic terrorist group in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, South America and Asia that traces its origin to the American intervention in Iraq. The Abu Nidal Organization and Hamas in Palestine, the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines, Gama’a al-Islamiyah in Egypt, the Harakat
ul-Mujahidin and Lashkar-e Tayyiba in Pakistan, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant, a worldwide group, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Kata'ib
Hezbollah in Iraq, al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, Ansar Dine in Mali, Boko
Haram in Nigeria, Ansar al-Shari'a in Darnah in Lybia, Al-Nusra Front in Syria,
and many other Islamic inspired terrorist groups huddle around a bonfire that was lit by Muhammad, blessings be upon him, long
before the idea of the United States was forged in the fiery brain of Samuel Adams,
who like Muhammad, blessings be upon him, believed in the efficacy of boots on the ground to preserve liberty and justice.
It was Samuel’s
cousin, John Adams, who said that the United States was the friend of democracy
everywhere, but the custodian only of its own,” a useful maxim to bear in mind.
But Paris, Mr. Murphy should understand, is very close to our hearts. Europe, besieged
on all sides by the widows and orphans of Mr. Obama’s failed policy in the
Middle East, has mothered our liberties, and ISIS must be destroyed.
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