Now that the dust is beginning to settle on the worst attack on French soil since World War II; now that we know who is responsible for it; now that we’re beginning to collect some of the worst responses post-tragedy, I think maybe now would be a good time to talk about ISIS.
First off, fuck ISIS and their off-brand warped view of Islam. They are the vomit of of an already perverted extremist ideology that has no basis on the faith that they claim to represent. Like the 3rd. Reich, they are the greatest embodiment of evil in our world that our generation has seen.
Growing up in the church like most of us from the area did, I was taught that there is an inherent goodness in people. That at the core of the human soul was some semblance of a conscience that keeps all of us from straight up murdering each other. A sense of rule and order and law and love that exists to gives us our human identity. That no matter how terrible someone is, there is always hope that they may repent or at least feel some sense of remorse. The actions of ISIS and their associates have done just about everything to tell me that maybe..maybe I’m wrong. That maybe some people are simply incapable of accessing this part of their being or they have the strong will to overpower that conscience and mute it permanently. It is because of this that ISIS is, simply, a great evil that cannot and will never end with words or diplomacy. It’s an evil that, for the good of humanity, needs to be eradicated; physically removed from our world. ISIS is the cancer to our human society; we cannot pray ISIS away.
Simply: ISIS does not deserve peace.
In the cloud of uncertainty that surrounds the western world post-Paris attacks, what has become clear is that President Obama was wrong in declaring that ISIS was contained, literally, 1 day before the Paris attacks; they are clearly not. ISIS was coordinated and organized enough to have sent out only 7 persons to account for over 130 deaths in a country that was over 2,500 miles away from their stronghold in Syria. Although an attack on the US is highly unlikely, we now know that ISIS certainly has the capabilities to reek havoc on our allies in Europe. The French military understand this so, unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for France to answer back with a series of air strikes earlier today in ISIS’ claimed capital of Raqqa, Syria.
But where does that leave the United States? Are we going to play the big brother role we’ve always played and step into the fight officially? Should we? Do we want to drag ourselves into another 10-year war with, yet, another middle eastern sect that believes we are their enemy?
Last night during the 2nd Democratic Debate, Hilary Clinton, who for all intents and purposes will most likely be elected into office next November, said the obvious things that need be said about ISIS (They “must be destroyed.”) but added that “we will support those who will take the fight to ISIS,” which can be translated roughly as ‘the US is not going to take point on this, so don’t expect that to change anytime soon.’
At the Bench Wire, we are politically neutral. We don’t pander to either side of the coin. Republicans and Democrats have equally reasonably sound ideas and equivocally terrible ones. With that being said, Democrats: ISIS isn’t fucking around anymore. There’s a time for peace and there’s a time for war and this is fucking it. This isn’t “Should we? Shouldn’t we?” pussy-footing we did with Iraq to where we couldn’t pin down hard evidence of WMDs. This threat is incredibly real and incredibly dangerous. We need to stop believing that the military forces around the world are going to get it done, because so far, no one has. We command the strongest military this world has ever seen with enough firepower to destroy entire civilizations in a matter of minutes. We can not sit on the sidelines as we did prior to World War II and be reactive at the potential cost of innocent American lives or the lives of our allies for that matter.
It’s time for ISIS to die and the whole world knows that the United States is the only military who can kill it.
So what the fuck are we waiting for?
