WAR AS A MEANS OF PEACE

I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.

Ulysses S. Grant

 

The new war began with bombing on  Monday evening at 9:26 PM EST.   Twenty sites around Raqqa, the northern Syrian  which serves as the capital for the Islamic State, were hit by air strikes from the U.S., Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates assisted by Qater.

 

These strikes included the use of B-1 Bombers, F-16 and F-18 fighter jets, F-22 stealth Raptors, Predator Drones and Tomahawk Missiles fired from off shore aircraft carriers such as the USS Arleigh Burke.

 

The U.S. alone attacked positions in Eastern Syria held by the al-Qaeda affiliated Khorasan Front from Central Asia who were using these sites as staging areas for terrorist attacks on commercial passenger jets and the American homeland.

 

And so the war began and the question remains what is next?

 

First... almost every military person either serving or retired who has commented on the President's strategy has stated that ground troops are necessary to achieve the degradation and destruction of ISIS.  Therefore how fast will we get to this stage and whose boots will be on the ground?   

 

Second...where are the other Muslim and Arab nations in this fight?  The President and Secretary of State Kerry have done "yeoman's work" in getting Sunnis to fight other Sunnis but some big regional actors are missing.

 

Where is Egypt and where is Turkey which after all is a member of NATO?  Turkey has been non-committal and reluctant to engage ISIS which it has assisted in the past.  Turkey also has the largest standing army in the area but has said that its hesitancy was due to forty Turkish nationals including the Turkish Consul General being held captive in Mosul.  They have now been released and the elusive and slippery Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, continues to dodge. 

 

Egypt is the most important Arab state with 80 million people.  President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is unsure where this coalition is heading.  He does not want to see Persian or Shiite influence increase in the Levant or the Magreb, nor does he wish to see the Muslim Brotherhood become a major regional player more than it is now, since he has outlawed them in Egypt.  Both Egypt and Turkey are bell weathers for how this is going to turn out.

 

Third...where is Iran, Assad and Hezbollah in this mix?  They have been allies since the revolt began and Assad deliberately let ISIS get strong to attack the other less fanatical members of the Syrian Free Army.  Rumors abound that the administration has been secretly negotiating with the Rouani government for assistance with ISIS who hates Shiites as apostates and executes them upon capture.  The Iranians have publicly stated that they turned down a deal with the U.S. which the U.S. said never happened.  The great fear is that there will be a trade off for Iranian ground troops giving Tehran nuclear capability for "peaceful purposes".and thereby leaving Israel and the coalition in the lurch.  Or perhaps this is the Byzantine  chess game that the west must play to rid the planet of a scourge from Hell. 

 

 If the Iranian scenario should be realized then the probability of a Shia-Sunni sectarian war will be ratcheted up immeasurably.  Likewise an Apocalyptic conflict between Israel and Iran and whoever else would be almost inevitable.

 

Assad is yet another dilemma.  The most cohesive army in the field buoyed by Hezbollah and the IRGC or the Pasdaran belongs to him along with chemical WMDs he didn't give up.  Obama gave his government a heads up before the attacks began which made Russia incensed because permission wasn't requested.  The Assad government nevertheless merely said they were for the attacks.  Where this is going no one knows but you can be sure that in part Assad strange  and under reported role as protectors of Christians and other minorities will surface in an attempt by one party or the other to rehabilitate his image.  Watch "TYRANT" next season to see the end result. 

 

Fourth...what will be the ISIS and al-Qaeda responses to this war?   Will we see a flurry of savage beheadings or worse?  Will ISIS follow the example of Hamas as some are already suggesting, and hide amongst the civilian population making "collateral damage" morally unacceptable?   Will we see vicious terrorist attacks both planned and of the "Lone Wolf" type at home and abroad?  Will we see WMD attacks in  our cities?  Or will we see all of the above? 

 

Fifth...what will be the role of Europe and the western democracies in fighting ISIS?  France and Australia seem committed but everyone else is mumbling.  This is an existential threat to them in particular or are they cowed by the non assimilated growing Muslim enclaves  they have allowed to take root in their countries?

 

Sixth...what will the  800 pound bear and dragon  do about this fight?  Both Russia and China have radical Muslim problems of their own but undermining the U.S. in the eyes of the Islamic world or the world in general may be too much of an enticement for them to pass up.  Russia is enlarging its Black Sea Fleet  and China is building a blue water navy to challenge the U.S. in the western Pacific.  Both make bellicose actions towards the U.S. or its allies.  They may think that this will tie down America for a generation and they will fill the vacuum left behind. 

 

In the coming days, weeks and months the answers to these questions will become clear.  We will see if Europe and the rest of the West will step up and shoulder their moral responsibility.  This is the President's "neo-con" moment.  His actions are supported more passionately by conservatives than by progressives.  War, after all is bad for the climate. 

 

This is a man who did not want to return to the region in war but instead in peace but the fate of the civilized world now hangs in the balance. For our part we all have to move past our emotional and ideological battlements and unite as we did during WWII.  This war after all has the same clarity as that one.  ISIS is the stuff of a Stephen King nightmare.  Good has never been more clear and evil has never been more vivid. 

 

The future will be time enough when reasoned criticism will be appropriate.  Now is not that time.  Americans are in harm's way and the nation must rally to them and the only Commander-in-Chief  we all have.

 

ERLANDSSON

 

BROADCAST PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT'S UN SPEECH

 

 

THE WEEK OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY 09/08-09/15 20014

 

Barack Obama ploughs ahead, oblivious to reality and common sense.  He politicizes the Ebola plague and sends 3000 "boots on the ground" to West Africa which is far more than he is sending to Iraq and Syria.  A new crisis every week continues apace! 

 

The Democratic party has become the progressive/ social justice/ socialist party comprised of victim groups towards which they claim, Republicans, Conservatives and the "Tea Party" are constantly at war with.  The politically correct/ multicultural screed they practice separates Americans from one another by race, gender, age, income, language, religion or the lack there of, sexual preference, ethnicity and disability and is their perpetual campaign platform.  Then they lie and make things up.  Democrats are not merely the pied pipers of dissolution but are really the main problem as they march in lockstep and tear the country asunder.

 

Obama and his underlings display an unbelievable lack of cohesion as he , his Secretaries of State and Defense, National Security Advisor, Press Secretary, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and other Generals present dramatically different versions of what the mission is against ISIS.

 

The coalitions he spoke of as if they were a "fait accompli" are simply not!  Instead he pleads with a reluctant  if not duplicitous, undefined group who will wait and see how committed this President is to "degrading and  destroying" the most evil entity since the Nazi Party.

 

Meanwhile Benghazi is once again resurrected from the living death bestowed upon it by the mainstream media.  CIA contractors who fought that night have come out of the shadows with a book entitled "13 Hours at Benghazi" which states categorically that not only was there a stand down order  but there was also a lack of requested air support which together contributed to the death of four Americans. Then  former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Raymond Maxwell disclosed that he witnessed an after hours " scrubbing" party in the basement of the State Department where the mission was to make any and all documents about Benghazi which would be problematic or embarrassing to then Secretary of State Clinton, go away.  This occurred just prior to the review  of the events by the internal Accountability Review Board which it should be recalled never interviewed Mrs. Clinton in arriving at its final conclusion and issuing its final report.  Hillary's Chief of Staff,  Cheryl Mills  and her Deputy Jake Sullivan were present for a time and according to Maxwell, in charge.

 

In the shadow of all of this, House Benghazi Select Committee  Chair Trey Gowdy convened his first meeting.  Gowdy reported that the State Department was most cooperative in turning over documents which they had held back before.  Hillary watch out for that bus bearing down on you!  Pat Caddell who once worked for Jimmy Carter has called Benghazi  the worst cover up in the history of the country.

 

Immigration sits in the wings waiting for the midterm elections to conclude so that a President who will not protect the nation from pandemics, terrorism, drug trafficking, crime and chaos, can further castrate whatever orderly immigration process we have remaining.  To him , it will be just another battle in his war to destroy the U.S. as we know it.  To him the political advantages of turning illegal aliens into registered Democrats will always triumph over the law or what's good for the country.

 

China and Russia are making common cause to hastened America's demise and then dividing the planet into their respective spheres of influence.  Both have overrated economies and need "Lebensraum"  to survive much less prosper.  Thus Putin's threat made privately to the President of the Ukraine that he can be in five Eastern European capitals in two days if he wanted to is a grave one made even more serious by him once again massing four thousand troops at the Ukraine's borders .

 

 Both Putin and President Xi are authoritarian dictators who will continue to provoke the U.S..  Neither would shrink from a preemptive war if they thought they win.  Both will use the Jihad to further their aims.  Both think Obama is a paper tiger.

 

The world churns and new lethal terrorists like the al-Qaeda affiliated  Khorasan Group have entered the battlefield in Syria with new tactics and technologies designed to blow passenger jets out of the sky.  The Jihad has entered a decidedly competitive phase to determine who will ultimately be the Caliph of Terror.  In Australia the government has stopped a plot to randomly behead innocent Australians in broad day light sending a clear signal to lone wolf Jihadis that sometimes the most horrific is also the simplest.  As these new threats make their way to our shores it should be remembered that none of these monsters are in the least bit afraid of Barack Obama.

 

Scotland had it's ill conceived election  to secede from Great Britain  and after the "YES" voters were beaten  by the "NOs"by 11%, David Cameron canceled the moving vans and the world took a deep breath.  Scotland has energized separatist movements in Catalonia, Flanders, Sardinia, Corsica, Northern Italy, Texas, Quebec, the Basque region, Brittany, Normandy,Bavaria, East Frisia, Schleswig-Holstein and Aland (Swedes in Finland, which I support) to name a few.  As the world establish by the allied powers after the Great War begins to unravel, old allegiances reemerge and latent tribalism comes to the surface.  Suddenly the map of the world in 1800 begins to reappear in 2014. 

 

The week closed with rumors  of Rep. Debbie  Wasserman-Schultz, Chair of the Democratic National Committee being targeted for removal by the White House.  Wasserman-Schultz has long been the subject of dismay by Democrats but her linking GOP Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin to wife beating seems to have been the final straw for rich donors.  She has been in many ways the perfect face for the party.  She lies with gusto and abandon, is shrill and over the top and all too often is like chalk  on a blackboard.  I for one will miss her.  What will I do for material if the "Debster" is no more.  She and Pelosi are the last of the maneaters.

 

ERLANDSSON 

 

 

THE 30,500 ARE NOT PRESBYTERIANS!

The day after the President of the United States gave his first wartime speech, 13 years into America's long march against Islamic extremism, his Secretary of State declared we were not at war with ISIS but “What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counter-terrorism operation, and it's going to go on for some period of time".  

This confusion was echoed by Susan Rice and Marie Harf and contradicted by Josh Ernest at the White House and at the Pentagon.  It seemed lost on some that Obama was basing his authority to go to war without Congressional authority on the 2001 and 2003 resolutions against al-Qaeda.  The 2001 resolution mentioned "war" four times and the 2003 mentioned it nine times.

This was followed by the British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond telling reporters at a news conference in Berlin: Let me be clear; Britain will not be taking part in any air strikes in Syria."  He said London won't be "revisiting" the issue after Parliament decided last year against participating in air strikes.  Number 10 Downing Street then had to walk that back by saying that P.M. David Cameron had not yet decided on air strikes.  (However after the Saturday release of a You Tube video of the decapitation of British aid worker, David Cawthorne Haines,  that could change dramatically.)

It all went down hill after that with Germany stating that they were not yet in the coalition followed by Turkey and then Saudi Arabia announcing that their contribution would be only the training of the Syrian Free Army on Saudi territory.

Friday it got worse with the CIA in a surprise release stating that ISIS had grown by as much as 300% since June and now numbered between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in the terror army.  This would make ISIS the 76th largest army out of 106 forces in the world.  It should be remembered that when they took Fallujah in the beginning of 2014 they were estimated to be around 4000 strong. 

When it comes to Barack Obama we have learned over 6 years to live in a state of diminishing expectations.  Thus when he gives us a little, many tend to bequeath it a potency that is not there.  He began his fifteen minutes into war making with a pronouncement that ISIL or ISIS is not Islamic nor is it a state.  Who then are the volunteers who have swelled its ranks at 500 a week...Presbyterians?  The insistence of Obama to protect anything and everything Islamic is the source of this obsession.  The reflexive impulse to see Islam in western terms is the source of those non Muslims who always want to begin the conversation with the assertion that "Islam is a religion of Peace".  They are the 21st century avatars of those with a "little knowledge" and thus are as dangerous as ISIS.

Then came his predictable pledge of no ground troops from the US, causing Speaker Boehner to decry "An F-16 is not a strategy" and that an air war alone will not get the job done.  

Obama's claim that ISIS or the Islamic State is not a state is likewise questionable.  ISIS now occupies 18 cities in Iraq and 22 cities in Syria.  31 of that total are under their full control.  The opposition to ISIS , which includes both the disparate elements of the Syrian Free Army and the Syrian Army of Bashir al-assad  is all in the eastern corridor.  Part of the east , the north central and the west are basically controlled by ISIS.

In Iraq, Anbar and parts of Diyala, Salahuddin and Nineveh Provinces extending south to Bagdad and west to Kurdistan are controlled by ISIS.  This territory is roughly the size of Belgium or Jordan and estimated by some to be as large as 35,000 square miles.  The 8 Sunni "militias' in the Sunni triangle at the present time are all either supporting ISIS or in a truce with them although there have been incidents of fighting between ISIS and the Jaysh Rijal al- Tariqa al- Naqshbandia (JRTN) the largest Sunni nationalist groups that also has Caliphate  type dreams.  ISIS also controls one border crossing in Syria and perhaps as many as three in Iraq. 

Over two million people in both Syria and Iraq have been displaced and are living in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey or Iraqi Kurdistan.

Obama has now stacked what remains of his Presidency on a proposal that seems both unstable and unserious.  It is beginning to feel in its infancy like more spin than substance and some openly wonder if this is serious or just more political necessity. 

He has tried to convince us that he waited for a new regime in Bagdad and now that he has it no one can really say if it is the real deal or not.  In Iraq, it is a new Sunni Awakening that is needed along with an Iraqi army that can and will fight. In Syria it is a collection of insurgents some with al-Qaeda ties, who Mr. Obama just weeks ago demeaned as "Doctors, Farmers and Pharmacists" whom he would be stupid to arm.  Then his core principle was "don't do stupid  "stuff"".  Now it is "no safe haven" for those who try to kill us.  The truth is that nobody knows what this is or where this is going and that in the long run is the biggest danger of it all.

No American should be sent into harms way if the ultimate objective is not complete and total victory.  Anything less is immoral and illogical.  A three year campaign with the finale left to a new President is yet another example of his propensity to fit square pegs into round holes.  It is a graduate studies exercise devoid of the essence of or the unpredictability  of the reality of war.  Why three years?  Three years will allow this cancer to metastasize and grow until ISIS is not just part of Islam but is Islam itself. 

ERLANDSSON

ROTHERHAM

 

From 1997 through 2013 and beyond, over 1,400 young. white, working class girls were systematically and sexually preyed upon by gangs of older men in the northern English town of Rotherham.  The girls involved were often troubled, living in group or foster homes, often living chaotic and dysfunctional lives which made them easy marks for their predators.

 

Despite numerous individual reports and three official reports in 2002, 2003 and 2006, nothing significant was done by local elected and appointed officials or the local Police.  This was mainly due to the fact that the gangs of men responsible were Muslims of Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Afghani origin.  Local officials,the majority of whom are from the Labour Party, repeatedly tried to avoid either racial confrontations or being labled racist or anti-Muslim.

 

In 2013 The Times of London did a series of investigatory articles about Rotherham which exposed the scandal.  This prompted the Rotherham Council to commission an independent report by Professor Alexis Jay who was formerly the Chief Inspector of Social Work in Scotland.  That report which was issued in August of this year has exploded like a bomb and has exposed the "Politically Correct" and "Multicultural" bias that allowed serial crimes of a horrific nature to be inflicted on young girls.

 

In the Executive Summary to her report, Professor Jay wrote this about the girls; " They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beatened and intimidated.  There were examples of children being doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally vicious rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone.  Girls as young as 11 were raped by large number of male perpetrators.  This abuse is not confined to the past but continues to this day."

 

The 2002 report was quashed and the author was warned  that " she must never refer to Asian men again".  The two subsequent reports in 2003 and 2006 were ignored.  The  2006 report noted "that one of the difficulties that prevents this issue from being dealt with effectively is the ethnicity of the main perpetrators".  An MP from Rotherham stated that "he didn't want to rock the multicultural community boat". , when asked why he did nothing.

 

The Police told Julie Bindel, one of the few feminists who investigated Rotherham that they were "treading carefully" and didn't want to provoke a  "race riot".  No one from the Rotherham Council ever approached the leaders of the Muslim community and no one from the Muslim  community ever exposed the scandal.

 

Home Secretary Theresa  May said of Rotherham, that the monstrous crimes went on for so long because of "institutional Political Correctness". 

 

 It should also be noted that recently the head of the UKs Independence Party, Nigel Farage  cited "Multiculturalism" as a main reason British  citizens went to fight for ISIS and behead innocent reporters and civilians.  Farage stated "We've seen an increased radicalization within the United Kingdom, much of this I'm afraid to say is a self-inflicted wound.  We've had four decades of state-sponsored multiculturalism.   We've actually encouraged people not to come together and be British but to live separately, to live apart...There are similarities {to the United States}..."

 

In almost every country where there has been extensive Muslim immigration, self segregating Muslims have refused to assimilate and instead have demanded special treatment. Spineless progressive politicians seeking political hegemony via identity politics, have bent over backward to accommodate them.

 

Many Muslim immigrants reject Constitutional law and instead want Sharia imposed together with all the oppressive barriers to individual rights and free will coupled with the misogynistic restrictions to full equality for women.  The rape of young girls moreover is to some merely the emulation of the Prophet Muhammed, who married his last wife when she was six years of age but didn't consummate the nuptials until she was nine.  

 

Political Correctness is both a political tool and a political weapon for both the left and Islamists who are allied in a mutual disgust for Western Civilization and/or modernity.  It is a "tool" to impose group think, self imposed cultural and social apartheid and tribal conformity.  It is a "weapon" to silence the opposition.  In Rotherham it was a "never get arrested" permit sanctioned by everyone whose sworn responsibility was to protect the innocent and the vulnerable.  England and the world are horrified by the bestial crimes this perfidious idealogy has permitted.  The government has vowed to address the cause of this sickness.

 

On September 4th an elderly woman in London was beheaded by a Muslim with a machete in broad day light in her garden.  Scotland Yard has ruled this not to be a terrorist incident.

 

ERLANDSSON 

AMERICAN CREEPSHOW

The "Obama Zombies" as author Jason Matera labeled them in his book of the same name, are at it again.  CBS has reported that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed Assembly Bill 1912 which directs California educators to include " the significance  of the United States electing its first African-American President" in its History and Social Science curricula.   Obama's past vocation as a "community organizer" is also to be highlighted.

Well, every curriculum needs a reading list and here are mine:  "Culture of Corruption" by Michelle Malkin; "The Amateur" by Edward Klein; "Faithless Execution" by Andrew McCarthy; "Pushback" by Rabbi Aryeh Spero; "The Roots of Obama's Rage" and "Obama's America" by Dinesh D'Souza; "Obama's Enforcer" by John Fund and Hans Von Spakowsky; "InJustice" by J. Christian Adams; "The Devil Inside the Beltway" by Michael J. Daugherty; "Liberty and Tyranny" and "Ameritopia" by Mark Levin; "After America" by Mark Steyn; "The Great Destroyer" by David Limbaugh and "Spreading the Wealth" by Stanley Kurtz.

These are but a small sample  of "Obamography", mostly critical, written with over two more years left to go in his second term.

He began his first term with young grade school  children singing North Korean type hymns to him under the guidance, of course, of union teachers.  So in six years, the "cultists" have simply taken steps to insure that grades K-12 are worshiping the worst and creepiest President in American history. 

After he leaves office (and there are those who believe that he will not leave without a fight) his successors will have the "Devil's own time"  to fix and repair all the terrible things he has done.  It remains to be seen if the Constitution and our system of government have been irreparably harmed by his acts.

Already we see that race relations under our first black President have deteriorated.  A significant   portion of Black America seem at times to be less connected to the rule of law than ever before.  As an example , numerous protestors of the shooting of Michael Brown state publicly on camera that Officer Wilson should be "convicted without a trial" as if this would be justice taking its normal course.  Is this deterioration and disconnect from the American "system"  connected to the fact that Obama and Holder treat the system with utter contempt thereby setting an example?

America in the "Age of Obama" has changed more rapidly than  for any generation since WWII but this time it is not for the better. Our economy is deliberately made worse and our politics deliberately made toxic.  America has retreated into itself by handing its freedoms, rights and culture over to the "Administrative   State" which acts as a law unto itself and to the academics and celebrities that support it.

Gone is the near unanimous  belief in "American Exceptionalism"   and the "inalienable rights of every person".  Gone also is "rugged American individualism".  When a majority of Americans  want to criminalize  pre-teens playing unsupervised and a mother is put in jail for letting her 9 year old play alone in the park, we have become captive to our darkest fears.  This transforms us into the enablers  of our children's  mass retreat into cyber-space where they never grow up.

The government of this President is always ready however, to step in with more rules and more benefits and programs to solve problems that we have always solved before on our own.   These become a cocoon of our own creation.  The state under Obama becomes the "Morlocks" and we become the "Eloi".

The truth is that almost everything this President does hurts the nation be it in domestic or foreign affairs.  His motives for doing what he does are couched in pious or pseudo patriotic rationales that have devolved into hackneyed slogans that mean the opposite of what the words convey.  We have Orwell's "Big Brother" and "doublethink"  and "thoughtcrime" and "Newspeak"  come to life before our eyes.  Incredibly he uses the accusations of incompetence and "naive idealism" to disguise his true agenda and thereby manages to keep his overall favorability  at  around 42%.  After all, probable incompetence  is forgivable...probable treason is not.

 The lack of transparency about what he does, why he does it and who he is after six years in office is the most disturbing and unnatural aspect of his Presidency.  His preternatural detachment from his job, his own party and the country has become the single most defining public aspect of who he is as a man.  The more you study him, the more you know he is unique because of his strangeness  and not his intellect or his political skills. 

He is the most enigmatic President in our history.  His past remains mysterious, undefined and blurry.  He strives to inspire devotion from the weak instead of loyalty and respect from the strong or fear from the evil.  He seems energized by the theory of life rather than life itself.  Being President to him is a scripted affair which must always end in applause because success has no intrinsic value.  We observe him in his roles as husband, father and President and know in some subconscious part of our minds that there is a secret side to him that is his real core.

He arrogantly believes his self imposed loneliness is his real strength because he is superior to others and has no need of their counsel. That counsel would in all probability, deter him from his goals of making the U.S. just another country riddled with ethnic, sectarian and racial tribalism held together by an oppressive "redistributionist" state.

He is at the essence, the President that a writer of the macabre would have created in a mystery where you don't understand the malignancy until it is too late. 

      

ERLANDSSON

(This Editorial was taped on 09/02/2014 for broadcast on 09/04/2014 on amfm247.com, I Heart Radio and Spreaker ie THE VERNUCCIO/ALLISON REPORT)