DESTROYING ISIS

60 YEARS AGO, President Truman had the balls to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan. This missile was equal to 20,000 tons of TNT. Truman warned Japan of a "Rain of Ruin" Since then we have been at peace with Japan with no reprisals. We know have a stockpile of nuclear bombs that can get the same effect we got from Nagasaki and end this now.

What is stopping US (United States), the once mighty super-power entering into the Middle East, notably Syria and obliterating ISIS? Answer – Obama. Our first Muslim President. Our once mighty nation has become so soft on religious issues within our melting pot that we are so concerned about stepping on toes on those who have come here to kill us. Do you remember after 911, when Muslims tried to erect a Mosque right near Ground Zero and WE had to cower over violating basic human rights issues, civil liberties and housing?  Those behind the Mosque vehemently denied that they had no ties to Terrorism but it was found that Islamic Terrorists were funding the Mosque. The basic principle of erecting a Mosque right down the block from Ground Zero was not resounding onto itself?

I know some are asking this author what I am referring to as “WE”. WE are the American people as per the U.S. Constitution and the founding fathers. WE the people who earned the RIGHT to become an American citizen who came through Ellis Island as immigrants as ONE under God indivisible with liberty, justice for all.  Our Presidents took an oath of office to protect our country from enemies both foreign and domestic. That oath was broken so many times, I lost count. There is no mention of Allah or Muhammad. Americans over the years became way too liberal and acceptable of all religions which brought upon these zealots/extremists and looked to kill the sheep, burn our flag, divide and conquer.

Once we had leaders and heroes who made this country great. Thousands gave their lives to protect our way of freedom and our way of life. We honored them, remembered them down the canyon of heroes. Memorialized them only to leave their hard work dismantled and shattered. They were noble men, uncorrupted by greed or power. They were noted and remembered in history for their achievements to their fellow man.  We emulated them, sought solace in their words and actions because they were brave. Honorable men of action and dignity. Not just spoke of what they would do but made historical change. Made this a better country, a better world with alliances with other great leaders with vision who could and would not be corrupted. Would rather die than be a traitor to their own country and people. But we have allowed them to disgrace their legacy.

I grew up in the Vietnam era. My father served in World War II. A grenade knocked out his teeth. Ironically, he came home and spent his livelihood as a dentist. He was a good man and a patriot. My family came through Ellis Island. We were of Russian and German descent and like thousands of immigrants looked forward to a better life in America. My parents met and married in the Bronx and I was born in Queens. My enlistment number when the war started was 1. My brother was 365. I did not fear fighting for my country. To me, it was a privilege. I recalled hearing what JFK said live on TV that “the only thing we need to fear is fear itself”. Know thy enemy.

JFK was a leader with vision and people feared him and killed him. Most probably because he could not be corrupted. A man with true leadership with love of country can never be corrupted and his followers will never doubt his reasoning nor purpose because he has resolve, respect, purpose and admiration from his allies and his enemies.

True leaders have compelling visions for the future of their country and an unbridled courage to act with conviction and not ponder. They are not intimidated by evil, fear, prejudice or coercion.

In 2009, Barry Sotero aka Barack Hussein Obama was quoted… “On September 11, 2001, the world fractured. It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day, and the days that would follow — the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.”

Years later, Obama made this statement…”On September 11, 2001 in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The paradox here is that Obama most likely did not write any of these comments but did sign off on it. In both but most of the latter, there is no truth in his statement or convictions. There is no WE. There is absolutely no veracity in any of his statements and it is an insult to hear that from the leader of the free world.

This is no leader we have here. A junior senator with no proven record who worked under the name of Barry Sotero with a questionable birth certificate, education, lack of skills, background and a throw-away American. A clever campaign manager who used a slogan and a blame game to get the needed votes and a platform for ‘change and transparency’.

We never required change and transparency from our great leaders who gave sustained us through tough time, economic problems, national security, foreign affairs because their agendas had a solid foundation and they had integrity and virtue. Some of these great leaders I admired was Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, FDR, Golden Meir, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

Militarily in the past 2 years, it might be because it's starting to look like we might have a sizable proxy-war with Russia building in the Ukraine, but our leaders aren't terribly interested in another huge ground operation into foreign soil in today's political climate. The United Nations has always been particularly disinterested in solving issues with military aggression- especially where none of the major nations have been particularly threatened yet. And the people of those nations? They're torn, somewhere between "It's not our problem" and "Last time we went into Iraq, it didn't turn out so well." 

ISIS is a Middle East version of the Khmer Rouge. It is, in short, a death cult that will commit unimaginable crimes against humanity unless it is stopped. To understand them, you must understand their motivation; World domination.  They are simply a killing machine with an objective. This became evident some time ago with their propaganda of “all non-believers” must die.

This enemy is unlike any other. You simply do not kill who you believe are the key leaders from moving forward to cross a demarcation line and cease all further efforts. They are many splinter groups and leaders at the ready to step up and intensify their efforts. There are sleeper cells in targeted countries ready to strike while our Muslim leader is fast asleep at the helm.

Obama’s new stated goal of ‘Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve’, the U.S.-led global anti-Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) coalition, is to "degrade and destroy" the organization. However, some have taken issue with this policy as unrealistic, even questioning the feasibility of destroying the group altogether. This debate merits a wider reflection as to other U.S. battles with terrorism and whether terrorist groups can be fully destroyed at all. However, it can. ISIS has approximately 45,000 troops and not anywhere near the stockpile of weapon, naval capacity, air force, satellite warfare, troops and allies. More important, they do not have a nuclear arsenal.

Staying on ISIS for a moment, the group's seemingly surprising and meteoric rise from the clutches of its defeated insurgency after the surge and Awakening movement in 2007 during the Iraq War, has drawn significant contention regarding the handling of the security situation by both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. ISIS's predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, was never close to destroyed despite comments to the contrary. The Awakening weakened the group and pushed it into Iraq's Sunni heartland to fester. As a result, the group shifted its tactics and quickly rebuilt, gaining strength to resurge in 2009. You can only blame our administration for ISIS's rise and many splinter groups due to the fact that the U.S. did not leave a residual force that might have quelled any hiccups of remaining insurgency desires or capabilities. Shifts of blame go to Assad and his terrorist involvement.

In Operation Enduring Freedom, otherwise known as the Afghanistan War, U.S. goals were to overthrow the Afghanistan government at the time, ruled by the Taliban — for not giving up the members of al Qaeda responsible for the 9/11 attacks, as well to disrupt terrorist safe havens and military capabilities. Yet, after 14 years of war, the Taliban in Afghanistan show little sign of relenting its insurgency and focus, despite reports of internal fracturing and disagreements between senior leadership following the death of its founder and the appointment of a new leader. In fact, the time has come to potentially negotiate with the terrorist organization so as to cease continued bloodshed that appears to have no end in sight. It is quite possible that the Taliban could have been even more significantly degraded and rendered ineffective if it did not receive at least some tacit support from Pakistan, to which the group's leadership fled following the U.S. invasion.

For many in government, success comes down to subjective goals. "Defeating a group doesn't necessarily mean you will have been successful at eradicating every single person who was ever aligned with the group," Matt Olsen, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, remarked about ISIS. Nick Rasmussen, current director of the National Counterterrorism Center, stated that while "there are more terrorist bad actors coming at us from a greater array of places, in larger numbers than there have been at any point. ... I would point to the significant progress we have made as a country in diminishing — dramatically — the threat from core al Qaeda." Rasmussen continued, saying that no groups the U.S. faces today have capabilities to carry out large-scale attacks on the U.S. homeland.

According to former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President Obama should not have used the words "degrade and destroy" to describe the mission against ISIS. "Those were incorrect words to use and he should've been more precise and he should've actually stated what I believe would be attainable goals, which would be to change the behavior," he stated in July on Al Jazeera, adding "destroying" is not a realistic goal. "I don't think that we'll ever destroy ISIS. We may cause it to change its name, but we are never going to destroy this organization. Destroy means completely eliminate in military parlance; that would be to annihilate."

As previously mentioned, some terrorist groups could possibly have been extinguished further. In the case of Iraq, the U.S. could have degraded al Qaeda in Iraq even further, although at the time, the terrorist group's losses were good enough to accomplish U.S. goals: a stable and secure situation in which to begin the political rebuilding process.

As for the fight against ISIS, to borrow a common phrase, ISIS is merely a symptom of the greater problem of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria and that country's civil war. ISIS cannot be extinguished without a political transition in the Syrian government. "So if we don't look at the fundamental problems, then ISIS, or son of ISIS or grandson of ISIS, will be a problem for years and years to come," former Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal said on CBS regarding the overall political narrative of the region. The U.S. took this stance as a precondition to intervening in Iraq last summer, waiting for political reforms to take shape.

As the saying goes, words matter. Destroying terrorism entails far more than exterminating terrorists. Every security situation is different and there is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Counterterrorism efforts from a U.S. approach at a basic level serve to protect the homeland and prop up partners. As for the current situation against ISIS, the metrics taken to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the group are too narrow to succeed in the long-term.

So what would it take to destroy and annihilate ISIS? What of ISIS’s weakness? Kurdish peshmerga militia have managed to retake Mosul Dam with the assistance of U.S. Special Operations Forces. But such desperate measures instead telegraph, well, desperation–and far from cowing anyone they are only likely to redouble the resolve of the civilized world to smash this group of genocidal jihadists.

What is needed now is not strongly worded condemnation ISIS brutality, much less a hashtag campaign. What is needed is a politico-military strategy to annihilate ISIS rather than simply chip around the edges of its burgeoning empire.

What should a strategy look like? In brief, it will require a commitment of some 10,000 U.S. advisors and Special Operators, along with enhanced air power, to work with moderate elements in both Iraq and Syria–meaning not only the peshmerga but also the Sunni tribes, elements of the Iraqi Security Forces, and the Free Syrian Army–to stage a major offensive to rout ISIS out of its newly conquered strongholds and working in contingent with Putin and NATO forces. 

The first front is to cut off ISIS communication grid altogether. We have the satellite technology to accomplish this feat. This alone to begin will render them incompetent. Shutting down the power grid in Iraq and Syria clears away a major obstacle to such a campaign.

The second strike is cyber warfare aligned with the first strike by partnering with ‘Anonymous’ and take out any cyber threats.  

In the aftermath of the Paris Terrorist Attacks, there is a new target on ISIS: A Declaration of Cyber War. The hacker activist group, Anonymous is using social media to retaliate against ISIS for their reign of terror in the city of light.

In a new YouTube video Anonymous vowed to take out ISIL: “We are tracking down members of the terrorist group responsible for these attacks we will not give up we will not forgive and we’ll do all that is necessary to end their actions.”

Anonymous ‘hacktivist’ known as “Vex” joined the hacker group about 5 years ago. After watching news reports of the terror attacks in Paris he decided to be part of the mission to stop the spread of ISIS propaganda.

“I got on the internet relay chat room as soon as possible. I was trying to figure out what we can do to help,” said Vex, Anonymous #OpParis.

The 19-year-old says he already removed more than 20 terrorist affiliated sites and that number is growing. Since the Paris attacks Anonymous claims to have destroyed more than 20,000 ISIS accounts by removing and defacing them.

“If the site has vulnerabilities in it you can deface it which is basically tearing it apart from the inside,” said Vex, Anonymous #OpParis.

Former Anonymous member Deric Lostutter tracked down “Vex” in an internet relay chat room or IRC. There they discussed the efforts by Anonymous and its members like Vex, which Lostutter says are instrumental in the war on terror.

“We give people ways to communicate and rise up the same way the American government funds rebels, we fund them with internet connections, communication methods and that’s the biggest weapon of all,” said Deric Lostutter, former ‘KYAnonymous.’

Lostutter revealed his identity after exposing the 2012 Steubenville Ohio rape cover-up with Anonymous. The case gained national attention and Lostutter was later raided by the FBI and is currently being investigated. He says law enforcement officials should recognize Anonymous as an ally not a threat. 

“I think if law enforcement chose to work with anonymous then the world might be a safer, better place,” said Lostutter.

While helping deter future recruits is essential to combatting ISIS, Vex says more needs to be done to break down the terror network’s funding. 

We need to go after their money initially before launching our campaign. If we could go after all their money that would definitely be a big win for anonymous, the US, France and whoever else is being terrorized by ISIS. Currently, ISIS is set to attack most any country to send a message.

The operation to defund ISIS is in the early stages, Vex says he is now shifting his focus to internet chatter to prevent the next ISIS terror attack. 

"I want to analyze their sites because I do feel saving a life is more important than taking down these sites currently.”

In recent days, ISIS has vowed retaliation but Anonymous says it is not intimidated.  

“Anonymous is a huge group you can’t just take us out I mean the FBI, CIA has been trying to do it for a while and because we have no leadership it’s really hard to take us down I don’t think it will happen,” said Vex, Anonymous #OpParis. 

Today, right in front of our eyes, whole civilizations are being expunged, and we cannot save them if we deceive ourselves about the nature and identity of the enemy.

I have spent some considerable time in the Middle East, where any attentive visitor can immediately see the traces of truly great civilizations. I fear a generation growing up unaware that ancient Baghdad was home to the world's greatest scholars; that the lands of Persia and Mesopotamia were home to artistic flourishing; that people of different faiths lived and loved happily from Cairo to Constantinople. And at the heart of it all was the majesty and beauty of Syria.

No more. It is hard to overstate the sheer scale of what has been wrought in Syria today. Some 200,000 have perished since the start of the civil war. An astonishing six million of Syria's 22 million people are now refugees, fleeing war and going to unimaginable lengths to find sanctuary. Whole cities, with their own institutions and public services, have sprung up in the makeshift camps. Some neighboring Arab nations are overwhelmed. Unfortunately they tend to be poorer nations like Lebanon, rather than the richer Gulf states. Saudi Arabia has accepted no refugees, unforgivably.

Syria itself is dissolving, its map changing by the minute. When protesters took to the streets in 2011, President Assad responded with brutality. He is a dictator who has used chemical weapons on his people. But he is a bulwark against the even greater evil of Isis. Some people argue that you cannot argue that one is more evil than the other. Well, I do; and unless and until we eradicate Isis, stability will not return to the region, borders will remain meaningless, and the refugees will grow in number.

These remorseless vermin are fully intent on raping, slaughtering and bombing their way to victory at all costs. It is striking that they have gone after the treasures of Syria's ancient civilization: they know that they can only claim victory for their perverted faith if they have eradicated the collective memory of the Syrian people, in which several faiths have lived in harmony and mutual respect. That is why I hesitate to say the phrase “modern Syria”: right now, Isis are succeeding in destroying Syria's heritage and ancestry, and reducing the country to something more like a medieval theocracy than modern state.

I believe that a militant, radical, mutated form of Islam is the greatest threat to humanity the world has faced in the 21st century. It unites Central Africa with Eastern Asia, and has sympathizers and affiliates from Lahore to - shocking to me - Dewsbury in Yorkshire. But its locus is in the Middle East, and specifically the lawless terrain between what is left of Syria and Iraq. It is true that some of the refugees heading our way - your way - are fleeing Eritrea and Afghanistan. But all the evidence is clear: the majority are Syrian.

We are not the police department of the World nor the stronghold for other countries fallen or scared. Certainly we can give aid to the citizens of those countries such as Syria but we are not sanctuaries. We will help them fight but they must be willing to fight for their own country!

Bad news keeps piling up at the White House’s doorstep on the pressing matter of the Islamic State. Obama’s persistent inability to tie the word “Islamic” to anything connected to terrorism, even when vile acts are committed by murderers boasting of their hardline Islamic beliefs, has not calmed the American public.

It’s no surprise that the public’s confidence in Obama’s war against the Islamic State, called ISIS by many in the West, for Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (i.e. the Levant), is waning but what is alarming is their ignorance that Obama is not a leader and never was. He is part of the problem. Now, more than six months after Obama authorized U.S. Central Command to bomb ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the president has asked Congress to sign off. Since it took the administration over two months to even find a name for this war— it’s Operation Inherent Resolve in case you wondered—it’s not surprising that the White House has dragged its feet with Congress, too. 

The ISIS political theater endangers our interests in the Middle East and with our allies. Yet this is far from the only distraction at present that’s stopping the White House from keeping its eye on the ISIS ball. This problem has understandably gotten caught up in the messy issue of Syria’s seemingly endless civil war, which has killed more than 200,000, many of them civilians. Here Obama’s outsourcing of America’s Syria policy to Vladimir Putin in 2013 proved a predictable strategic debacle but at this juncture there is little to be done: the pro-Russian and pro-Iranian Assad regime is firmly in place, the opposition is hopelessly fragmented, and Syria’s fratricide will likely continue for years to come. 

For the past few years, tensions between Russia and the West have been high. Events in Ukraine have been one reason; so too has Syria, where Russia, a supplier of arms to the Syrian government, has used its veto at the UN Security Council to stymie America's strategy. I wonder, however, if this crisis - in which Russia, European and American interests in a stabilization of Syria surely align - is the moment for us to put aside recent Cold War rhetoric and once again unite to defeat a common enemy. There is a historical precedent, after all.

Seventy years ago, Russia and the West were riven by ideological differences. And yet they came together to defeat Nazism. In our time, the greatest threat to humanity is Islamist in nature, and our failure to defeat it is a direct cause of this refugee crisis. I agree with the Financial Times's Edward Luce, who argued yesterday that Syria may come to haunt Obama, because his indecision and false threats about crossing “red lines” has made him look weak.

Obama's whole approach to foreign affairs is conciliatory: witness his rapprochement with Iran and Cuba. Here, then, is a golden opportunity. I do not say Assad is a long-term ally. But Isis is a short-term, mortal danger. Putin is prepared to support efforts to defeat it. So, on the basis of my conversations with them, are some senior members of the government, though what the Labor Party thinks won't be clear until we know its new leader. Let us turn the outpouring of public support for refugees into a strong and coordinated effort to tackle the problem at source, with Muslim nations central to any anti-Isis coalition.

To mend relations internationally, neutralize the cancer of Isis, and help the desperate people of Syria and beyond: that is a prize worth fighting for. Putin has shown leadership. Does Britain's political class, so slow to respond to the refugee crisis initially, have the same courage and moral strength? I doubt it - but given public support for action, now would be a good time to prove us sceptics wrong.

Iran has been a key, if unintended, beneficiary of the sudden rise of ISIS, the JV team no more, turning into a major strategic threat in the Middle East. In Iraq, Iran’s role on the ground in fighting ISIS has been more important than anything done by U.S. or Western forces. General Qassem Suleimani, the shadowy head of Tehran’s sinister special-operations wing of the Revolutionary Guards, a man with much foreign—including American—blood on his hands, has been in Iraq so much in recent months while any sanctions on Iranian arms shipments have been disregarded in the case of Iraq where the West seems happy to let the Iranians do the hard work of defeating the Islamic State. Why? 

That there may be negative long-term consequences of outsourcing Iraq’s security—and to a large extent Syria’s, too—to the most dangerous hardliners in Tehran does not seem to be keeping anybody in this White House awake at night. This is perplexing, considering how much Iran features on Obama’s foreign policy agenda. Many on the Right consider the administration to be allied with Tehran already, de facto, while even those traditionally supportive of Obama’s efforts to parley with the Iranians about their nuclear program have been perplexed by how little the White House has to show for its repeated pleadings with the mullahs. The less said about the embarrassing collapse of Yemen’s government, hailed months ago by Obama as his ideal counterterrorism showcase, in a military coup by Iran-backed rebels, perhaps the better.

Then there’s the separatism Obama created with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which has occupied headlines for months. United States has enjoyed a rich fulfilling relationship with Israel for a hundred years or more. Our closest ally. They clearly hate each other, and it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is what happens when two vain men, smart but arrogant, whose default response to any political crisis is doubling-down, collide publicly. The White House itself labels Obama a “chickenshit” while Netanyahu is now pushing hard against his biggest foe, Iran, while Obama is doing the same against his main enemy, the GOP. The resulting political theater does no service to any coherent Western policy against Iran or ISIS. 

While there really is no solution to the Iran problem, short of an Operation Persian Freedom that will not happen, there is one to the ISIS threat, and it’s not more employment opportunities in the Middle East. The Islamic State is deeply vulnerable to air power, aggressively applied in coordination with Special Operations Forces (SOF), backed by excellent intelligence. However, the Obama administration has been diffident in its application of air power against ISIS, and the terrorist insurgency remains far stronger than it ought to be, given that the United States has been waging war, albeit of a low-grade sort, against it for half a year already. 

While the Islamic State will continue its onslaught and be a serious threat to the Middle East and elsewhere, the Obama must take action and do what it must. 

Deploying a couple divisions of the U.S. Army or Marine Corps would crush ISIS quickly, but the wisdom of that is dubious, given the history of Iraq since 2003. What will degrade ISIS is U.S.-led airpower, at a higher sortie rate, in coordination with our SOF, the finest snake-eaters in the world. In a matter of months, this lethal tandem will inflict such serious losses on ISIS in Iraq and Syria, particularly on its high-value targets, that it will gradually lose operational effectiveness. We will incur losses, but the enemy’s will be hundreds-fold more. The new Syrian regime and Iraqi State must continue to ‘seek and destroy’ any radicals remaining ‘in state’. While the Islamic State will continue in some evil guise for years, it will not be a serious threat to the Middle East, if the Obama administration does what it must.

We will not defeat ISIS, which represents a far graver strategic threat than al Qaeda ever did, until we confront what it actually is. 

We cannot expect any U.S. president to channel Jordan’s King Abdullah who0 has promised the murderers of the Islamic State that they will get the punishment they deserve, but we ought to expect Obama to be more serious about the rising ISIS threat. There is no fix now save a military one. Some people just need killin’, as they say in Texas, and if anybody on earth deserves the West’s lethal force it’s the Islamic State. Delaying a real counteroffensive against ISIS, due to distractions on many fronts, only empowers our enemies in the Middle East and beyond.