TUE FEB 10, 2015 AT 07:43 AM PST
ISIS is worse than terrorists. Psychopathic killers
In the wake of the totally unsurprising news that Kayla Mueller is dead, i just gotta say that we can't equate the fight against ISIS to prior military misadventures. We have American citizens being targeted, tortured in many ways needlessly beyond reasons for extracting intelligence information, and then killed barbarically. THis is a direct attack on the security of american citizens. Easy to say our citizens need to stay away from these areas(hell, even I questioned why Kayla foolishly went to the middle east). But the world is a worse place if atrocities are committed in isolation. I opposed all the middle eastern wars started by Bush except for the efforts to catch Bin Laden and punish the Taliban. THe same here. Keep the mission simple. Don't fuck with America or american civilians. Or you will feel the pain.
Treat ISIS as more than terrorists. These are psychopathic killers who get their kicks off torture and murder. They recruit from not just muslims, but crazy westerners who have their share of mental problems. Just read the accounts of how they treat their hostages. Their behavior has nothing to do with a misguided attempt to get some secret info. A lot of their torture is based on kicks they get by watching their hostages suffer. And in most cases, these hostages are aid workers and journalists.This goes beyond mistreatment of our POWs captured abroad. I don't think even Bin Laden would torture journalists and civilians the way ISIS has as that wouldn't serve his message, as twisted as his message is. These people are worse than Bin Laden from a moral perspective.
But there is also a certain pragmatism in how they deal with hostages. They dial down the sadism when they realize the hostage's home nation is willing to pay the money. We can't go that incentive route to encourage better treatment of our hostages. But we can try the disincentive route of discouraging them from torturing hostages from our country.
Time to teach them a lesson. if we have to ally with Assad temporarily to fight ISIS, why not? We have allied with just as bad or worse leaders in the past. But just like Obama focused on catching Osama instead of ramping up wars, I am all for targeted killings of ISIS leaders all over the world. It's more humane than entering into full fledged wars. I am also glad Obama didn't rush us into more wars in Syria and other places because now even those countries feel the pain of what used to be terrorism now morphed into warfare by a cartel of nutjobs.
Obama's patience led to ISIS overreaching on their atrocities and gave time for other countries to feel the pain too. It might sound cold, but that shared pain is what is needed for any hope of a global coalition. At some point, we have to figure that enough's enough and strike while global support will be at it's maximum level. TIme to put more pressure on Western Europe and friendly middle eastern countries to ramp up the efforts to squash ISIS. Jordan seems onboard.
I think the time to go full force is now and the narrative should be going after people who are killing our citizens. Not rebuilding Syria or Iraq or whatever nation where ISIS is present. But if we do it, I hope there is pushback to ideas , even those expressed by me in this diary, to prevent any mission creep as even good intentions can lead to stupid wars.
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