CIA says ISIS has 30000 Fighters. Turkey, Germany Won’t Join in USA-led Bombing.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani places ISIS blame on Obama administration (IMAGE SOURCE: Monitor Mideast)

Tweedle dee.

And tweedle dum.

The various nations are playing Say Whaaa? about the president’s plans to bomb ISIS into oblivion.

Turkey — which is the geographic bridge between Europe and the Middle East and a next-door neighbor to Iraq — has decided that they are a no-go. Ditto for our friends in Germany.

According to International Business Times:

Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier questioned whether Obama’s plan of airstrikes and equipping moderate Syrian rebels was adequate. “We haven’t been asked, nor will we do it,” he said of the airstrikes. “We need to be honest with ourselves in the current situation, we don’t yet have a final, blanket strategy which guarantees that we’ll be successful against ISIS and similar groups.”

I hate to say this, but that position may be well taken.

If the CIA knows what it’s talking about (always a question) ISIS’ new notoriety and glorious beheading videos have recruited up to 30,000 wannabe serial killers to their ranks.  Bombing, without concomitant strategies to attack their funding, shut down their web sites and deal effectively with the people who are going to them from areas outside the Middle East will not achieve the destruction of ISIS. In fact, it could end up strengthening ISIS.

Meanwhile, the people most at risk from ISIS are joining the US. Ministers from 10 nations in that region committed to joining the US in armed opposition to ISIS.

From Voice of America:

Earlier Thursday, ministers from 10 Gulf and Arab nations said Thursday they are committed to joining the United States in a “coordinated military campaign” against Islamic State fighters who have seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria.After talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with Saudi officials and U.S Secretary of State John Kerry, officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council, along with Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, said they are united against the threat from all terrorists, including Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. EgyptNon-Arab Sunni Turkey also attended the talks.

But two other powerful regional powers, Shi’ite-ruled Iran and Syria, were excluded, a sign of how strong the Middle East’s sectarian divide remains.The Arab states agreed in a written communique to take many of the steps U.S. President Barack Obama spelled out Wednesday in his newly articulated strategy for wiping out the militants – stopping the flow of foreign fighters, cutting off funds for Islamic State, providing humanitarian aid to those terrorized by the militants and rejecting what the ministers call their “hateful ideology.”

Notice that these states have agreed to work to cut off funding for ISIS. I can’t emphasize enough how critical that is. It is also critical for us to take a look at who is selling them arms and other supplies. This is large-scale support for mass murder.

The reason this is so important is that ISIS, for all its braggadocio, has no war-making ability in and of itself. None whatsoever. If ISIS cannot buy arms and supplies from actual, functioning governments who do have war-making ability, it is reduced to the knife that one of its murderers bragged about when he killed Steven Sotloff.

If we can cut off their money, stop governments from selling them arms and become more intelligent about the arms we are giving away, the dynamics of this situation will change dramatically and immediately. That includes not buying oil from them. The wells they have seized are stolen property. The money they get from the sale of this oil goes to finance mass murder and the destruction of civilization in a whole region of the world.

Personally, I am a big flummoxed by the plan to bomb ISIS back to the where it came from. It is true that 30,000 organized people with all their armaments are a bit difficult to hide. I have no problem whatsoever with bombing ISIS. I just hope that we actually bomb ISIS and not the surrounding countryside.

However, bombing alone has consistently failed to achieve anything other than chaos and ultimate defeat for those who have employed it. From the Blitzkrieg, to North Viet Nam, to now, bombing as a single tactical exercise has failed. Mind you, I am not advocating “boots on the ground,” (unless we actually do send a planeload of empty boots over there.)

America has had it with war of this type, and for good reason. Even though we carefully block the reality of war from our sight by hiding the disabled soldiers who come home and even, for a long time, refusing to allow photos of the returning caskets, the fact is, we are sending our people to die.

I think we can dismember ISIS by removing their money, refusing re-entry and imprisoning — for life with no parole and no press interviews and in a separate prison — those who join them and want to return to Europe/America/Australia, et al later, and by shutting down the web sites and recruitment venues within our nations. We also need to take a realistic look at our immigration policies.

Congress needs to stop throwing partisan pies at one another long enough to pass the laws we need to defend this nation. The president needs to stop playing the various parts of the electorate and sign those laws. Everyone that we’ve elected needs to start caring about America more than they do their political parties and special interest groups. The number one thing that scares me about this situation is that our elected officials on both sides of the political spectrum are games-players who are have been, at least up until now, unwilling to put America first.

Bombing fails as a single strategy. But it can be a decisive component of a more comprehensive strategy. Number one, before we do much of anything else, we need to stop feeding this beast and begin starving it.