Observing in his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "When ISIS Rapists Win" that the Islamic State "fills the vacuum left by decaying nationalist ideologies," David Brooks concludes:
"So far the response to ISIS has been pathetic. The U.S. pledged $500 million to train and equip Syrian moderates, hoping to create 15,000 fighters. After three years we turned out a grand total of 60 fighters, of whom a third were immediately captured.
It’s time to stop underestimating this force as some group of self-discrediting madmen. ISIS is a moral and political threat to the fragile and ugly stability that exists in what’s left in the Middle East. ISIS will thrive and spread its ideas for as long as it has its land.
We are looking into a future with a resurgent Iran, a contagious ISIS and a collapsing state order. If this isn’t a cause for alarm and reappraisal, I don’t know what is."
A "contagious ISIS"? A pity the president isn't being informed of this. As reported in a Daily Beast article entitled "Spies: Obama’s Brass Pressured Us to Downplay ISIS Threat" by Shane Harris and Nancy A. Youssef:
"Senior military and intelligence officials have inappropriately pressured U.S. terrorism analysts to alter their assessments about the strength of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, three sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. Analysts have been pushed to portray the group as weaker than the analysts believe it actually is, according to these sources, and to paint an overly rosy picture about how well the U.S.-led effort to defeat the group is going."
Be that as it may, maybe Nobel winner Obama should cut a multi-billion dollar peace deal with ISIS, in the hope that they will also discover reason and civility within 15 years? Yeah, right!
More important, what about "a resurgent Iran"? Obama went on record on December 29, 2014, as saying that Iran could become "a very successful regional power." Meanwhile, however, the mullahs continue to hang gay men; stone to death women accused of adultery; oppress Baha'is, Kurds, Christians and Sunni Muslims; threaten Israel with annihilation; arm Hamas and Hezbollah; and execute poets accused of "waging war on God."
ISIS is a curse on humanity, and so is Iran in equal measure, but what Obama decides not to see cannot hurt him.
