IS ?

Gates Of Mordor 

(Doubling for the Gates Of Hell)

This is not an essay on Heidegger and Being, meditating upon "what-is" and "what-is-not".

What-is-not is our dreams, and What-is is our comeuppance, chickens coming home to roost, and a game of pick-up-sticks in which we have been granted the guarantee of grasping the night soil end of the stick.

It is about the new War against IS, ISIS, or ISIL.

(1)
In the Washington Post we read:

Arab states willing to join air fight against Islamic State in Iraq, U.S. officials say
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/arab-states-willing-to-join-air-fight-against-islamic-state-in-iraq-us-officials-say/2014/09/14/7bdbe1a4-3c41-11e4-b0ea-8141703bbf6f_story.html?hpid=z1

PARIS — Several Arab states have offered to conduct airstrikes against militants in Iraq alongside the efforts of the United States, U.S. officials said Sunday as the Obama administration sought to bolster its case for action against the Islamic State.
“A lot of this is still in the discussion phase, but I want to be clear that there have been offers, both to CENTCOM and to the Iraqis, of Arab countries taking more aggressive kinetic action against ISIL,” including airstrikes, a senior State Department official said in Paris, using an alternative acronym for the militant network...

Lucky old stiffs are we, to have the Battlestar Islamica Rangers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Dubai come to our cause, especially since they were the ones who funded such mercenaries in Syria in the first place.

What will happen when IS sees the mighty air forces of civilization arrayed against their iniquities!!

Will they tremble in fear and remorse? Or will they skedaddle into heavily populated areas and cities, thereby ensuring that any air strike will inflict the maximum collateral damage and death among the civilian populations?

The culture of death loves the holocaust past. The Art of Modern War as set down in the days of World War II by the GGs (Greatest Generation) involved extensive bombing and destruction of civilian areas, a strategy which carried over into the Cold War in the form of Mutually Assured Destruction (of cities) - an Armageddon bullet we dodged once and are eager to confront again.

(2)
The beheading videos seem to be designed to elicit an uncontrolled and inchaote response, which is exactly the way numerous people are responding to them, as if IS were some sort of super-powered Puppet Masters who rule men's minds!

(3)
We ignore natural allies because they are enemies of the Likud party:

Senator Lindsey Graham:

“The first thing I want to tell American people, from my point of view, it is our fight, it is not just their fight,” Graham said. “I will not let this president suggest to the American people we can outsource or security and this is not about our safety. There is no way in hell you can form an army on the ground to go into Syria, to destroy ISIL, without a substantial American component. To destroy ISIL, you have to kill or capture their leaders, take the territory they hold back, cut off the financing, and destroy the capability to regenerate.”

There are troops on the ground in Syria: the Syrian Army and the rebel groups whose fighters are the source of the IS army.

(Senator Graham also said
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/09/14/Graham-ISIS-is-an-Army-Of-Islam-Opening-The-Gates-Of-Hell-On-The-World

"If they survive our best shot, this is the last best chance, they will open the gates of hell to spill out on the world. This is not a Sunni versus Sunni, this ISIS versus mankind."

and we may reasonably pause and consider the implications of a very senior US Senator describing important world affairs as if it were all part of a Left Behind novel...
What the heck!)

(4)
We should support in a big way a combination that has a good chance of success.

The people of this area must fight their own wars.
If people wish to kill, they have to do so until they are incapable of continuing. If a outsider or referee steps in and says "Time-out!", then they will only live to kill yet another day.

And they must learn the lessons other nations learned in conflict; they must create their pown heroes and heroines and leaders who will lead a new nation born in their wars.

As it is, the political process is frustrated by interventions.
What would the USA be if the nations of Europe and France were strong enough to have forbade the British to commence hostilities against the colonies of America? Would George Washington have risen to the status he achieved? Would there have been a Constitution?

Those who live by the sword must be schooled by the sword and be sent to after-school detention class, which will be overseen by Mr. Sword

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