BALTIMORE, Maryland October 6, 2014 - In the Middle East, ISIS attacks a peaceful town on the border between Syria and Turkey. The town itself is Kurdish. It is called Kobani. It is Kurdish forces, about 2,000 to 3,000 of them, that are defending it. Fox says that the Kurdish forces are being assisted by family and friends, and that the defense force is not well-armed. On Sunday, the Kurds took a page from the ISIS playbook and used a suicide bomber against the terrorists. Today, Fox says the ISIS flag is flying on two sides of Kobani, one day after Iraq vowed that Kobani would not fall. They said this because the Iraqis believed a third army would intervene to help in the defense of the town. This third army sitting up on the hill, watching, for now, is the Army of Turkey. Turkish Tanks, with their turrets aiming at the town - or is it through the town to the oncoming ISIS insurgents? - sit side-by-side, idle now that they have taken up these positions. Fox reports that the Turks inside the tanks are reluctant - for now - to become involved in the fighting. Even if that is so, however, it is clear to all that they soon will be intimately involved in all of the hostilities. The reason, of course, is that the battle is about to spill into Turkey. The rest of the world keeps hoping ISIS will go away. But the opposite is happening with stunning regularity. ISIS is ruthless. ISIS is committed to the institution of a world-wide Fundamental Hard-line Islamic Caliphate. And do not go looking into any text book for a picture of what kind of world would exist if ISIS and their like are running the government. It will be so hard-line, so extreme, that it will be as if civilization had fallen back to a time surviving for the next 24 hours was the aim of every human. Stark, hopeless, ruthless, bleak, depressing, blood-curdling; a horror movie come to life.
Fox also said today that USA forces are operating Apache Helicopters in close air support of Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces. But no USA air power or helicopters are in the fight at Kobani because such forces would have to be based in Turkey. And even though Turkey is a NATO member, it has declined to enter the fight against ISIS or even allow western forces to use its land as a base for deploying into Iraq and Syria.
You know the story by now on why the United States and other Western nations are not pouring troops into the fight. The United States, by and through President Obama, is using air power to assist a skidish and terrorized Iraqi army that cuts and runs at the first sign of trouble. The few times they stand and fight, they are slaughtered. The Kurds are not afraid. They fight for their own home towns, their own families, and their own possessions. Their problems are two-fold: they don't have enough soldiers and they don't have enough weapons. They need the American Military to deploy with them. But Presiden Obama will not allow that.
For now, President Obama concedes that ISIS is a legitimate threat. But in doing so, he also ruled out ground forces from this country getting into the fight. And he has made no long term commitments about even the air power. While he says he is trying to mount a world-wide consortium against ISIS, he is having trouble getting participants because the USA itself is making such a limited commitment.
On this October 6, 2014, the story remains this: ISIS grows by the day. It's reach grows by the day. It's army grows by the day. It's ability to fight sophisticated battles with western armies growns by the day. It's willingness to massacre and terrorize is open and obvious. ISIS seems not to care how they are portrayed by the western media or even its enemies.
And the issue is this: Is ISIS a real threat to people outside of Iraq and Syria? Is the threat the kind that Germany posed to the entire world in the 1940's and Communism poses everywhere now in the form of Communist China. Or are we talking about being a world-wide threat in the sense of sponsoring terrorists that can strike anywhere with impunity, but with a sponsor that cannot exert political control beyond Iraq and Syria?
Right now there is no consensus. I believe that if ISIS is not checked with equal force soon, it will take over Iraq and part of Syria. I believe it bash into other power-hungry Islamic groups and other Middle East nations which oppose it either publicly or privately. And I also believe they will be heard beyond the Middle East if they are able to gain firm political power in Iraq and part or all of Syria, they will vigorously seek power outside of their borders. All of this adds up to a Middle East more tortured and turbulent than it is today. If you add an ISIS-controlled Iraq/Syria, to a nuclear Iran and an increasingly virile Al Qaeda and you have a catastrophe waiting to happen. Israel will be in so real a danger that it would begin to be difficult to see how it would survive in its present form. Preventing this scenario will require a commitment firm enough to persevere through inevitable setbacks, both on the battlefield and in the political arena. God help us!
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