On the front page of my morning Los Angeles Times was this headline: White House grapples with limits of air campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Seems we need more assistance than we’re getting in order to stop ISIS in its tracks. Quelle surprise.
Then I read and watched the latest breaking news on Ebola. Between those scary accounts and GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter’s lies about !!! TEN ISIS FIGHTERS !!! having crossed the Mexican border RIGHT INTO TEXAS, USA!! it dawned on the GOP to blame President Obama for his lack of feck and obvious schemes to fulfill his dreams of becoming the most powerful dictator ever. The president is so weak, per Republicans, that he’ll somehow manage to use the Ebola virus and ISIS to assume the role of King of the Whole Wide World. No easy feat for someone so feckless.
Republican senators seek to block funds to combat Ebola http://t.co/sqyvYdUEE9 because it’s just easier to blame Obama for any outbreak
— Markos Moulitsas (@markos) October 9, 2014
The following is the emerging strategy of the GOP to win on November 4th:
Alarmist O’ the Day Rep. Hunter inexplicably believes Islamic State is slithering into our country with the same ease that the Ebola virus magically lingers in the air endlessly (P.S. and by the way, it doesn’t.), so we’re all gonna inhale it and die as we get beheaded by the ten ISIS infiltrators, who are apparently immune to the virus. Or something.
DHS secretary says people arrested at southern border were actually ANTI-ISIS http://t.co/x6VOsQ2QVW
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) October 9, 2014
Here’s Rachel Maddow debunking the ISIS lies:
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This question came to mind: What’s up with all the hysteria– based on what again? Come on, America! Why aren’t you educating yourselves? Not that this is a new concern, but lately, the panic of the misinformed/uninformed is more intense than usual. Fear does that to people. So does a lack of knowledge.
With all that in mind, here are today’s L.A. Times letters to the editor, because our voices matter:
Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan suggest that the right way to fight Islamic State is to send in ground forces. When will we learn the lessons of other failed ground wars, including Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan? (“U.S. strategy against Islamic State is too much air, not enough boots,” Op-Ed, Oct. 6)
The Viet Cong, Taliban and Saddam Hussein’s forces were each thousands of miles from our shores and did not represent existential threats. There were no reliable partners on the ground.
Progress, which could only be measured over years, required a gradual escalation of forces. The more violence we threw at an enemy embedded in the local population, the more civilians we killed, and the resulting anger helped the enemy.
In Iraq and Syria, let’s not make matters worse by throwing kerosene onto a raging fire.
Joel Rudnick, Mar Vista
..
As a Vietnam veteran and retired Marine, I’m truly perplexed by the call from non-combatants to send in ground troops.
I’m also surprised that no one has pointed out the fact that Islamic State is not a standing army — it is more like a very dangerous street gang gone wild. Even if it numbers 30,000 or more fighters, would it be able to stand against the 2nd Marine Division? Against a U.S. Army tank battalion with the awesome Abrams tank?
Not at all. Islamic State fighters would just melt in with the local populace, and we would be mired in a senseless and never-ending police action — again.
Why is the brain trust so eager to send our men and women off to right a wrong that we cannot right? This is a fight we cannot win, so let the locals fight it out or succumb to their fate. Let the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Syrians fight for their country, their families, their freedom.
When did we become a nation of such panic?
Stephen Baldwin, Irvine
Duncan Hunter a monumental tool for saying anything remotely that stupid. He should be the one in an Isolation Ward. The GOP just a collection of worthless fear & scandal mongering whores. No real ideas left.
That about sums it up, RS.
What really explodes my blood pressure Laffy is Duncan Hunter is a sitting Congressman. And, for fucks sake, sits on the “Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities”
I expect this kind of lying BS from the usual grifter trash that makes up the GOP Pundit Industrial Complex .. Fox Noise, Limpdick, Hand-Job Hannity etc. What I don’t expect is a Tax-Paid U.S. Congressman to go on National TV and just flat-out LIE. And, all of it, just a cheesy attempt to gin up fear among an aging base of knuckle-dragging, ignorant, white-trash that couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag.