Rope a dope

I listened to our President speak yesterday. A truly brilliant man but as they say pride goeth before a fall. He has that fatal condition of the highly intelligent, he seems to be so enamored with his own brilliance that he is unwilling to see that things aren't working, that there might be a better way and he obviously has real problems changing course. I do not recall ever seeing him as defensive as he was yesterday.

The current malaise was evident when he recently derided the Islamic State as a jv team. He continued yesterday by pointing out their crude tools lack of sophistication. What they lack in sophistication they more than make up for in efficacy and planning and I wonder why it is so hard for Obama to see this? The status quo is not working.

"This is not, as I said, a traditional military opponent. We can retake territory. And as long as we leave our troops there, we can hold it. But that does not solve the underlying problem of eliminating the dynamics that are producing these kinds of violent extremist groups." President Obama

Oh yes, the underlying dynamics. Perhaps it would be cheaper to send all of the terrorists to shrinks for counseling. Let's rationalize their barbarous behavior.

Obama wants to get rid of Assad, a laudable goal, but if it is not attainable at the moment is it really worth giving ISIL a free pass by not cooperating with the Russians, who at least seem serious about getting something accomplished? How long do you wait and sulk until you get everything your way?

He reminds me of Floyd Mayweather, one of my least favorites boxers, satisfied with playing pretty defense on the ropes, a dancer with no punching power. We need to see less Floyd and more Holly Holm.

There is such cognitive dissonance with this administration team. I heard retired general after retired general on the radio expressing dismay and chagrin over our current strategy as well as the same from many key intelligence operatives. Bi partisan people, ex administration people.

Ex Sec'y of State William Cohen said that our armed forces are only at 31% of readiness, we have let them lapse into a serious state of decline. So maybe we don't have the resources to attack Isis, let alone the resolve. Shameful.

The President got very snitty yesterday when he rhetorically asked his critics if they knew better than his joint chiefs of staff about how to attack Isil. I would love to hear from those men and women, unfettered, I get the feeling that they would give us an entirely different read on the situation.

So we are left with a wimpy containment strategy, we are going to double down on doing nothing. I kept thinking about Jefferson and the Barbary Wars yesterday, they started around 1793, when four muslim nations' pirates were shaking our merchant ships down with regularity and holding them for ransom.

Thomas Jefferson wouldn't take any shit. I wonder what Teddy Roosevelt would have done when confronted by today's problems? Actually I have a good idea, we would have a force on the ground and we would be mopping things up, Teddy wasn't a guy that liked to get punked.

Similar situation regarding the Syrian refugee issue. We hear about all of this vetting and crosschecking of potential emigres and then the FBI admits that there isn't even an available database. We are told that refugees do not commit terrorist attacks. Of course the Tsnarnaev brothers had refugee status but that's ancient history now.

Paris was a game changer. It unmasks the threat of radical Islam in a very real way. Citizens of the world and lovers of freedom can not and will not accept such barbarity. I hope that our President will change course and let the military do their job.

Iraq, Syria and the middle east are a mess, a mess of our own making, thanks George, the Islamic State is merely a manifestation of a sunni bloc that hates the now more powerful shia bloc even more than it hates the west, but it was marginalized by our inept clumsiness and the old balance not likely to reach a new stasis until a lot more blood has been spilled.