The Islamic STATE!

Just last week I was thinking that we ought to start treating the Islamic State exactly as it claims to be: a state. It does after all have territory about the size of Florida. It has a government, an army, a court system, it collects taxes, provides health care, collects the garbage, and so on. In other words, it has all the marks of an actual state. If we decide to recognize the IS as a nation among the family of nations, then we can pass a Declaration of War against it and fight its agents wherever they rear their ugly heads: Paris, Libya, New York City, wherever. In addition, we don’t have to pay as much attention to sparing the lives of the so-called innocent civilians. We can simply bomb them into submission, like we did Japan.

So just last week I was thinking that this would be a good strategic move, and then yesterday the president trashed the whole idea. I am continually amazed at how contradictory my thinking is from his.

What are we waiting for?

The French Defense Ministry claims its jets have hit a command and control center, a Jihadi recruitment center, a munitions depot, and an ISIS training camp. And they did this less that 24 hours after the attack on Paris. This means that these sites were known to military planners well in advance of the Paris attack, which begs the questions, why hadn't they been hit a month ago or six months ago or a year ago? What are we waiting for. The longer the West waits to obliterate this hotbed of vicious, merciless evil, the stronger and more evil it will become. We flew over a thousand sorties a day in Dessert Storm and 350 in Bosnia; we are averaging only seven a day in the IS and 3 out of 4 return without firing? Why such a tepid response to such a horrific evil? Why do we have these planes if we're not going to use them. The time to act is now.