Tag Archives: foreign policy

The Contained Daesh

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While President Barack Obama thinks—and says out loud—that he’s “squeezing [Daesh’s] heart and making it harder for them to pump out its propaganda,” the Pentagon is describing an expanding Daesh.

Now it’s Afghanistan. Daesh has become

“more operationally active” there by carving out territory and openly fighting the Taliban.

In particular, Daesh in Afghanistan’s Khorasan Province

has progressed from its initial exploratory phase to a point where they are openly fighting the Taliban for the establishment of a safe haven, and are becoming more operationally active[.]

Even were “containment” succeeding, this is an illustration of why it’s badly insufficient merely to “contain” or to “defeat” this Evil. It must be destroyed, utterly.

It’s a long, dangerous year we have ahead of us.

A Good Move

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Japan and India strengthened their military and economic ties Saturday, signing a high-speed-rail agreement and pledging joint exercises for their navies, as countries across Asia seek to counterbalance China’s growing assertiveness in the region.

Sreeram Chaulia, Dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs, made the thing explicit:

The message is: We don’t want Chinese hegemony in Asia and we’ll work together to create a multipolar Asia[.]

We should encourage this and more agreements like it in the region. More than that, we should work with those in such agreements rather than sitting back and letting them stand on their own.

Use Nuclear Weapons on Terrorists?

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday the Russian missiles used to combat terrorists in Syria could be fitted with nuclear warheads, the Russian government-funded news agency RT reports.

He’s not talking to the terrorists in Syria, though. He’s talking to Poland, the Baltic States, and eastern European nations generally.

And to us.

Naturally, this is not necessary when fighting terrorists and, I hope, will never be needed,” Putin said of the possibility. “But overall, this speaks to our significant progress in terms of improving weaponry and equipment being supplied to the Russian army and navy.

Hmm….

Say We Had

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The US-led coalition fighting the extremist group Islamic State denied Monday it carried out deadly airstrikes against a Syrian government military base.

The regime of President Bashar al-Assad said coalition warplanes carried out an air raid on Sunday in the eastern province of Deir Ezzour that killed three Syrian soldiers and wounded 13 others, and destroyed several combat vehicles and an arms depot.

Our special envoy to the coalition, Brett McGurk, was fast of the mark to deny the strike. He was desperate to insist that coalition strikes had occurred kilometers away, we couldn’t possibly have struck a Syrian military base.

Why? Hasn’t our President said the Syrian government must go? Haven’t he and our Secretary of State guy said al Assad must go? Given those demands, wouldn’t a strike on the Syrian government’s military bases—all of them, not just one—be an entirely appropriate activity by the coalition?

What, exactly, would have been the downside of such a strike, had it actually occurred?

Language

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Does Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speak the same language the rest of us Americans do? Does anyone on the Left?

Asked about the terms “radical Islamist” and “radical form of Islam,” she, like her Left constituents and supporters, says you can’t use those terms. On ABC‘s This Week Sunday, she said,

I don’t want to do that [use those terms] because, No. 1, it doesn’t do justice to the vast numbers of Muslims in our own country and around the world who are peaceful people[.]

In what way does it do anything to “vast numbers of Muslims…who are peaceful?” In the American version of English, those modifiers—by definition—limit the ones being discussed in those terms to a carefully restricted subset of Muslims. Those modifiers explicitly exclude “vast numbers of Muslims” from the characterization.

It seems part of the problem with trying to reach agreements with anyone from the Left is that they don’t even speak the same language. They appear to have napped through their grammar school lessons.