Never has the world witnessed such horror on the scale inflicted by the Islamic terrorists comprising the would be caliphate builders known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, or the Obama administration's preferred "ISIL" for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. We can revisit the curious name discussion later, but this entire battle that has Cold War adversaries saber rattling, two NATO allies suggesting invocation of NATO Treaty Article 5, and competing U.S. and Russian claims over Syrian airspace has the world on the brink of World War III. For what?
Is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad so bad, that the reign of ISIS' destruction, Christian genocide, worldwide acts of terror, sex slavery and obliteration of antiquities, etc., are not just ignored but supported by the West? That's right. The West is supporting ISIS and for unthinkable reasons.
Am I the only one shocked that the only people in the world who use the term "ISIL" rather than ISIS are the Obama administration officials and a few Republican senators who share Obama's zeal for removing Assad? ISIS describes lands it holds in Iraq and Syria and accurately represents who it is. The Levant refers to a Syrian and Palestinian territory, land it does not hold, and ignores the existence of Israel all together. Why give ISIS that propaganda boost
Obama won the presidency on his opposition to U.S. engagement in "regime change" and foreign wars. The rallying cry of the leftist peaceniks and communist agitators was, "No blood for oil!" Where are they now? All across North Africa and the Middle East, regimes have fallen like dominoes. As emails are exposed, we now learn that Obama and "Madame" Secretary Clinton were behind every coup in their "Arab Spring." From Tunisia to Libya, Egypt and now Syria, we see U.S. fingerprints from direct engagement to complicity.
The inconvenient truth is that every new regime has seen Christian minorities once protected by basically secular dictators subjected to full-scale genocide at the hands of Obama-supported Muslim Brotherhood victors. Why would Obama be so determined to depose Assad, and why would Republicans like John McCain and Lindsey Graham be so firmly in lockstep with him? Do any of them care that opposition to Assad puts them in league with ISIS? What could possibly be so important?
The only reason we are ever given for why Assad should be deposed is humanitarian. He is mean to his people. He maybe even crossed a red line and used chemical weapons. So that makes him more loathsome than ISIS, how? If that is the measure, why has the world not turned on the North Korean regime? I'm sorry, Mr. President. You campaigned against regime change. For you to support it now makes you a liar. Maybe Assad needs to go, but you cannot be for it. What you can be for is protecting Americans, and that clearly means destroying ISIS, not merely "degrading" it.
This gets us to the real Obama motive.
Now if you are Bush, you campaigned on advancing American interests, so you can accept some lost blood for oil, and you can fairly freely seek regime change. The same can be said for Republicans like McCain and Graham. So while Putin supports Assad to hold monopoly control of Iranian natural gas to Europe, one can understand European interest in toppling the Russian ally. The planned natural gas pipeline from Iran through Syria would give Europe a source in competition with Russia's sole source monopoly. But what is Obama's real interest? Could the guy who killed the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S. be driven to build a pipeline to Europe?
We have only Obama's words and record to ascertain why he is so determined to topple Assad. In every conflict, radical Islamists filled the vacuum. No matter how much Obama, and McCain for that matter, talk about this vaunted "Free Syrian Army," they are puppets in a proxy war squeezed between the vastly superior forces of the Russian-backed Assad military and ISIS. If Assad goes, who really believes some moderate Islamic forces will be able to take and hold control in a region where the record of the radicals is nearly 100 percent victory? Against the protests of the Obama administration, the mighty Egyptian military handed the Muslim Brotherhood its only defeat and, thus, Christian populations their only relief.
Regarding ISIS, we have a clear Obama record for support of radical Islamic expansion, and we know why Europeans and Senate Republicans want to support ISIS as a way to topple Assad. But the dirty secret of these conjoined interests was laid bare this week by Putin, who exposed NATO ally Turkey's interest and, in so doing, the sinister U.S. interest.
By attacking ISIS' oil convoys, Putin decimated a huge chunk of its financial infrastructure. He ticked off Turkey because the president's son, Bilal Erdogan, is getting very wealthy brokering oil for ISIS and raised the question of why the U.S. had not shut off this oil flow over a year ago. Were we incapable or uninterested?
The ISIS attack in Paris showed that no corner of the world is safe from this monstrosity of a rogue state that has been allowed to grow into a metastasized cancer of the worst order. It has the best weapons, nearly unlimited cash, infrastructure and a stream of fresh recruits serviced by a steady flow of kidnapped Christian and Yazidi sex slaves, and the united might of the world is powerless to check it?
It is unthinkable that the U.S. would materially support ISIS, but that is exactly what the growing body of evidence suggests. Our ally, Turkey, is brokering its oil, and we are allowing it. We engage in nominal airstrikes and report the death of an occasional "high-value" target, but the ISIS reign of terror grows ever deeper and wider. By supporting ISIS, the president and congressional supporters of his policy are engaging in truly treasonous behavior. The unthinkable is here and, sadly, we have Putin to thank for exposing it and actually "degrading" ISIS. Beam me up, Scotty!
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