What Will We Do When Baghdad Falls?

We need more than a genie on a flying carpet to get out of this mess.  Baghdad, if you've looked at the latest maps of the IS progression, is surrounded.

Despite assuring us Baghdad will not fall, circumstances make that assumption suspect. We know the Iraqi army isn't up to snuff.  We know more and more suicide bombings are occurring within the green zone and we know that the surrounding towns have had their water supply shut off. They will fall like dominoes. All IS has to do is wait.  Keep nibbling around the edges.

The coalition which was such a triumph a few weeks ago seems to have disappeared. Is anyone other than the President calling the shots in this conflict?

If we weren't going to fight this war to win it we should have stayed out of it.  Sorry aid workers and journalists.  You go into dangerous territory at your own risk. Some will tell us IS is not a risk to our national security because they have neither the weaponry nor the means to get to our shores.  Perhaps they don't if you're looking at them sending an army.

But if you look at our porous border, and our malcontents they are very much a threat.  It is obvious whoever is leading their strategic planning knows what they're doing.  I wonder where they were trained.  Because of that I don't believe for one minute that somewhere within their ranks plans for doing serious damage to the U.S. are not in the works.  No matter whether or not we hear chatter.

What is equally as troublesome is the political process that is buzzing around us.  Business as usual.  Dirty campaigns.  Republicans still without a message and a President more intent on reaping the praises of a Gwyneth Paltrow than working with his generals on how to defeat this enemy.

It seems as if to him it's a game he didn't want to play and is now bored by it.  It's not going his way and nobody else wants to play by his rules. So he walks away from it leaving those we promised to help hanging.

I'm very sad at what we've allowed ourselves to become.  Disinterested, disrespected and inept. Whats even more sad is I see no way for matters to change for at least two more years.  By then who knows what will be left. If anything.  Anywhere.

Nobel Finally Got It Right

After having awarded the Peace Prize to Barack Obama on the strength of his rhetoric, the Noble committee has finally gotten it right. And how fitting.

 For Malala Yousafzay, who you remember was shot in the head by the Taliban for being an advocate for girls rights to an education, nothing could be more fitting.

And Kailash Satyarthi, long an advocate for children's rights. Again, how fitting.  It is the children, after all, who will have to sort out the mess the so called adults have imposed upon the world. Hopefully they will gain the wisdom made possible by people like these to make it right.

Let us learn from this too.  That education is so very necessary.  Not what we're giving youth today where it's driven by ideology but rather education based on fact. Note too that the recipients are from countries hostile to one another.  That they've put their faith in the young is telling.

I hope their message is the one that finally resonates rather that the allure presently aimed at the disenfranchised youth to join in bloody jihad in order to promote a vagrant vision of their "religion".

It is for others that these two speak.  It is for others to take up the cause and move it forward.  The idea, while so much the same, is for such a diametrically opposed end.  Freedom, education, equality rather than submission, ignorance and subservience.

President Obama should return his Peace Prize for he neither earned it upon accepting it nor deserves it now.  Actually, he should have declined it in the first place.  He didn't and that act told us, had we thought about it, about his character.  When it should have been about selflessness it was all about self.  And remains so today.

Personally I prefer and applaud the selfless.

Why Is Turkey Playing Chicken?

I have to take back everything positive I said about Turkey a few posts ago.  And wonder why they're playing chicken with us with the very existence of Kobani at stake.

Is there no human decency left in the world?  Come on people, sort out your territorial issues later.  The peril of leaving IS run amok is far worse than who has possession of a piece of land - the Turks or the Kurds!

After all, Kobani is within spitting distance of the Turkish border.  They even have tanks at the ready yet they insist on playing political games.  If they send in ground troops so must we.  True.  I  don't disagree with that but they are there, we aren't and the city is hanging on by its fingernails!

They want a no fly zone.  We won't order it up. Heck we won't even order up enough air strikes to dissuade IS as they keep moving that black flag ever closer to the center of Kobani.  Turkey understands the risk yet they're willing to risk an increased IS presence because they worry about the Kurds, at some time, going back to demanding their own country.  Well, there may be nothing for any of them to claim if they don't quit playing games.

They also need to realize and accept that the U.S. effort is being micro managed by an abysmally unqualified individual and that isn't going to change for at least two years.

Biden was right even if unpolitical in saying our allies are a large part of the problem, including Turkey. They may not be letting people cross into Syria at the moment to join IS but they're doing a far cry less in keeping IS away from their border.  Never mind the human cost paid by thousands of people who want no part of this mess.

We're stuck with Obama for two more years.  The world doesn't have to be.  It's time for them to put aside their own petty interests and collate among themselves to get the job done.

If for no other reason than it's the decent and humane thing to do.  Don't follow in our footsteps.  To do so is to fall prey to the most inhumane enemy the world has faced in decades. Perhaps we can't do better.  I have higher hopes for the rest of the world.

Gray Matter

I'm going to change the subject today.  To a degree.  Instead of writing about the never ending war in the middle east I'm going to write about the never ending war on aging.

This week end seemed to be filled with too much FOX and while doing so I noticed something really weird.  Considering I'm never going to see 70 again, perhaps it's because I've learned over time there are some things that need not be changed because if they are it's not always for the best. It's self defeating.

Hair.  What's wrong with gray hair?  Especially on television personalities? Some of the most distinguished people in the world have gray hair.  President Obama does.  As with most Presidents it comes with the job. There's nothing wrong with that except one tends to age faster than normal. Stress and all that.

Lets, however, look at news anchors and reporters.  Forget about the women.  Dye is in their DNA and with modern technology it looks pretty natural.  But the men!  Wowser! Bad toups and even worse color jobs.

Fortunately there are some who haven't fallen into the trap.  Perhaps they have more progressive management.  Take Anderson Cooper. He's been gray as long as I can remember. Scott Pelly certainly looks good.  Even Brian Williams has a touch of gray showing.  You know, the distinguished kind.

But the FOX fellows. We'll do bad toups first.  George Will is letting the gray peek out below his not-a-hair-out-of-place topper.  Then there is the worst of the worst, Pat Cadell along with his dyed to match facial hair.

John Roberts used to be a nice salt and pepper then nearly white and now back to dark something or other. Bob Beckel is more often a red head then not. Even Shepard Smith shows up at work with a decidedly red tinge to his hair.  What is about men's hair coloring that turns it red?  Women got rid of the laughable blue look years ago!

Why do they do it? Do they realize it looks so unnatural it's laughable? Do they think they'll lose their jobs if they look their age?  Actually with the falsified color they do!

I don't mean to come down extra hard on FOX.  It's just they are the ones I was watching as this observation penetrated my conscious.  I'm sure there are many, many others.

It used to be it mattered more what was in your head than what's on it.  That should include what color it is too.

As for me, I'm one of the lucky ones.  With dishwater blond hair what gray I have is pretty well intermingled. The  biggest changes I've noticed is that it's thinning and getting curly.  Please, don't let that give the media moguls any more ideas on tonsorial splendor. There's no shame in hair today ~ gone tomorrow.  To which my other half will attest.

Is ISIS Safe From Itself?

I listened to interview with a criminal profiler last night where she was explaining what type of person is actually capable of beheading another.  Especially with a knife the way Jihad John goes about it.

On the positive side, there aren't many though ISIS seems to have more than it's share.  I suggest that's because they have attracted an army of the disenfranchised, misfits  and mentally unbalanced of not only their region but of the world.

It's scary that some do live among us, note the recent beheading in Oklahoma.  She explained that the process itself is not easy when using nothing but a knife, no matter how sharp. I do wonder too if the victims we've been witness to on television have been drugged to some degree.  Granted they are surrounded by armed madmen but the expressions seem void, blank and not even a twitch of resistance. Perhaps it's a state of self hypnosis knowing what's coming.

To do this, however, it was explained that one must be basically dead inside.  No conscience.  No emotion other than the thrill,  the high gotten from the act.  It's hard to imagine such a void in a human body.

It was also explained that the recruiting sites on the Internet don't cater to that side of ISIS and few that join expect to be engaging in that end of it.  It's hard to understand what the appeal may be when this is the only side we see.

The leadership of ISIS, however, has it's group of maniacal thugs and uses them well for their purposes.  What happens, though, when the bombings don't cease and the military action escalates and most importantly when they run out of western  and non-compliant captives?  What will they do to satisfy the blood lust of their self-cultivated monsters?

It would of course be just if they turned against those very ones who have enabled them.  It would only be better if one of those doing the beheading was a woman and she was let loose against al-Baghdadi.

I'll settle for one of the men though.  I cannot imagine any woman, any woman, being capable of such unspeakably cruel violence.