Point-CounterPoint: Think Again About War with ISIS by Rich Levy

Another bigfoot invasion by America will do nothing to diminish the embrace of religious slaughter by some in Syria and Iraq. With Iraq in a shambles and 150,000 civilian dead as a result of our last attempt to save the mid-East from itself, America is seen not as the savior of the Garden of Eden, but more as a world-wide version of the Ferguson cops. But ISIS isn’t an unarmed kid or a sign wielding protester; it is shooting back at us with the very weaponry we sent to “save” Iraq. It is insanity to dive back into this viper’s nest with a ground war, utterly heedless of any lesson of the last ten years, regardless of how much oil they sit upon.

Why the relentless drumbeat to war? Who benefits? Certainly not the people of the mid-East. Not the impoverished and under-educated Americans we send to fight on our behalf while we go freedom shopping. America will not benefit as long as our infrastructure continues to rot, and our schools remain third rate, while pallets of taxpayers’ money fill the holds of C-17 Globemasters to be shipped off to whomever Republican retreads and their Tea party usurpers assure us are the next founding fathers, battling the Hitler of the month.

Posturing warriors benefit. So long as Lindsey Graham needs a vote, he’s flexing a little military muscle. Likewise, John McCain will be treated like a military expert by lazy media stars; McCain learned everything he knows about military strategy and geopolitics in a prison camp; without imminent war,

McCain fades like a vague recollection. War profiteers will benefit; there’s no shortage of Halliburtons and Cheneys and their allies by appetite, in search of their next blood meal.

If the President holds back, the opposition “finds” feckless cowardice, if he drops the hammer on ‘em he’s a warmonger; the pathological opposition wants only to see him in the middle of war, with all of its nightmarish unintended consequences. The GOP has had to swallow whole the contempt in which they and their recent administration is held, and they crave the redemption of turnabout at any cost. Even at the cost of war? Yes, of course. They’ll axe your health care, hype Benghazi forever, take the nation to default, and leave the offices of judges and ambassadors unfilled; these are just tools to get what they want. Fear is their medium by which to seize power. Of course, by war.

Joining with other nations to neutralize a real, but limited threat, we can only succeed through serious, cautious determination. Wildfire fear mongering, as we have seen recently and repeatedly, incinerates progress; it is the lowest form of inspiration, the cheapjack cousin of leadership, regardless of who does it. There have always been the brutally power-hungry; there have always been some ignorant adrenaline junkies who will follow them. That grim human flaw which animates ISIS must not be allowed to become the model for American foreign policy.

Rich Levy met candidate John F. Kennedy at the age of five, and at fifteen became politically active in the 1968 elections. He has been in the marine trades for 40 years, and lives in Dorchester county with his wife and dogs. He enjoys music, boating, and motorcycling, and is a member of the volunteer fire company. Rich avidly follows news and politics as an active liberal Democrat – which, in his opinion, is the only kind of Democrat to be.