Army Bob: We must take serious and decisive action against ISIS

French Philosopher and writer Voltaire is credited with saying, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
The murders at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in France were designed to violate that rule. Charlie Hebdo is a publication that has spent more than six decades satirizing and insulting just about every group in France: Christians, Jews, elected officials, and yes, Muslims. This magazine has been attacked before as it insulted various groups; Jews and Christians took them to French court, while Muslims chose to attack.
This attack was well planned and executed. Traditionally, terrorists are successful in the infiltration and execution of the attack, but not in the exfiltration phase. This terrorist cell is either very professional or very lucky; they appeared to have a sound escape plan.
The longer we allow extreme Islam to maintain a base of operation in what they refer to as The Islamic State of Iraqi and Syria (ISIS), the better trained and equipped the terrorists will be.
We have stuck our heads up our fourth point of contact (our rear ends) for going on a year now, doing very little to stop ISIS.
ISIS has now printed its own currency, established an education system, military and civilian, and established its own courts, international trade policy and taxing system. ISIS is a magnet for the world’s young radical Muslims; each and every day we do nothing or very little to end this Islamic Caliphate we are charged interest from the blood bank of our military.
We could have stopped ISIS five months ago with an armored brigade task force, but we chose to put our faith in politically correct language, ignorance and symbolic actions. Today we are looking at an armored division, perhaps a corps, three to ten times the number of our brave noble warriors who will need to go into harm’s way and three to ten times the number who will pay the ultimate price for our freedoms.
The Islamic world needs to rebuke the ISIS Caliphate in the strongest most violent manner possible, but they continue do nothing, which emboldens tens of thousands of radicals to join the ISIS ranks. The Islamic world continues to trade with, fund, ignore and tacitly approve of ISIS; they will condemn ISIS in public but privately support them.
President Bush 43 was roundly rebuked by the media for saying “you are with us or with the terrorists;” well friends and neighbors, he was correct. It is time we dust off the Bush Terrorism Counteraction Plan and go to work.
ISIS is a nation; if any other nation were doing as openly and boldly what ISIS is we would have taken decisive action. It takes months, not years, to prepare a person for jihad, months, not years, to turn a devout Muslim into a radical jihadist, months, not years, to indoctrinate an Islamic Kamikaze. No other nation in the last two decades has been as openly a threat to our way of life as the nation of ISIS.
Three months ago the estimate was just over a hundred Americans were training with ISIS; France has over seven hundred. We may never know just how many Americans are currently training in the Islamic Caliphate, but we can wager it is many more than one hundred; reinforce that number with those from allied nations free to travel to the United States and we are looking at a bloody problem.
Nothing succeeds like success and the successful attack on Charlie Hebdo is a recruiting tool of jihad. The French will not win at this point; if they kill the Jihadists, they are martyrs, if they get away, they are heroes. The Boston Marathon bombers are heroes in the Islamic world; the spin is that they stood toe to toe with 1000 American police and military making a glorious stand for Islam. The 1000 number is actually the total number of police and military in the greater Boston area, involved or not. This kind of hyperbole continues to help ISIS build their ranks.
Islamic terrorists have an approval rating among the followers of Muhammad in devout Muslim countries in the 90% range; as long as the terrorists’ brutal, savage actions are rationalized as heroic and justified and as long as they are successful, we will continue to live in fear.
Victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is a bastard; we must defeat ISIS or see it produce hundreds of thousands of more” children.” Time is on the side of ISIS, inaction is on the side of ISIS, apathy is on the side of ISIS. Conservatives and liberals will say it is not our problem, but it will be and a serious one; we need to pull our heads out of our fourth point of contact (rear ends) and deal seriously with ISIS.