November 5, 2015

"Donald Trump will protect Israel, and brutally and quickly cut the head off of ISIS."

From Donald Trump's new radio ad.

68 comments:

Bob Ellison said...

How did Politico manage to write an entire essay about a radio ad without linking to the actual ad?

Even ABC managed to get that link.

Are these Politico people even pretending to be journalists? Were they all trained at Columbia?

Vet66 said...

After the recent cruising altitude destruction of the Russian passenger jet after departing Sharm-al-Sheikh in the Sinai, it is imperative that ISIS be decapitated before lax security at U.S. airports is used to accomplish the same attack in this country over a major American city. This is not a "JV team" we are dealing with and they are far from being on the run as Obama disingenuously said the were.

tim maguire said...

Hmmm...while I support stronger action against ISIS, and would not object to the mass beheading of its leadership, something about a populist pushing war by promising quick victory sounds strangely unpleasantly familiar.

Brando said...

"Hmmm...while I support stronger action against ISIS, and would not object to the mass beheading of its leadership, something about a populist pushing war by promising quick victory sounds strangely unpleasantly familiar."

Everyone hates ISIS and pledges to "destroy" them. It's not worth listening to until someone explains convincingly how they plan to do that. I'm not convinced "just drop some more bombs" is going to work on a group like that.

Now, beef up surgical strike teams and embedded assassins who will methodically eliminate every key member of that group? Now I'm listening!

Ann Althouse said...

"How did Politico manage to write an entire essay about a radio ad without linking to the actual ad?"

I changed the link to ABC.

I was looking at various sites and had trouble getting the ad to play on CNN.

tim maguire said...

Brando said...Everyone hates ISIS and pledges to "destroy" them

Except Obama, he doesn't seem too interested.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

One of the main disagreements between ISIS and Al Qaeda is that the ISIS leadership believes that Al Qaeda invested too much effort in attacking the West rather than focusing on the sectarian struggle in the ME. As much as possible the US should avoid involvement in civil or sectarian wars since they rarely represent any real threat to our interests. Hysteria over ISIS obscures our long term strategic interests just as hysteria over the communists in Vietnam obscured our long term interest, to contain China, a goal for which Vietnam is now an important ally.

Bobby said...

ARM,

"One of the main disagreements between ISIS and Al Qaeda is that the ISIS leadership believes that Al Qaeda invested too much effort in attacking the West rather than focusing on the sectarian struggle in the ME."

Source for this, please?

traditionalguy said...

How did he get a real live woman to read that with empathy and emotion. For Trumpies to add that missing ingredient is almost like cheating.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

The most obvious source is to look at what ISIS is actually doing, single-mindedly fighting a sectarian war on its own territory. This is very different and vastly more effective than Al Qaeda's strategy of antagonizing Western powers.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

From the Brookings Institute:

Yet even in its early days the group bickered with the Al Qaeda leadership. Zawahiri and Bin Laden pushed for a focus on U.S. targets while Zarqawi (and those who took his place after his death in 2006 from a U.S. air strike) emphasized sectarian war and attacks on Sunni Muslims deemed apostates, such as those who collaborated with the Shi’a-led regime.

traditionalguy said...

Morning Joe regulars were intrigued with Trump's Radio Ad being so traditional. They were admiring the strategy for 30 minutes, but refused to play it. They are an NBC screen.

Bay Area Guy said...

The idea of challenging ISIS more aggressively is a good one. At some point though Trump is gonna have to learn that over-heated rhetoric is often counter-productive.

Gusty Winds said...

The idea that Trump is going to cut the head of ISIS is appealing since that is exactly the comeuppance those bastards deserve.

And NOBODY, is going to believe Hillary! will do anything about ISIS, unless of course they are not interested in doing anything either.

Bob Ellison said...

Hey, AReasonableMan, why don't we just comment about the price of tea in China?

MayBee said...

How about the groups trying to block NBC from having Trump host SNL?

If they were basing their complaints on in-kind contributions, I would get it. But these are Hispanic groups who are accusing him of thought crimes and word crimes, and thus want him not allowed. So current left-ish.

MikeR said...

Is Trump planning to send a division or two into the ISIS territories? That is the way to defeat them - their strategy is based on holding territory - and I doubt anyone is going to support that.

Original Mike said...

"The most obvious source is to look at what ISIS is actually doing, single-mindedly fighting a sectarian war on its own territory. This is very different and vastly more effective than Al Qaeda's strategy of antagonizing Western powers."

Passengers of Flight 9268 could not be reached for comment.

traditionalguy said...

ISIL is up the creek without a paddle. They bombed Russian civilians, but are strangely gone silent after their first clam they brought it down.

Putin will kill them all.

Bobby said...

ARM,

That's one line from Daniel Byman's testimony, and it's not inaccurate, but you've taken it out of context.

Brian Fishman, formerly of West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, has framed the ideological divide as Zarqawi/ISI/Daesh believing that the the only way to save the umma is to purge it, while Zawahiri/AQ believe(d) that Muslims were not the problem, but that "apostate" institutions needed to be changed- this is the source of Byman's testimony and you see this manifested tactically in the difference between how AQ tends to control territory versus Daesh (i.e., the latter imposes far stricter controls over the population than AQ ever did).

This is a clear difference between the two organizations (observable even to those with minimal experience in the region and culture), and we can certainly expect that AQ would be more interested in attacking targets in the West than is Daesh, but it does not follow that Daesh is not at all interested in attacking targets in the West - that's a logical fallacy. And in fact, according to an Abu Mohammed al-Julani broadcast from May 2015, his Al-Nusra Front (the AQ affiliate in Syria) has been ordered by al-Zawahiri not to use Syria "as a launching pad to attack the US or Europe" so as to not jeopardize their current fight(s) against Daesh, Assad, the Kurds, et. al., so even this broad overview difference between Daesh and AQ does not comport at every level.

In other words, this stuff is really complicated.

Michael K said...

"One of the main disagreements between ISIS and Al Qaeda is that the ISIS leadership believes that Al Qaeda invested too much effort in attacking the West"

Was your source the Brookings guy who annoyed Fauxcahontas and was fired ?

Michael K said...

Good one, Bobby.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Bobby said...
In other words, this stuff is really complicated.


It is and it isn't. While I agree the ideology of the local combatants is something of a shifting target our interests in the region should not be. They should be clearly stated and then defended. Macho posturing runs counter to our interests more often than not. We have Bush Sr saying exactly this today in the papers.

Freder Frederson said...

After the recent cruising altitude destruction of the Russian passenger jet after departing Sharm-al-Sheikh in the Sinai, it is imperative that ISIS be decapitated before lax security at U.S. airports is used to accomplish the same attack in this country over a major American city.

You're going to look very stupid if it turns out it wasn't a bomb.

Bobby said...

ARM,

"While I agree the ideology of the local combatants is something of a shifting target our interests in the region should not be. They should be clearly stated and then defended. Macho posturing runs counter to our interests more often than not."

This I agree with... Although I strongly suspect that you and I would disagree on just what America's "clearly stated" interests should be as well as on how they should be defended.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Original Mike said...
"This is very different and vastly more effective than Al Qaeda's strategy of antagonizing Western powers."

Passengers of Flight 9268 could not be reached for comment.


There is some reasonable debate on whether Russia is either Western or a power.

They should be. They should have partnered with the EU and repaired their economy, but they are too stupid to recognize their own best interests.

Bob Ellison said...

It wasn't a bomb. You can rely on me for the truth of this statement.

Also, the United States of America is too stupid to recognize its own best interest in exploiting its vast reserves of oil and natural gas.

You can rely on my for the truth of this statement.

Robert Cook said...

"At some point though Trump is gonna have to learn that over-heated rhetoric is often counter-productive."

Trump has spent 30+ years in the public eye..when do you think that point will come?

Nichevo said...

Haven't the US and Britain said they think that it was a bomb, and are acting accordingly? I mean I'm all good with dead Russians and sad Vlad, but if true we can't let it happen to us.

Michael K said...

"they are too stupid to recognize their own best interests."

This is the old leftist (communist) concept of "False Consciousness" in which those stupid people think they know what they want. We cognoscenti know better and we will make them do what we know is best even if we have to kill millions of them.

You see it every day. The latest is the HuffPo reaction to the Houston election.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Putin will kill them all."

I do wonder if ISIS is so politically unsophisticated that they failed to understand the difference between Putin and Obama. Did they not understand they were handing a blank check to Putin? And, if ARM is correct about their think-globally-kill-locally vision, then how could ISIS possibly benefit from the destruction of the airliner?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Michael K said...
This is the old leftist (communist) concept of "False Consciousness"


This is true nonsense. States regularly fail to pursue their objective best interests, for a variety of reasons. Hoover allowing passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff act is a perfect example.

Brando said...

I'm not happy about the innocent people killed on that airliner (I know--bold stance to take) but the silver lining is we may soon find out just how someone like Putin handles it. In every previous dustup with terrorists (mostly Chechens) Putin has only seen his popularity go up while cracking down hard on his enemies. The Russians have an Asiatic way of dealing with these sorts of problems, and we Americans just don't have the stomach for it. I can't picture Putin spending years trying to nation-build in the Mideast, or fretting over whether the Arabs will like him. I do hope he decimates ISIS, effectively doing what we're simply not going to do.

Brando said...

"This is true nonsense. States regularly fail to pursue their objective best interests, for a variety of reasons. Hoover allowing passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff act is a perfect example."

But again, it is not always so clear cut what is in a state (or a constituency's) best interest. Most today would agree Smoot-Hawley was a bad idea, but then we're also now seeing every major candidate of the incumbent party railing against free trade. Clearly, they don't think trade is in their constitency's best interest, and while I disagree with them there's no way to objectively prove they're wrong.

Likewise, many Republicans who choose to oppose tax hikes--even where the people being taxed are some shadowy cabal of rich people!--might not be voting against their interests, if in their view taxing the rich would rebound against the poor and middle class. Perhaps they understand their interests more than their left wing betters.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Brando said...
I do hope he decimates ISIS, effectively doing what we're simply not going to do.


I predict that you are going to be very disappointed, based on their ineffectiveness in Afghanistan. And, they were a lot stronger back then. Chechnya is a very different case, after losing all their satellite states Russia was unlikely to let go of its own territory.


Rusty said...

AReasonableMan said...
Michael K said...
This is the old leftist (communist) concept of "False Consciousness"

This is true nonsense. States regularly fail to pursue their objective best interests, for a variety of reasons. Hoover allowing passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff act is a perfect example.


He's not talking about states. He talking about the left's belief that the state knows what is in the best interests of individuals. Tariffs are most commonly instituted to protect a specific industry. Not individuals.

Rusty said...

AReasonableMan said...
The most obvious source is to look at what ISIS is actually doing, single-mindedly fighting a sectarian war on its own territory. This is very different and vastly more effective than Al Qaeda's strategy of antagonizing Western powers.


Is that why they're invading Europe now?

Bobby said...

"I predict that you are going to be very disappointed, based on their ineffectiveness in Afghanistan. "

This is where I agree with ARM. Putin may very well adopt a very kinetic strategy in Syria (though he might not- I'm not an expert on Putin or Russia), and if he does, he'll almost certainly bring a world of pain down on Daesh (and, to be frank, al-Nusra Front and the Free Syria Army, and probably anyone who does not bandwagon with Assad's Alawite faction). Tens of thousands- maybe hundreds of thousands- of people in Syria will be killed, maimed or displaced, and what little property remains is going to be further transformed into rubble. This will please a lot of people here. But it won't destroy Daesh- it won't even defeat Daesh.

Even in Chechnya- which is Russia's backyard- the FSB estimates there's still over 500 active insurgents, and they occasionally hit a government target; Russia doesn't have the logistical capability to project the kind of power into Syria that they did in Chechnya, and their proxies- Assad's Alawites, Iran, Hezbollah- have objectives beyond simply "destroying anything that moves in Syria" and will therefore be less reliable partners than Russia would otherwise need.

I see it making a lot of Russians (and Americans, for that matter) happy to see them fighting back, but as a strategic matter, it's unlikely to be of any lasting victory.

Rosalyn C. said...

"Opportunistic smugglers have reportedly been helping small groups of ISIS fighters travel from southern Turkey into Europe for months, hidden in cargo ships filled with hundreds of refugees, according to an ISIS operative and several smugglers quoted by BuzzFeed in January. The ISIS operative claimed some 4,000 fighters were already waiting in Europe, intent on fulfilling ISIS's repeated threats to stage attacks around the globe. He said such attacks would be in retaliation for U.S.-led airstrikes against the group in Iraq and Syria." September 07 2015 http://www.ibtimes.com/refugee-crisis-isis-fighters-europe-islamic-state-extremists-exploit-refugee-flow-2085787

Michael K said...

"States regularly fail to pursue their objective best interests, for a variety of reasons. "

Says the leftist who thinks they they don't know their own best interests. One of your guys wrote a book titled, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" The Wall Street Journal even gave him a column for a while but nobody was interested.

Name the anti- free trade party today, will you ARM ? Some people never learn. Including Trump, I fear but I think he is just pandering to Democrats.

Lyle Smith said...

I think if ISIS showed up in Madison Meade would cut all their heads off too. He would know what he was doing too.

Brando said...

"I predict that you are going to be very disappointed, based on their ineffectiveness in Afghanistan. And, they were a lot stronger back then. "

They also had us providing aid and weaponry to their enemies there, and the USSR was in the midst of falling apart. Even still, they lost a fraction of what we lost in Vietnam.

But then, all that's assuming Putin tries to occupy Syria with conventional means. He may not try the same strategy, and he may find his client (Assad) stronger than his Afghan counterparts in the '80s.

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bobby said...

Brando,

"He may not try the same strategy, and he may find his client (Assad) stronger than his Afghan counterparts in the '80s."

See, I just don't think that's the case, though. Dr. Najibullah's government in Afghanistan- though widely opposed by both Islamist and tradionalist parts of the country- did maintain some small degree of legitimacy from both some Pashtunist sectors (he was Ahmadzai tribe, the largest Pashto tribe) and much of the cosmopolitan Tajiks and Uzbeks, and had a reasonably trained military force that at least was able to keep him in power for three years from Soviet withdrawl (Feb 1989) until the UN-brokered resignation (Apr 1992), and the regime itself doesn't fall to the Taliban for four more years.

Assad's Alawites, who are maybe 12% of the country and Russia's only allies organic to Syria, are trying to maintain control over a now very hostile population, primarily because at this point they're fighting for their lives; regardless of who topples them, the Alawites are going to face a bloodbath. There was a time when Assad's Baath Party enjoed the support of the secular Arabs and the Druze (among others), but those days are gone and it's unlikely they can get them back. At this point, the Russians can only hope to just kill a lot of Syrians and let Assad stay in power by default, not really re-establish any kind of stability. That's at least partly why you see them so heavily targeting the non-IS rebels- the more damage they do to them now, the better chance Assad has of staying in power if the West is ever successful at defeating IS. And the arrival of the Cubans suggests to me, at least, that Russia understands this problem.

Michael K said...

Good comments again, Bobby.

Sammy Finkelman said...

I don’t think it was a bomb. I think the plane was possibly brought down by induced mechanical failure – something, but not a bomb.

Maybe somebody creating tiny cracks in the right places, or something else designed to get the plane to come apart at high altitude or after 20 or so minutes of flight.

The investigators are being taunted that they won’t be able to figure out how the plane went down.

Specifically:

1) That investogators won’t be able to prove that ISIS didn’t do it – which, translated, means that they won’t be able to determine any other cause. (or, at least, if determined to be man-caused, find any guilty parties.)

and

2) That how it was done is being kept secret – which I don’t think means how they smuggled a bomb on to the plane, but means the technical means. (although that also sounds like a bluff)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/isis-offshoot-invites-russian-plane-crash-investigators-to-prove-it-wasnt-us-1446646925

“Take the crashed plane and search it, take the black box and analyze it,” the voice says. “Tell us what you found in your investigation, show us your expertise and prove, if you can, that it wasn’t us who took the plane down or how it fell.”

And it probably wasn’t exactly ISIS, if it was.

ISIS isn't known to be in Sharm el Sheik.

It could have been arranged for by Vladimir Putin, like the Moscow subway bombings in 1999, and (probably) the Charlie Hebdo, Denmark, and Paris train attacks, but we’ll see how things develop. Russia is actually not really fighting ISIS and to say that this is retaliation for what Russia is doing in Syria pretends that it is.

It is not just the Russian spy agency that should be on the list of suspects. Qatar could be playing a triple game, too.

Sammy Finkelman said...

Also from the Wall Street Journal article:

Wednesday’s claim noted that the jet crashed on the first anniversary of Sinai Province, then known as Ansar Beit Al Maqdis pledging allegiance to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Beit Al Maqdis is an exact Arabic translation of Beis ha mikdah - the Jewish temple. After they affiliatd with ISIS they changed their name because ISIS decided to de-emphasize its hatred of attack Israel. They've been very careful about that - and Jordan, too. And Turkey.

Sammy Finkelman said...

An ISIS operative gave an interview to Buzzfeed??

Better, an FSB (Russian spy agency) operative.

I mean, really?

mikee said...

Hey Brando, could we go for devastating ISIS instead of only decimating it?

Your way don't do much except eliminate 10% of them. My way kills so many it hurts the organization.

Words mean things.

Alex said...

Now THIS is a leader. Take that Dr. Carson.

grackle said...

In other words, this stuff is really complicated.

To dwell on our enemies’ many internecine spats is kind of interesting but ultimately irrelevant. So … they are argumentative and violent, even among themselves. So what? Here’s the simple version: They ALL want to kill us. So treat all of them as deadly enemies. The only way to deal with the ruthless is to be ruthless in return.

For ISIS a couple of battalions of Marines, without stupid Rules of Engagement, would do the trick in at most a couple of months and that’s moving relatively slowly and cautiously.

For those who say the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, etc., should do the fighting, know this: None of these ME allies are going to do our fighting for us. They will attempt to protect themselves from ISIS if ISIS attacks them, nothing more. To expect them to fight our fights for us is to abandon reality.

I do not believe Putin will do anything that will help US interests in the ME. He will prop up Assad and allow ISIS to grow in directions away from Syria and more into the mostly undefended Iraq – into the Obama-created power vacuum that is Iraq.

And for those, such as Obama, who are offering the opinion that Putin is entering a “quagmire” that will cause Putin much grief – know this:

Quagmires are for the militarily and politically constipated democratic Western nations, not totalitarian dictators like Putin. The Putins of the world do not have to worry about “quagmires.”

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Yeah, right! Ha ahahhahahahahahahaa.

narciso said...

well that is true, up to a point, any long term military expedition, is likely to cause friction, Chechnya was resolved in part by using proxies like the Kadyrovski and their
like minded local battalions like Zapad and Vostok, but one has seen the blowback in places like Domedovo airport, a certain train stop on the Moscow line,

Laslo Spatula said...

No one is serious about nothing until the Nukes fly.

I am Laslo.

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

But will Bruce Springsteen refer to President Trump as The Man Who Cut The Head Off ISIS? That will be important for Trump's second term.

Michael K said...

Oh, God. MacDonald is out.

David said...

What is Putin, a Superhero with powers to win every fight?The Russians are having problems with their supply chain and with maintenance in the difficult conditions. The Russians are not at American level in training, logistics, weapons and communication. They will have the same difficulties everyone has with ISIS, which means that a large effective mobile fighting force on the ground is necessary to have military success against them. It's not impossible, but whether the Russians possess the capability is a very open question. They will be more willing to sustain casualties in their own force, and will not shrink at "collateral damage" and noncombatant casualties. If Putin is smart, and I think he is, he will not set out hard for an objective he is not confident he can attain.

narciso said...

Volodya is considered to have dealt with an intractable insurgency, better, because fewer troops had to remain in the Caucasus, now that's a matter of debate, the events preceding
the Sochi olympics suggest otherwise,

jr565 said...

I thought he thought it was better to keep people like sadaam in power. Now he wants us to go in and take on ISIS? I'm fully down with it, but it's not the most consistent of positions.

BN said...

I just don't understand why we all have nuclear weapons if we're not going to use them.

I guess that's just me being a Roman at heart. Nobody else thinks that way, huh? i.e., using all the power at hand when upstarts get out of hand.

Luckily, I'm just a ghost on the internet, I guess. Don't have to be for real.

BN said...

Ooooohhh, Russia and China!

Sorry... I forgot.

Well, better we lose a few 100,000 young dudes than a few million all kinds of demographics from big cities. Right?


BN said...

Ok, that's going too far... even for me.

There is no answer, is there?

Robert Cook said...

"I just don't understand why we all have nuclear weapons if we're not going to use them."

We don't all have nukes, but enough of us do that--and here is why we're not using them, (so far)--most people in positions of power, whatever their other deficiencies and pathologies, understand that using nukes opens the door to suicidal global devastation.

Don't worry, BN...you'll probably get your wish eventually. Someone will have the hubris or stupidity (or insanity) to use nukes.

Robert Cook said...

"No one is serious about nothing until the Nukes fly."

You know...Double Negative would make a great band name! And their first album could be called "...until the Nukes fly."

Robert Cook said...

"They also had us providing aid and weaponry to their enemies there...."

You mean the people who are our enemies now!

Rusty said...

sammy.
Unil somebody with some expertise can examine the wreckage and run tests all we're going to get from the black boxes are what went on in the cockpit and what the instruments were recording.
If that.
It was ,as others have noted, myself included, a Russian built and maintained plane.
It may just have been an oportunity for ISIS to take credit even though they didn't have a hand in it.

Nichevo said...

Rusty, it was an Airbus. Also a death trap, but a Western European deathtrap. Maintained by Glug and Slug, no doubt - the Vodka Brothers. Also there was talk of an accident this plane had, and apparently others that have had similar accidents and were repaired by monkeys has failed before. Never accept any aircraft part or repair performed in Asia outside Japan or Singapore. Obviously, in this case, Russia is Asia.

Fly Boeing!

Nichevo said...

Does NTSB or any credible agency have a role or is this going to be some Russian Egyptian whitewash BS?