Question: Is the US response to the Islamic State (ISIL), announced by Pres. Obama and being carried out in bombing raids in Iraq and possibly Syria, disproportionate? What? The question has never been asked. Why not? Because no-one cares.
Jack Cohen
If you are the US and fighting a ruthless terrorist enemy like ISIL, then who cares about disproportionate response. We will kill them with whatever weapons we’ve got, even if they have no defense against it. It’s like Joan Rivers said, “if missiles were being fired at New York from New Jersey, we’d flatten New Jersey.” The only country in the world that is accused of “disproportionate force” in responding to a ruthless terrorist enemy is …Israel. You may ask yourself why, and it isn’t hard to come up with an answer.
Here is an excerpt from PM David Cameron’s speech of today to the British people following the beheading of a British subject, David Haines, by ISIL, “We are a peaceful people. We do not seek out confrontation but we cannot ignore this threat to our security…..We cannot just walk on by if we are to keep this country safe. We have to confront this menace,” he said. In fact exactly the same statement could have been said, and in effect was said, by PM Netanyahu about Hamas. This has almost nothing to do with the fact that Hamas are largely Palestinian Sunnis and ISIL are largely Syrian and Iraqi Sunnis (plus a motley crew of foreign Sunni extremists). Their objectives are the same, to wipe out all non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East, including Yazidis, Kurds, Christians and Jews, as well as Muslim heretics such as the Shia and the Alawis of Syria (including Pres. Bashar Assad and his regime).
There are some unexpected outcomes of the success of the Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East. First, The Arab League has cohered around opposition to the terrorist IS, which threatens all the established Arab States in the region, notably Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. They have joined up with the US to form a coalition to fight IS. The US and UK are not prepared to put “boots on the ground,” so they will carry out the disproportionate air campaign, while the Kurdish Pesh Merga and the Iraqi Arabs will hopefully do the ground work (with some training). One way or another with disproportionate force the IS will be destroyed, But it can’t be destroyed only by proportionate force, using only the same weapons in the same quantity that they have, what a stupid idea.
Another surprise is that Qatar has joined the Arab “moderates” in agreeing to fight ISIL. That means that they had reversed themselves and are no longer going to support ISIL. But, what about Hamas, are they still going to support Hamas? If so then the US Administration must put pressure on them to stop their support. The only way to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians is to take Hamas out of the picture, and their only major donor of funds at the moment is Qatar.
Jack Cohen, Netanya, Israel
Jack Cohen: Born in London, UK, lived in suburban Washington DC area for 30 years, moved to Israel in 1996. He has a web site: Comment From Israel
Jack Cohen
