If you attack the United States of America or our allies then we will chase you to the ends of the Earth and follow you to the gates of hell where we will then proceed to engage you with limited air strikes and attempt to contain you within a predefined time frame with no actual boots on the ground… punk.
America will not tolerate a news anchor who makes up fabricated tales of grandeur describing harrowing incidents of taking enemy fire when no such incidents actually occurred. You might consider being our President someday… but being our news anchor is simply out of the question. We have to TRUST our news anchors.
1) There is no such thing as a “mean drunk”. If he is mean to you when he drinks then he is just mean. The alcohol simply unchains the man.
2) A man should never hit or push a defenseless woman. He doesn’t hit you because you treat him poorly. He does not do this because you get “up in his face”. He hits you because he is an asshole.
3) Having a bad childhood is not an excuse for being a bad adult. Good people take bad experiences from the past and turn them into something positive. Bad people take bad experiences from the past and turn them into excuses.
4) If he hits you once then he will hit you again. Apologies are just intermissions from the violence.
5) Trying to fix an abusive husband is like trying to turn a ticking time bomb into a lovely bouquet of roses. It is only a matter of time before the whole thing just blows up in your face.
6) If you blame yourself after your husband physically attacks you then congratulations… you have just become his psychological puppet. He is using your own empathy against you.
7) You can tell your children whatever you want. You can attempt to teach your kids how to be wonderful people. Your children will ultimately learn how to treat a woman by watching how your husband treats you.
8) If you are ever even briefly frightened for your life because of your husband then he should never know where you sleep going forward.
9) There is never a good excuse to stay. Issues with money and children will work themselves out over time. You should not be afraid of the unknown. The known in your life is frightening enough.
10) Nobody intentionally marries an abusive husband. You are not “just like one of those women”. You ARE one of those women.
I watched a mixed martial arts fight recently which pitted a large muscled-up brute against a scrawny little opponent. A loud guffaw was released from the crowd as the two fighters stepped into the ring. I thought MMA fighters had to be from the same weight class but this was clearly not the case for this fight. I leaned over to my friend and whispered, “This little dude is about to be destroyed.” The big man started the fight with a flurry of punches. The little guy kept retreating when approached and continued to run in circles around the octagon. The big fighter proceeded to chase his opponent while constantly swinging and missing. This continued for the first two rounds. In the final round, the big guy became frustrated. His arms had become tired and he looked exhausted. Suddenly, the little fighter came in with a right hook and landed it right on the other guy’s chin. The big man fell to his knees and the little guy pounced. The fight ended with the smaller fighter sitting on the big guy’s chest and pounding away at his defenseless skull. The big guy was powerful and aggressive. He was determined and he was fearless. But most importantly… the big fighter was dumb. The smaller guy did not have to be as powerful because he was patient and he was smart.
This fight that I just described is very similar to the United States and its current war on terror. We are fighting in a manner that is profoundly stupid. We initially came out flailing wildly after we were blindsided on 9/11. We were using an old and tired fighting tactic against a new enemy. We are now becoming frustrated and exhausted while our enemy circles us. We know deep down that we are losing but we seem bewildered. If we don’t change our fighting tactics soon, we run the risk of losing the fight.
In order to understand this concept, you need to look at the age of the typical Islamic militant. The average age of an ISIS fighter in Iraq right now is just twenty-two years old. Just think about that for a second. This means that our current enemy was approximately eight years old when the 9/11 attacks took place. An angry American public cried for revenge after the twin towers fell back then. Our strategy became focused on getting Osama bin Laden and blowing up terrorists anywhere that we could find them. The United States couldn’t have cared less what the average eight-year-old Muslim child was thinking when this fight started.
We launched our counterattack with drone strikes and hellfire missile while our enemy launched a new war with false promises and propaganda. We provided our enemies with the ammunition for their war with our mea culpa regarding mistreatment at the Abu Ghraib prison. We fed into our enemy’s narrative by attacking innocent wedding parties with predator drones. We supported brutal dictators in their region because it served our best interest. Hell… we should have just printed up their propaganda pamphlets for them and dropped them from our own airplanes. In summary, we did not give the average eight-year-old Muslim child living in the Middle East back then any reason whatsoever to trust us.
It is much easier to prevent an innocent young person from becoming radicalized than it is to return this person back to the civilized world once they have already converted. We cannot continue to fight these battles on the wrong front. Most conventional wars in our past had a leader whom we could directly focus on. If you toppled that leader then you won the war. The war we find ourselves engaged in today is not with any one military leader or country. The civilized world is at war today with an idea… and that idea is called radical Islam. This war will not be won with military power alone. This war will either be won or lost in the arena of ideas. We have to start fighting intelligently or otherwise this smaller opponent will soon be sitting directly on our chest while pounding in our skull.
The best way to fight propaganda is with counter propaganda. Of course these brutal Islamic militants need to be killed… but even more importantly, their message needs to be silenced. We need real leadership to rally Muslim countries to counter radial Islam. These radical Islamic militants need to be defeated by good Muslim people willing to fight for what is right. Jordan and the United Arab Emirates would be willing to lead the way if the United States would offer real leadership and support. The United States should be willing to provide tactical support and equipment. Our non-Muslim allies could assist as well but the main fighting on the ground must be from a groundswell of Muslims willing to attack other Muslims. This will counter our enemy’s own propaganda if they are defeated at the hand of other Muslims. We are never going to win the hearts and minds of this current batch of Islamic militants on the battlefield today. Every single one of these Islamic extremists must eventually be eliminated.
The most important role for the United States going forward is to focus on the next batch of young and impressionable Muslim children that are currently being brought into this world. We have to show them the goodness that is the United States of America. We have to work with local Muslim leaders regarding education and prevention of future radicalization. Most importantly, we have to conduct ourselves in a manner where we do not leave these children with the impression that we might be the evil bad guys that our enemies describe. We have to be patient and we have to be smart. We have to stop chasing our opponent endlessly around the octagon. We have to study our opponent and adapt accordingly.
It would be a glaring omission to finish discussing my fighting analogy without even mentioning the “bolo punch”. You do know what the “bolo punch” is, right? The bolo punch is a fighting technique in which a fighter will move one arm in a large circular motion in order to distract the opponent from the other hand. While the opponent is focusing all of his attention on the movement of the one hand, the fighter will then use the other hand to blindside the opponent. Right now, ISIS is the circling hand that is getting everyone’s attention… but Iran is sitting quietly with the other clenched fist. Iran has a vast stockpile of enriched uranium and they have just developed an intercontinental ballistic missile according to recent reports. The mullahs of Iran have already vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. ISIS may be “small potatoes” compared to what might actually lie ahead in this fight.
If we are not careful… the world may soon receive the mother of all bolo punches.
The time for training camp is now over.
The gloves have come off.
It is time to learn how to fight properly in this new world order or we are soon going to get knocked the hell out.
Raif Badawi is a popular blogger in Saudi Arabia who was recently sentenced to 1000 lashes for insulting Islam. A stranger takes him outside each day and whips him 50 times near a mosque as punishment for speaking his mind. As tragic as this unjust court ruling may be, I just can’t help but notice that it has given birth to one of the strangest sounding job titles in the history of mankind. I challenge anyone out there to name a more ridiculous sounding job position than that of a “blogger flogger”.
I am happy to announce that the United States of America has now finally won its war against terrorism. The strategy used to accomplish this goal was simply brilliant. The civilized world struggled unsuccessfully for years to rid the world of terrorism by getting down into the trenches and battling insurgents on their own home turf. We soon discovered that a new terrorist would pop up just as quickly as we would take down an old one. It seemed as though we were playing a never-ending game of “terrorist whack-a-mole.”
New leadership ushered in a new era of ideas. We had been fighting this battle on the wrong front. The United States redirected its efforts to pinpoint the actual root of the problem. Our leaders eventually determined that the only real way to rid the planet of terrorism would be to actually attack the word “terrorism.” Major news organizations got onboard and announced that violent Islamic terrorists would now be referred to as “rebel forces.” Terrorist attacks themselves would now be referred to as “crimes.” We stole a page directly from “the artist formerly known as Prince.” The enemy became “the rebel forces formerly known as terrorists.”
This new tactic regarding the global war on terror proved to be very successful almost immediately. Terrorism statistics began to show a significant decline. We finally had these rebel forces on the run. There was obviously a sharp uptick in local crime during this same time period, but these petty crimes could be dealt with on an individual basis by local law enforcement.
The good news is that the global war on terrorism has finally ended. Terrorism is now gone for good. The bad news is that there are still large organized groups of severely religious gentlemen who are rapidly gaining power by overthrowing entire government entities with the long-term goal of eventually removing your head from the rest of your body. Perhaps we need to announce a new global war on whatever the hell you want to call this.
Pro Tip: A tax refund is not a present from your government. When you receive a tax refund… you are simply getting paid back for a mandated interest-free loan. Often times, this money is not even paid back to the same person who was forced to loan it away in the first place. This process is more commonly referred to as “stealing”.
Just a few weeks ago, President Obama used Yemen as the perfect example of success regarding his recent foreign policy decisions. Yemen now has no functioning government whatsoever and is currently being run by terrorists. I just can’t wait to see what kind of diplomatic successes that he has planned for us regarding Iran.
Chris Kyle was the most lethal military sniper in the history of the United States. He became highly decorated after four tours of duty in Iraq while he recorded up to one hundred and sixty confirmed kills. A very popular movie was just released out of Hollywood depicting his life story. If you listen to some of the people on the far left, you quickly realize that they have a far different perception of Chris Kyle than the person portrayed in the movie. Film director Michael Moore implied that Chris Kyle is a coward and was the invader of another sovereign nation. Actor Seth Rogan compared the movie about Chris Kyle to a fictional piece of Nazi propaganda. Many on the left argue that the people of the United States military were unwelcome invaders during the start of the Iraq War in 2003. They laugh when looking back at Vice President Dick Cheney’s speculation that the people of the United States military “would be greeted as liberators”. They perceive Chris Kyle as an unwelcome invader in an unjustified war. This is an overly simplistic view of a very complex story.
In order to understand the complicated relationship between the United States and Iraq, one really has to go all the way back to 1982. Islamic extremists had already overthrown the Shah of Iran. Saddam Hussein feared that radical Islamic ideas would start spreading rapidly through his predominantly Shi’ite population. Hussein then invaded Iran and attempted to overthrow the new radical Islamic government. Two years into the Iraq-Iran War, Saddam Hussein was clearly losing. President Ronald Reagan was growing concerned about Iran’s repeated success on the battlefield. You have to remember that this was just two years after the Iranian hostage crisis. Iran was clearly our greater potential enemy during this period. America decided that Iraq would be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The United States began to supply the Iraqi military with communication and radar equipment. Saddam Hussein started receiving billions of dollars in aid from the United States. The U.S. military provided intelligence and advice to the Iraqi military including how to arm itself via third-party weapons dealers. The citizens of Iraq could see that the United States government was clearly in Saddam Hussein’s corner.
Did you ever see that old Frankenstein movie when the crazy doctor starts yelling, “It’s alive”? Well, that is pretty much what the United States government should have yelled after we propped up the President of Iraq. The United States created this monster and then completely lost control of it. Over the next eight years, Saddam Hussein would rule over his people with a ruthless iron fist. His citizens lived in constant fear of his wrath. He kept most of his nation’s wealth for himself as his people lived in abject poverty. During the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against his own Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq. It has been estimated that up to 182,000 people were killed in this genocide. The United States turned a blind eye to the plight of the Iraqi people during this time because it was not in our own country’s best interest. Now, let us all check in on our Frankenstein’s monster by fast-forwarding to 1990.
War has its costs, and for Saddam Hussein the cost of his prolonged war with Iran included a 30-billion-dollar debt to the tiny adjacent oil-rich country of Kuwait. Saddam asked Kuwait to forgive this debt, which Kuwait promptly refused. Saddam deeply resented this refusal considering his perception that Kuwait had historically always been a part of Iraq. Using the weaponry and power granted to him by the United States government, Saddam Hussein suddenly invaded and quickly took over Kuwait… much to the surprise of the international community. Within the course of just a few days, Saddam Hussein suddenly flipped in his role from a trusted ally to public enemy number one. The United States started encouraging the Iraqi people to rise up against their brutal dictator.
After a few months of failed negotiations, the first Gulf War had begun. The United States military along with its allies moved in and quickly pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Within just a few days, allied tanks were blazing at full speed across southern Iraq while the so-called “elite Iraqi Republican Guard” were sent fleeing up north back to Baghdad. Many of the citizens across Iraq greeted the United States military as liberators. Citizens cheered in the streets as the allied tanks rolled past them. The Iraqi people started to do what the United States had encouraged them to do… they rose up against their brutal dictator. Trusting in the United States government would eventually prove to be a fatal error.
Iraqi military resistance was much lighter than almost anyone expected. Most of the Iraqi military would surrender almost immediately when encountered. It became obvious that Saddam Hussein would be quite easy to topple. At this point, President George Herbert Walker Bush had to make a quick choice. Would he want to push into Baghdad and remove the head from the snake? There was concern that a leadership vacuum in Iraq would quickly lead to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the region. The choice was suddenly made to withdraw our troops from Iraq and leave Saddam Hussein in power. The Iraqi citizens who rose up to join our fight against Saddam Hussein would later be slaughtered. The deaths of these brave Iraqi rebels would not soon be forgotten. Let us now jump ahead once again to 2003.
The World Trade Center has now fallen. Saddam Hussein has already initiated multiple failed assassination attempts on our current President’s father as an act of revenge for the previous Iraqi invasion. The United States military has already been at war for two years with terrorists in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Colin Powell sits before the United Nations Security Council giving the most famous speech of his life. He told the world that Saddam Hussein possessed extremely dangerous weapons of mass destruction that could be used for an imminent attack. In retrospect, it would seem that the evidence presented that day was likely falsified and presented to the CIA by an Iraqi citizen with a brilliantly devious plan to remove his brutal dictator from power.
Do I believe that President Bush and Secretary Powell believed everything that they were telling the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? I have never been given any reason not to believe them. But I do believe that President Bush was just looking for a reason to finish the job that his father admittedly failed to do. I think that President Bush was in a very vulnerable position to “take the bait”. Just recently, some new evidence has come to light indicating that there may indeed have been some actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, given the leadership vacuum and growth of radical Islamism created in the invasion’s wake… I do suspect that most historians will eventually agree that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a tactical mistake.
It is within the context of this history that you must view the current mindset of the average Iraqi citizen. The average Iraqi citizen does not fear the American military. The Iraqi people did not greet the American military as liberators the second time around because they justifiably did not trust the American government. Saddam Hussein had two male sons who had walked around the streets of Iraq absolutely terrorizing and repeatedly torturing them. When Saddam and his evil offspring were finally put to death, military commanders felt the need to broadcast these images throughout Iraq due to the understandable distrust of the American government. As the Iraq War dragged on, most of the opposition that our troops were facing was not from the Iraqi citizens… we were fighting Islamic extremists who were crossing the borders and engaging us from other countries like Iran and Syria.
There are three factors that should be considered when any country engages in a war: the military, the government, and the citizens. The United States military has always been our strongest and most admirable variable. It is not a soldier’s job to decide if we go to war or why we go to war. It is not the soldier’s responsibility to empathize with the people who are trying to kill him. Chris Kyle was not an enemy to the Iraqi people. He was a hero to the citizens in the United States and the citizens in Iraq. Most of the people of Iraq are just like many of us. They are afraid of Islamic extremism. They are highly educated and cultured. Many of them believe in Jesus Christ and pray to him regularly. Chris Kyle volunteered to go half way across the world to protect these people along with his fellow soldiers. Meanwhile, Michael Moore and many of the rest of us stayed over here to safely judge his actions from a distance.
The second factor that should be considered when a country engages in war is its government. Our government has repeatedly let down the people of Iraq. The only thing worse than not helping a group of people is when you only half-help them. You eventually set these people up for an even greater failure than if you never even got involved in the first place. Large numbers of peaceful citizens around the globe do not hate the United States because we are rich or because we are “freedom loving”… they hate us because our government constantly screws around with their country’s infrastructure and then abruptly abandons them. Our government often props up brutal dictators because it serves our own personal interest. Just recently, our government was led by President Obama in pulling completely out of Iraq and abandoning any of our previous commitments that we made to its people. Hard fought military gains were simply handed over to our enemy. This action was executed with very little protest from the American people. This leads me to the third and most important factor when dealing with a nation’s war: its citizens.
The citizens of the United States are our country’s “weakest link”. Our enemies fear our government and they most certainly fear our military… but our enemy understands that the true weakness of the United States lies within the civilian population. They know that we don’t have the stomach for a prolonged fight. They realize that we lack the same intestinal fortitude that they do over the long haul. They know that we are intellectually lazy and easily distracted. We allow our government to run amok and we tend to mindlessly defend our political leaders. Our enemies will prolong conflicts instead of simply trying to win them because they know that American citizens will eventually lose their resolve over time. Our government attempts to mitigate this risk by not showing us the body bags or the flag draped coffins on our televisions.
The citizens of the United States do not want to constantly hear about the war overseas because it makes them feel badly in general.
We have become distracted and uninformed as a nation.
We have become hesitant in supporting the act of doing the right thing in the world simply because it is right.
We are blurring the previously distinct lines between good and evil.
We are becoming more godless as a people.
I have met the true enemy of the Iraqi people and it is not Chris Kyle nor any members of the United States military.
I have met the true enemy of the Iraqi people… and the enemy is us.
Eight people who recently wrote letters to President Obama detailing personal stories about their own lives have reportedly been invited to sit with the First Lady tonight during the State of the Union address. President Obama plans to address these stories individually during his speech. Hmmm… I wonder if any of these literary scholars wrote inspiring tales of self-reliance in which they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps without any assistance from the Federal government? I guess we will have to tune in tonight to know for sure… but I am just DYING to find out!