ISIS has beheaded another American:
The Islamic militant group ISIS has beheaded Steven Joel Sotloff, an American freelance journalist who was abducted a year ago Syria, a jihadist monitoring organization said Tuesday.
The monitoring organization, SITE Intel Group, made the announcement on Twitter. It said that ISIS had also threatened to execute a British captive, David Cawthorne Haines.
Meanwhile Obama dithers as usual. He has no idea what to do and because of this the world can see his cowardice. Meanwhile the media makes excuses for him:
“He is being cautious,” CNN political analyst Gloria Borger declared. “And everybody would agree that’s a good thing – nobody in this country wants boots on the ground or to go to war.”
“We have someone who is careful and cautious and also somebody who, I think, views everyone watching things around the world with their hair on fire,” Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart declared. “He sees himself as someone, it’s his job to tamp it down.”
We have fanatical Islamists rising to power throughout the middle east thanks to Obama. We have Russia threatening its neighbors because they know Obama is too much of a coward to stop them. We have China doing the same thing due to the same reason.
This is all the result of giving the reins of power to a community organizer.
But hey, this war shouldn’t effect any of us in America right?
CNN national security analyst and former CIA operative Bob Baer said on “The Lead” Tuesday that the “people who collect tactical intelligence on the ground, day-to-day – and this isn’t Washington – but people collecting this stuff say they’re here, ISIS is here, they’re capable of striking.”
CNN national security analyst and former CIA operative Bob Baer (Credit: CNN’s “The Lead”)
At this moment, he said, U.S. intelligence agents are keeping tabs on suspected Islamic State militants who may have crossed the Mexican border to gain entry into the United States. Other suspects, he warned, are American citizens who have returned from places like Syria.“They can’t prove it. They’re waiting to get enough intelligence to actually run them in. And then there’s the unknown, of how many people have come back they’re not even aware of,” Baer told CNN. “The people who do this for a living are very alarmed.”
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A quote from the movie Swordfish which applies perfectly in this situation. ==> Anyone who impinges on America’s freedom. Terrorist states, Stanley. Someone must bring their war to them. They bomb a church, we bomb ten. They hijack a plane, we take out an airport. They execute American tourists, we tactically nuke an entire city. Our job is to make terrorism so horrific that it becomes unthinkable to attack Americans.
Remember this, Curt?
“It [Iraq] could be one of the greatest achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”
Joe Biden to Larry King in 2010
Obama ran on bringing our troops home from Iraq. Afghanistan was his “good” war but Iraq, well, he was going to heal the earth and cause the seas to recede. It was a campaign promise that resonated with a war weary populace. All those photographs of flag draped coffins in the media. You know, the ones we never saw after January 20, 2009, although our soldiers were still coming home the same way?
Except he didn’t, and this disaster is entirely on his head. He, and he alone, is responsible for the disaster that has become the Middle East.
Four years later we are experiencing what an absolute failure Obama’s foreign policy is.
@Bobachek: It’s probably the only thing that would work. But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for any American leadership to make a decision this difficult. If we had this President and this Congress during WWII we’d still be trying to invade Japan.
Bobachek hits it outta the park!
Bobachek #1 does prescribe the only medicine that would be effective in deterring radical Islam, and it would have to be administered is EVERY instance of recurring symptoms.
Jason Clarke might or might not be right that this administration would have been… indecisive… in World War II. Remember that the American public was overwhelmingly opposed to our entering that war until Pearl Harbor was bombed, and remember that suggestions have been made that the Roosevelt administration took steps to insure that the bombing did enough damage to inflame the American public but not enough to cripple us beyond recovery. The implications of such a cold calculation would have been lost on the public in 1941. I don’t know what Obama’s calculations might be, but I am certain that he is under no obligation to share them with us or with the enemy, and whatever they are, I am also certain that the American public lacks the collective wisdom to understand them.
Retire05’s conviction that everything wrong in Iraq is Obama’s fault is nonsense. Iraq has been one of the Devil’s favorite playgrounds for ages, and nothing about that has really changed. Retire05’s real agenda is to damage Obama at every opportunity, for reasons not worth speculating about. He’s not running for office. Stop crying!
The real question is at what point does the United States’ commitment to its citizens end? We have journalists who put themselves in the path of extraordinary harm; are we obligated to defend or rescue them? We have mercenaries and spies sprinkled around in the worst places, some of them in our employ, some not; are we obligated to defend or rescue them all? How about the American citizens who take up arms with the enemy, joining the great jihad; are they on our responsibility tab too? Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, North Korea, Iran… all REALLY bad places. How many back-packing hikers do you honestly think are innocently wandering into these Hell-holes? Remember that when caught, that’s what most of them claim to be. They all have cover stories that they foolishly hope will convince stupid Muslims that this is all just some incredibly dumb mistake. Well, how stupid is that? Wouldn’t we be better off if they DIDN’T get the chance to contribute to our gene pool? Might it not be a better deterrent against such stupid adventurism if the United States consistently did NOT take steps to secure their release?
We have no business there, and the sooner we figure that out and stop stirring the hornets with our meddling, the sooner we will earn the moral right to bomb them to Hell (as Bobachek suggests) when they bring their dirty business HERE. Until then, we’re complicit.
@George Wells:
That is all a pre-9/11 mentality. Anywhere terrorists set up business and pledge to attack the United States is a place where we have business to conduct. We no longer have to wait for it to happen in order to see if it would happen; that’s been done and the benefit of the doubt for big-mouth US-attacking wannabes has expired. Anytime anyone with the means to conduct an attack pledges an attack, they should be hit, and hit with horrific power and violence. Whomever is CinC and does not bears the full responsibility for the consequences.
@Bill:
OK, Bill, lets see what we have. Osama Bin Laden was Saudi, the Boston Marathon bombers were Chechen, and the Ft. Hood shooter was , what, Lebanese? (I don’t remember, but the detail isn’t important.) What IS important is that there are 1.6 BILLION Muslims in the world, and by virtue of the teachings of Islam, they ALL have the motivation to attack us. The MEANS for attacking us are readily accessible on the internet, but these Muslims don’t usually “announce” their intentions to attack, or their schedule or their target. We are left with a huge pile of hints that indicate a general threat but which rarely end in actual violence. There are probably 500 million Muslims who have “pledged to attack” the USA at one point or another, and we can’t really do anything about that, can we?
I get that Islam is at war. They always have been. It’s the nature of the beast. But “nuking” a city isn’t going to go over well at all, not for killing an American tourist. A “TOURIST”??? How many innocent American “tourists” do you think are currently sight-seeing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, North Korea, Iran, Somalia, Nigeria or Yemen? Spies, thugs, independent arms dealers, drug dealers and the like, maybe, but back-packing college kids hiking without a GPS? I doubt it.
@George Wells: ISIS is an organization. It is a large, well financed, powerful organization that has shown it has a goal and the determination to achieve it, by whatever means. THEY have threatened/pledged to attack in HERE. We know where ISIS is.
Don’t wait, George, for some propaganda email to tell you what to think; it is pretty clear and obvious and has been since 2001. Is Biden the most resolute of Democrats today? That’s just pitiful.
Attacking the United States is what makes a terror organization big league. They do it for prestige inside their little terror organization club; beheading Americans serves that purpose as well. A successful terror attack on the homeland would be a recruiting bonanza, just as Benghazi was and the ISIS string of victories has been. They need to be destroyed and there is no other way to couch it. They don’t need to be “managed” and they don’t need to be reasoned with. Every person in a leadership role in this government should be echoing the same sentiments Biden did; we will chase them to the gates of hell, we will shove them through, then we will slam the gate behind them. BUT, while we make all that bold talk, someone needs to take bold action. THAT is the key.
Just after Pearl Harbor, Admiral Halsey said “when we are done, the only place where the Japanese language is spoken will be Hell.”. Of course, we never took it that far, but that should be our strategy; the only place terrorists can reside without fear of US punishment will be Hell; and they should consider themselves lucky to be there.
@Bill #8:
Thanks, Bill, for some sweet platitudes. Much appreciated. As if without those poetic refrains in opposition to terrorism I might otherwise be supporting jihad. Thanks too for that insult about “propaganda emails.” I’ve never even seen one, much less read such a thing. Was wondering what sort of mailing list you might have gotten yourself on…
“We know where ISIS is.”
You might do me, the Pentagon and the rest of the world a favor by letting us in on your little secret. Because as far as I have been able to determine, there isn’t an ISIS “homeland” where their government is seated or where their war college is located or where their armaments are manufactured or from which their supply lines might get stretched in the conventional sense that got Hitler’s troops into trouble when they invaded Russia. Yeah, we know where ISIS is: they’re flitting about in trucks and SUVs like a bunch of mosquitoes, drawing blood here and there and creating more pain and fear than their weight would suggest is possible. Their “funding” comes from anyone who would be our enemy, (there are plenty of those) and it isn’t in bags of gold that we might snatch. It’s in the form of internet credit accounts that are as mobile as the “cloud” and are protected by sophisticated geeks the likes of which hack into our databases regularly and who have the same motivations as the ISIS donors. Warfare has changed, Dear Child, and one of the most frustrating developments has been that our enemies have learned to not present an easy target.
YOU know where they are? NAME A CITY! Name a target at which we can aim a surgical death-blow to the head of the beast. Ahhhh… There isn’t one. OK. Name a geographically delineated population of, say, 30 million men, women and children down upon whom we could rain nuclear genocide and in doing so accomplish the eradication of this terrorist “organization.” What, STILL a no-go? That’s the problem. We have a better idea of who among our OWN citizens are supporting “jihad” than who the real leaders of ISIS are. We get our “intel” from “tweets” and Facebook “likes” and cellphone video snippets, not from imbedded operatives. ISIS ground activities are conducted at the very limits of resolution of our satellite and drone reconnaissance capabilities. What little we are able to see is barely worth shooting at.
No, they can’t be “managed” and they can’t be “reasoned” with. But politicians like Biden with his “gates of Hell” remarks don’t do squat as far as ISIS is concerned. His speech had one purpose, and that was to SOUND tough. It was for home consumption, a thinly disguised ploy to soothe his own party’s worry that Obama is letting the situation get out of hand. But the sad truth is that there is very little that Obama or any other president can or will be able to do so long as terrorist groups such as ISIS remain largely disbursed among the 1.6 billion Muslims on the planet. Maybe we COULD kill them all, but we won’t.
Yes, and our Government continues to help finance ISIS by choice. Our government, by choice, has done much to keep the US excessively dependent on foreign oil which, in turn, helps finance evil groups such as ISIS, etc. Our Government, by choice, has also done many other things that made it possible for ISIS to emerge (the same can be said in regard to Germany and Japan during the years leading up to WWII).
ISIS, and similarly evil groups, will continue to emerge and grow powerful just as long as our Government aids and abets them and/or those who finance them (i.e. the Saudis, etc, etc).
Meanwhile, many ask just why our Government acts this way… Well, the answer is somewhat complicated. However, the main reasons are:
1. Remaining heavily dependent on foreign oil makes it possible for our Government, and U.S. oil companies, to use the excuse of “blaming” foreign oil producers for any price hikes and supply problems that we consumers suffer. The result is that Americans have little or no recourse when it comes to exercising their consumer power when it comes to purchasing fuel and fuel oils.
2. US foreign aid is almost impossible to account for. This, of course, make such aid much easier for certain entities to skim from and/or divert towards entities that are disagreeable to most Americans.
3. Lobbying. This form of bribery has much to do with why many of our lawmakers almost always seem to side against we the people.
3. Politicians and politics. Most politicians crave power and money and, as such, often refuse to follow the will of the people and/or the law in general. This abnormal and insatiable quest for power and money is why certain people strive to become politicians in the first place. Most politicians have a history of such behavior that can be seen from an early age such as being “class president” and/or “leader” of other scholastic programs and the like (or, in 0Muslim’s case, being a “community organizer” like Jim Jones was). These people just have to be on a soap box no matter what it takes.
4. Lobbying. This form of bribery has much to do with why many of our lawmakers almost always seem to side against we the people and American interests in general.
Yes, and such organizations require large, well educated, well informed, and well connected sources in order to carry out their goals. Those fighting for ISIS certainly aren’t being commanded by a few Islamic leaders hiding out in some village somewhere…
I’ll also add that little or none of the success ISIS has achieved would be possible if our CIA did what it was originally designed to do.
@George Wells:
That depends on if not opposing jihad can be considered supporting it. For, as anyone should know, jihad is going on as we speak. ISIS has declared war on us and, apparently, we are still thinking about it.
What pisses me off about those with your view (which you are free to entertain, by the way) is that you go to great lengths to make excuses as to why we should do nothing when, in fact, there is no possible excuse. For over a year, we now know, Obama has known where they are and the military has offered plans of action. For those so debilitating stupid as to not be able find them, try Raqa. ISIS just took over a complete military base there. At that point, we should have leveled it, to prevent even MORE weapons falling into the hands of these murderers (excuse me if you have not been made aware that they are murderers). Damn, George, do you actually think military intelligence does not know where they are concentrated? All we lack is the will to do something.
Which brings me to Biden; that was a good speech he made but just like our allies and enemies, I would need proof that he is capable of following that rousing talk with action. Somehow, I doubt it. Same with Hillary. They are, at the end of the day, liberal Democrats and socializing the United States, at the end of the very same day, their primary goal. Little do they (or you, it seems) realize that in the event of a catastrophic WMD attack on a major city (like NYC, for instance), free health care to illegal immigrants will be of very little use. We will be in survival, not free birth control, mode. We can only hope, unless there is a true come-to-Jesus 180 done by this administration, that ISIS has enough logistical problems to stall an attack until some adults take office, because only impediments of their own (none posed by our immigration system, certainly) is all that slows them down.
The time for worrying about if they really mean us harm and not making them mad at us is over. You may want to blame Bush for stirring up such a hornet’s nest, but what stirred them up before 9/11 or October 12, 2000? And, if it was the cowboy Bush that made them angry, why did the placating and apologizing Obama not slake their hate? Islamic extremists HATE America and we happen to be Americans, so it is about time we, as an entire nation (but for those who still want to give them the benefit of the doubt or even take their side) realize this and begin to strike back. Anyone that thinks it wise to wait for another attack before we take (again) the threat of an attack seriously is grossly irresponsible.
@FMB42:
That was a long post… was it directed to anyone?
You made allusions to the U.S.’s dependence on imports of foreign oil, implying that there is a governmental conspiracy to rely on foreign oil for the benefit of countries that support terrorism. In fact, our imports of foreign oil have been dropping for the past decade, as has our total consumption of oil. Over the same period of time, our production of our own oil has steadily increased, with the result that the percentage of oil usage attributable to imported fuels has dropped substantially. This development has neither been particularly aided by governmental encouragement nor hindered by governmental restrictions, though both incentives and restrictions are applied to the energy sector by the government. The real difference has been caused by the free enterprise application of technological advances in oil extraction and the stability of relatively high oil prices on the World market.
Perhaps you are attempting to make the point that by saving our own oil and instead consuming the oil reserves belonging to other countries, we will somehow benefit in the short term those countries who sell their oil to us, and in turn they may share their revenues with terrorists. But if you are suggesting that if WE don’t buy oil from the Middle East, nobody will, well, that’s absurd. And if you think it is better IN THE LONG RUN to exhaust our own reserves of oil in order to temporarily deprive terrorists of the incremental increase to the price of oil on the World markets that would result if we actually SAVE our own oil, well, there’s no logic in that, either.
Oil is money, and money is power. It doesn’t really matter whether the oil or the money pass through our hands or someone else’s, if the folks who have the oil choose to fund terrorists, they will and be done with it, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We can reach total energy independence if we really want to, but that still wouldn’t “defund” terrorism. The United States and its timid European “allies” lack the strategy,the resources, the capacity or the stomach to police the world, and the sooner our terminally delusional, saber-rattling, war-mongering “hawks” – especially the ones who don’t understand economics – figure that out, the better.
@Bill #11:
This effort, this time, was pretty good, Bill. You might not believe it, but I agree with a lot of what you said. Particularly I agree with your point that ISIS is already at war with us. Yeah, I get that. And no, I don’t blame Bush for stirring THEM up, because this crap has been “developing” for a very long time. Muslims were angry at us before Bush “stirred hornets,” and nothing that Obama did or can do will earn their love. But what I believe that this administration DOES appreciate – and you don’t – is that ISIS and similarly minded Muslims everywhere really ARE itching for a fight. They WANT us to attack them. The beheadings and the little slaughters are intended to elicit our violent response. ISIS knows that if we hit them back and hit them HARD, their recruitment will EXPLODE. They NEED us to kill them, to make them martyrs… they WANT to die at our hands. They don’t think the same way we think. The firebombing of Dresden and the nuking of Hiroshima had a successful deterrent effect on our WW2 enemies, but similar violence would aid and abet the Muslim enemy.
Work on that theme, and remember that there are 1.6 billion of them. I really DON’T know what would work, but I don’t think that starting WW3 is the best answer. Yeah, I know that Retire05 thinks WW3 has already started, but I’m not ready to blow us all back to the Dark Ages in order to win it. There must be a better answer.
I doubt that conflating immigration issues or your displeasure with the Affordable Care Act with the ISIS terrorism problem is constructive. It paints you in a more angry and irrational color than the issue deserves.
@George Wells: I would point out that we lived quite a while without an ongoing war between Islam and the west. This is a recent phenomenon, punctuated by isolated terror attacks. They hit us, we hit them back. On and on. Only the victories in Syria and Iraq (they have gone from less than a thousand to 13,000) has swelled their ranks considerably.
“Bumps in the road” such as Benghazi brings in the recruits. Death from above does not. Yeah, sure they want to fight us. How’d that work out for them in Iraq? There is no way any formation of ISIS could stand up to a Marine brigade. However, currently, that is not necessary.
What is necessary is that we equip the Kurds (and Iraqis, once they prove they can fight without dropping their weapons and running away) to do the ground work while we provide military intelligence and air support.
This administration has no idea what it does not understand. These are the people, if you would remember, that still cannot bring themselves to say “terrorism” and will not admit to being in the midst of a shooting war for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. This administration holds its own popularity above all else and is willing to reveal intelligence secrets in order to enhance it; there is little about non-political domestic games they understand.
What is really not constructive is (intentionally) missing the point that all the little left wing socialist dreams don’t amount to much when one of our cities becomes uninhabitable; nor does dealing with non-existent climate change or fund raisers. The point is that this administration had better put its big-boy leader pants on and start dealing with national security issues or we WILL be in the middle of WW3 (you do realize that, while all this swirls around, Iran is happily continuing its nuclear program, don’t you?).
Doing nothing is not much of a strategy
As to oil, it will be a long, long time before we can do without it and, were this administration intelligent enough to see it (or cared), we could be almost totally energy independent. Wilfully remaining dependent on a critical energy source from right in the middle of the most tumultuous region on earth is just short of treasonous. I don’t know about any “conspiracies” to remain dependent on foreign oil, but there is definitely a policy to keep domestic production to a minimum (all expansion in production has come from private lands while anything the federal government can do to restrain exploration, development and production is being done) to placate the short-sighted environmentalists (harken back to addressing the phony global warming “threat”).
@ Bill #14:
“I would point out that we lived quite a while without an ongoing war between Islam and the west. This is a recent phenomenon…”
Yes, Bill. And what changed things? I used to think that it was our continuing support of Israel, but we haven’t wavered in that since the country was formed, and like you said, this violent terrorism is recent. I’m not trying to be provocative or to assign blame when I ask this question. I’ve read plenty of theories, and heard what the Muslims say about it, but there are unresolved conflicts in the available answers, and I believe that the solution to Muslim-inspired terrorism must begin with an understanding of the root cause.
The flaw I see in your plan to arm the Kurds and the Iraqis (once they grow spine) is that it is an open-ended investment which history has taught us never pays dividends. For all of its brutality, the Soviets failed to subdue Afghanistan. It wasn’t an overly effective Afghan Federal Government that stymied their efforts, it was the little bands, tribes, mercenaries – all of the diverse groups, Afghan and otherwise, who stood to benefit from Russia’s failure. Look at the lives and treasure we invested in little Vietnam, and what did we gain besides debt. Did we convince anyone – including ourselves – that the “cause” was worth the price? No…
I keep pointing out that there are 1.6 billion Muslims, and you keep ignoring the implications of that number. Their religion basically puts them at war with us. All of them. The Muslims who take up the call at any given point behave much like the bacteria in a culture-dish. If an antibiotic is introduced to the dish, bacteria at the introduction site die, and the others move away from the residue. If sufficient antibiotic is employed, the culture dish is effectively sterilized. We can work this model just so far, but it will predict the behavior of terrorists when we attack them, as we found when they evaporated as we “surged” in Iraq. Terrorists and their supporters will ebb and flow in response to the actions we take, and at 1.6 billion strong, we cannot wipe them off the face of the Earth.
Saddam Hussein kept Iraq… quiescent… by brutally suppressing and murdering dissenting factions. We would have to do the same to achieve the same results, and we’d have to do it in perpetuity. I told you before and you did not dispute that we don’t have the heart, stomach or cash to sustain such an effort, so why should this administration start down that path?
Talking about “treason” is hyperbolic rhetoric I don’t stoop to.
Tossing in “Global Warming,” “Benghazi” and other right-wing hot buttons unnecessarily confuses the issue. If you want to chew on your entire laundry-list of why you hate Obama, liberals and Democrats, talk to someone else.
@Bill:
Ask anyone who did tours in Iraq and they will tell you that the Peshmerga (the Kurds) are hellofa fighters. Even their women are fighters who relish in the idea that ISIS fighters believe if they are killed by a woman then Heaven (and the 72 virgins) are not available.
The Peshmerga has begged Obama to arm them directly as they are fighting with 60’s-70’s Russian weapons while ISIS has our modern weapons. But Baghdad insists that all arms go through them, so Obama seems to be paralyzed on what to do.
Remember, that although Nidal Hassan has requested to be made a member of ISIS, this administration still calls his jihadist, terrorist attack on Fort Hood soldiers “work place violence.”
Obama ran on being a “peace” president. He bragged how Iraq was a stable country, and how he brought all the troops home, not even trying to renegotiate a new SoFA. Obama had campaigned on the promise to bring all the troops home from Iraq, and it didn’t matter to him how that would affect the Middle East, he was hell bent to do that. He believed that the Middle East would simply fall all over itself trying to work with him because he “understood” them since he was a student in Indonesia. That was clear in his Cairo speech. Being the malignant narcissist he is, it never occurred to Obama that the jihadists didn’t care that he had attended a madrassa when he was young, they didn’t care that he could recite the Islamic call to prayer, and they damn sure didn’t care he was black. He may view himself as a citizen of the world. ISIS views him as a Westerner and they really don’t care that he is inept. As a matter of fact, they constantly throw it up in his face on Twitter and Facebook. When in our history have we seen a President so mocked publically by our enemy?
But Obama could be rolled and the first clue to that should have been Honduras.
Retire05 points out that “The Peshmerga has begged Obama to arm them directly as they are fighting with 60′s-70′s Russian weapons while ISIS has our modern weapons. But Baghdad insists that all arms go through them, so Obama seems to be paralyzed on what to do.”
He doesn’t SEEM to be paralyzed, he IS.
We intentionally did NOT partition Iraq. The Kurds are a regional sect. We essentially installed Al Maliki in Baghdad, not in Kurdistan. Having done so, we have no business circumventing the fragile authority of the Iraqi Federal Government that he represents. We were “nation-building,” remember? Arming the Kurds against Al Maliki’s will would be analogous to Uganda sending arms to Texas to aid their fight against gay marriage. A common interest doesn’t trump the sovereign rights of a country. Obama is constrained by the sovereign right the Iraqi government has to control events within its borders, for better or for worse.
Retire05 mocks Obama, calling him a “malignant narcissist,” and then asks “When in our history have we seen a President so mocked publically by our enemy?” Logically, that makes Retire05 “our enemy,” doesn’t it?
@Bill #14:
Regarding oil policy: One of my pet peeves with the argument for opening up off-shore reserves and those in the Alaska National Wildlife refuge isn’t that the environment might get trashed. My problem with opening up those reserves to exploitation is that we – the taxpayers, the OWNERS – would get very little of the value of what was exploited. Yes, there would be some jobs created. But the lions share of the profits would go to the shareholders (and especially to the CEOs) of the multi-national companies that did the exploitation, not to us, the owners – the tax payers who would likely get stuck with generous tax incentives for the oil companies that would in no way be compensated by the meager lease payments that the government would extract from the companies. Even worse, the oil extracted from our own land would not end our dependence on foreign oil, because the stuff would be sold on the open market to the highest bidder, certainly putting downward pressure on world oil prices but also squeezing some of the smaller private or independent producers here at home. The oil-producing countries that fund terrorism would still sell their oil and still fund terrorism. Exploiting our own reserves would not cut off that spigot.
If our federally owned resources were to be exploited by a federally owned company that returned all of the oil and all of the profits to US, the OWNERS, then I would be fine with exploiting those resources. But as it stands, the exploitation suggested would make us no different from other, third-world nations who have their resources exploited by multinational companies to the enrichment of the oil companies and the few lucky corrupt politicians who arranged to be paid off for the privilege. That’s not something I want.
People often wonder why Islam is rising up lately.
It ebbs and flows in violence toward non-Muslim neighbors since its inception.
Mohammad was peaceful toward his Jewish and other neighbors UNTIL he had raised a good-sized army.
Then it was fight, fight, fight!
The attempt to take over Europe several hundred years ago ended with the siege on Vienna where Islam’s forward momentum was defeated.
After that Spain was retaken from Islam by the Spanish.
Next, the Ottoman Empire and Caliph ruled over all of Islam until 1927.
After it was broken up a whole bunch of wealthy Muslims sent their sons to universities in Europe where they got influenced by Marxism.
This has resulted in the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood, a melding of Islam with Marxist totalitarianism.
The Marxist influence, like all ”progressive” ideologies, required scapegoats for why the little man in Islam was kept so poor.
The birth of Israel was a convenient scapegoat for Islamic rulers who were nothing more than kleptocrats with fat Swiss bank accounts and ”sinful” lifestyles while their people suffered.
The USA became a secondary (too distant to really attack) scapegoat.
But it has been the cell phone, social media, air travel and modernity that spelled the end of many kleptocrats like Ghaddafi and Mubarak.
Nowadays Islamist jihadis CAN reach the USA.
So, they try to do so.
Israel has faded into the ”lessor satan,” while the USA has become known as the ”greater satan.”
Charismatic Muslims, like Adhem Choudry in UK and al Nasrali in Lebanon and al Sadr in Iraq, keep the rabble roused.
In Islam, in the koran and hadith, are the seeds of jihad.
All a charismatic needs to do is inflame.
I have pointed out that ISIS goes beyond the limits of Islam’s holy books.
ISIS is highly populated by sadists.
(If you recall Saddam had two sons who were also sadists.)
It needs wiping out even more so than your run-of-the-mill jihadi.
@Nanny G:
A couple of things worth mentioning; until this century the word “crusade” was not used as a pejorative. And the word “Islamophobia” was unheard of. That word was created by CAIR (Council on Arab American Relations) to bash anyone who spoke out against Islam, radical or otherwise.
Here is an article by one of my favorite historians that you might find interesting:
http://therightscoop.com/the-real-history-of-the-crusades-an-act-of-love/
Muslims will live peacefully among those of other religions until such time as the Muslim numbers guarantee that they have a strong chance of being able to conquer that territory. But the thought of conquest is never far from their minds, and they possess one thing we do not; patience. Denmark, Holland and France, and in some ways, Great Britain, are all possible areas where radical Islamist numbers have gained rapidly.
@George Wells:
In the first place, it is not like the federal government bought the land; they confiscated it to keep others from using it. So, it belongs to us all (not Washington) and many of us want it used to make us energy independent. ALL of us utilize the resources in one way or another.
Secondly, this is about national security. Imagine the strategic cosmic shift if we did not depend upon the Middle East for almost half our energy. Imagine if we did not have to scramble carrier groups every time Iran threatens to close the Straits of Hormuz. Instead, it seems the policy of the left to keep us dependent and vulnerable to energy blackmail.
@Bill #21:
“In the first place, it is not like the federal government bought the land; they confiscated it to keep others from using it. So, it belongs to us all (not Washington) and many of us want it used to make us energy independent.”
Ummm… When I went to school, I was taught that the United States BOUGHT the Alaska Territory from Russia… did that change?
And when the Federal Government “confiscates” land for the “public” benefit, it does so with the authority of “public domain” and it pays a “”fair”” price for the lands taken. A displeased ex-land-owner can and often does sue for better compensation, but if you know of anyone whose land was straight-away stolen from them (aside from the American Indians) you can tell me all about it.
“many of us want it used to make us energy independent. ALL of us utilize the resources in one way or another.”
Trouble is, it doesn’t work that way.
Take the example of federal lumber “leases” granted to Weyerhaeuser and the like. For pennies per acre, large lumber companies get the right to chop down old-growth forests growing in National Parks and National Forest Reserves. Those trees belong to all of us, right? Well, the logs get shipped straight away to the orient more often than not, where the best lumber stays and the by-products get ground up and made into chip and pulp products that get sent BACK to Walmart and Home depot for us to buy.
That’s exactly how it’s going to work if we let multi-national oil companies suck our oil out of Alaska. It WON’T make us energy independent! The oil WON’T belong to us! It will belong to the company that pumps it out of the ground, and that company will sell it to the highest bidder. China will be the highest bidder, because we’ve given them almost all of our manufacturing business (when was the last time you bought a TV or an air conditioner or (on and one and on) that was made here?) and they are bursting with dollars (that they got from Walmart) that they need to spend before they become worthless.
The idea that Alaskan oil is going to benefit Americans is a myth that has been bought into by people who are too stupid to smell snake oil when it is shoved up their noses. If you honestly believe that Alaskan oil is somehow all going to end up in OUR storage tanks filling OUR demand for the stuff, why don’t you point out the laws and the contracts that insure that’s how it’s going to work. Because simple economics says otherwise, and that conclusion is confirmed by the experience with National Forest lumber.
@George Wells: My, we do stray off the beaten path. Alaska is a STATE and then the land controlled by the government has been TAKEN from the state. Oil production and sales generates TAX REVENUES as well as contributing to national security (do you actually think that in a crisis we would continue to feed the open market where our potential enemies may be getting THEIR oil? Not if a LEADER makes it a national security issue).
In short, the federal government has gobbled up huge swaths of land, owning almost 80% of the west. Under Obama (and anyone else that panders to the environmentalists) exploration, development and production has been prohibited. Many of these areas are the richest, most promising fields for production. This despite the jobs and revenues this produces, as well as the valuable energy.
China, by the way, gets most of the manufacturing business because unions have practically priced us out of the manufacturing realm. Add to that onerous federal regulations and, now, Obamacare and the EPA. Apparently, we WANT all of our manufacturing jobs to go overseas; we elect (or some of us, anyway) representatives that assure it happens.
Since you say you have been Republican and conservative and blah, blah, blah, I am sure I am preaching to the choir, but liberal policies are ruining this country and, now, liberal “leadership” is putting the security of the nation in dire jeopardy.
@Bill #23:
“My, we do stray off the beaten path. Alaska is a STATE and then the land controlled by the government has been TAKEN from the state.”
Perhaps it is when we stray from your preferred subject matter that your command of the facts becomes most weak. You require some education in the history of Alaska:
When Alaska was bought from Russia in 1867, the entire contents of that purchase – some 355 million acres – became the property of the Federal Government. Between the time Alaska was purchased and the time it was granted statehood, it was administered as a territory, with all land use subject to the conditional approval of the federal department governing it. (Over the years, Alaska was administered by the Army, the Department of Interior and the Navy, to name a few.) During this period, private land ownership in Alaska did not exist. Upon attaining statehood in 1958, the Federal Government GRANTED to Alaska approximately 28% of the land – ultimately 105 million acres – for various uses, and in 1971 an additional 44 million acres were granted to Native Alaskans for settlement. The Federal Government retained ownership of the majority of Alaskan land, conserving it in trust for the future benefit of ALL AMERICANS. At NO TIME did a governmental entity in the form of “the State of Alaska” own a significant portion of Alaskan land, and at NO TIME did the inhabitants of Alaska who emigrated from the contiguous 48 states own the land either. No “confiscation” of Alaskan land was ever undertaken. 60% of the total land mass of Alaska remains in Federal hands today, having NEVER been held otherwise.
If you had researched that which you did not know, you never would have made the totally false statement that “the land controlled by the government has been TAKEN from the state.”
“In short, the federal government has gobbled up huge swaths of land, owning almost 80% of the west.”
Much of the federally held lands in the Western States was acquired in essentially the same manner as was the Alaskan land. Independent frontiersmen did not extricate American Indians from the lands Indians held, the Federal Government did. The lands so obtained were not simply given to the Euro-American settlers, they were held in trust for all Americans. Land ownership in the pre-statehood territories was determined differently in each territory, governed by what would have essentially been “Articles of Territorial Administration.” Land ownership was further codified upon the Grant of Statehood given each state in turn. With few exceptions, there were not significant land giveaways in the Western states that were later retracted. Those that WERE retracted were done so under the provisions of eminent domain, with the private owners suitably compensated for confiscated lands. Regardless of whether or not the settlements reached at the time were fair, those cases are all long closed and the federal ownership of those lands today is not in serious question. If you question the decisions being made regarding the exploitation of federally held land, there is an appropriate avenue for such a challenge. Otherwise, you can cry about it here and accomplish nothing.
“we WANT all of our manufacturing jobs to go overseas; we elect (or some of us, anyway) representatives that assure it happens.”
Then it is the House of Representatives (dominated by Republicans) that is the problem?
It is American greed that has led past administrations – both Republican and Democratic – to lower trade barriers that have in turn opened foreign markets to our unprotected trade and enabled foreign companies to under bid our own. Protectionist legislation that benefited labor unions was exchanged for cheap appliances made in Mexico and China. Now we make no appliances. When money follows the path of least resistance, we lose. We don’t WANT to lose, it’s just that the disintegration of trade barriers insure that we do.
@George Wells: United STATES, George. United STATES. The STATES control the land unless the federal government takes it over. Laws of the STATES are supreme unless federal law is specifically passed to override it.
Nevertheless, your stance makes the situation even worse; the federal government should be MANDATING energy production (rather than shoveling billions to campaign contributors running bankrupt “green” companies) for national security purposes.
@Bill:
It would seem that your chat buddy is concerned that if we explore our own oil, it will all get sold to foreign interests by those evil, greedy oil companies. It seems he is not aware of either the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 or the Export Administration Act of 1975. Or this:
Correct. How many of the tax payer’s dollars have been redirected to “green” companies at a total loss for the taxpayer, never to recoup that money? Solyndra ring a bell?
Fortunately for the U.S., Texas has no such limits due to its lack of federal lands. So private owners are leasing their lands for exploration in both the gas and the oil industries. The Eagleford Shale estimates just continue to increase.
http://www.cfr.org/oil/case-allowing-us-crude-oil-exports/p31005?cid=nlc-public-the_world_this_week-link2-20130712&sp_mid=42033387&sp_rid=ZWRpdG9yaWFsQHRoZW5ld2FtZXJpY2FuLmNvbQS2
@Bill #25:
” United STATES, George. United STATES. The STATES control the land unless the federal government takes it over.”
That is the most patently absurd interpretation I have ever seen. The explanation of Alaskan Land ownership I gave you was lifted directly from Historical and Legal accounts and is not the product of my imagination. The ownership account I gave is correct.
Consider for a moment a hypothetical situation in which a large territory that was virtually unpopulated back in 1830 was found by one explorer to be full of gold – enough to make very many people quite handsomely rich. Lets say that news of his fortunate discovery got back to Washington. More likely than not, pressure in Congress would build quickly to take over control of that territory – in order to secure access to the wealth there-in. News would spread, and thousands if not millions of fortune-seekers would rush to the territory to look for their share of the gold. Eventually, “statehood” would be granted. But that statehood wouldn’t mean that the territory became the property of the guy who got there first, and it wouldn’t mean that it became the collective property of the more recently arrived treasure seekers. It just doesn’t work that way. When a country (including the United States) assumes control of a territory, ownership of the land there-in coveys in total to the country assuming its control unless otherwise specified in treaty between the new and the previous owner. No such treaty was made between the USA and Russia regarding disposition of Alaskan land, and the treaties the USA made with the Indian Nations were largely voided unilaterally by us.
Your attempt to bend the facts to support a clearly incorrect interpretation of the law or a complete ignorance of the history of Alaska is unbecoming. The Federal Government of the United States of America lawfully holds a great amount of land – including 60% of the State of Alaska – in trust for the benefit of all Americans – not just for the benefit of the residents of the states in question – and it is the right and the responsibility of the Federal Government of the United States of America to manage the land and the assets contained there-in in the way it sees fit. Anyone disagreeing with the choices being made regarding the utilization of such resources as are federally owned has the right and the opportunity to influence such use through political and legal channels. I encourage you to avail yourself of those opportunities if you feel the need. But don’t try to tell me that Alaska owns the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, because it doesn’t. If it did, the oil there would already be on the market, on its way to China.
@retire05 #26:
When an oil company imports 50,000 barrels of crude oil from the Middle East and pumps another 50,000 barrels of crude oil from Prudhoe Bay, and it ships 50,000 barrels to China and it refines 50,000 barrels into gasoline and diesel fuel for use in the United States, what does it matter which 50,000 barrels went where?
This sort of shell game is played all the time. China gets all the oil it wants because it has the money to pay for it. The Middle East sells every drop of oil it can pump because the efforts – largely funded by Democrats in the USA – to develop viable alternatives to oil that won’t create a nuclear wasteland every time something goes wrong have simply failed. It was worth a try, and we will have to try again.
The growing World population will continue to want increasing amounts of energy, and oil will increasingly fall short of meeting that demand. When the World reserves of oil run out – and they will – whatever replaces oil will be vastly more expensive, far dirtier and/or way more dangerous. The price of oil by-products and derivatives – paints, plastics and non-aqueous solvents – will skyrocket, and the economic pressure to replace oil in these derivative processes with renewable biofuels like ethanol from corn will drive up food costs. Poorer nations will starve. And on and on.
Republicans think that they can trust oil companies to endlessly find more and more oil and to pump it safely, so that none of the above will ever happen, and I fervently hope that they are right. But on the outside chance that they are wrong, I’d like not to be the first country to run out of its own supply of oil, because the LAST country to have oil will be FABULOUSLY RICH! (Connect the dots.)
And just in case the Republicans are wrong about there being a miraculously-never-ending reserve of oil somewhere, I’d like to keep the Alaskan oil reserves that are NOT already depleted IN RESERVE!
Not pumped, not spent, not burned, not exported.
Saved for OUR FUTURE.
And all of Bill’s B.S. about the state of Alaska OWNING all of the land and the resources there-in, you know that’s B.S,. or you would have peed on that history lesson I gave him.
So, go ahead and tell Bill about that useless law prohibiting exports of USA-pumped oil, and DON’T tell him about the shell game that the oil companies play to circumvent it. Let him THINK that squandering our remaining oil reserves will hurt Middle East terrorists and NOT future generations of Americans.
The world that conservatives want is receding into the past at the speed of time. The future will have more people, more pollution, more crime, more wars and more epidemics. Rich people will live longer, gay Americans will be able to marry in all 50 states, and Caucasians will be a minority rare in America.
Go ahead and live in your fantasy world where you ignore science and logic because they don’t support your personal beliefs and values. Ignore me because I hurt your feelings with the truth.
You can’t say that I didn’t warn you.
@George Wells:
I wonder, George, why every one of those valiant efforts to save us from oil results in three things: 1), bandruptcy. 2)Democrat campaign supporters getting richer and 3)More Democrat campaign contributions?
We indeed need the viable replacement for oil as an energy source. Wind and solar are, at best, supplements. Even China is failing at making solar panels a viable enterprise. What we need to find the next great energy source is research and development and that cannot be entrusted to the government and it will not happen when energy costs “necessarily skyrocket”.
You just keep up with your excuses of why liberals, Democrats and Obama will not act in our nation defense. One of these days, you will hit upon something you actually believe.
@Bill #29:
“One of these days, you will hit upon something you actually believe.”
That’s your problem, Bill. You can’t tell the difference between KNOWING something and BELIEVING something. You BELIEVED something about how Alaska operated, but you KNEW nothing.
You think that BELIEVING something makes it true, but it doesn’t.
All the believing in the world doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
Waste your breath blaming liberals, Obama and Democrats, as if doing so will do anything more than make you feel better.