Tag Archives: ISIS

The ordeal of Kathy Griffin

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The self-crucifixion of Kathy Griffin has nothing to do with political correctness. It has to do with a Hollywood egomaniac who went way over the line (when it was Obama in a sniper target you all flipped out), and then had the pathetic audacity to claim that she was some sort of victim, trying to make herself the martyr of the resistance, knowing how much money that might mean. She dominated the news for a day or three, burying whole news cycles of genuine tales of horrors that Trump is inflicting upon the Constitution, working people, women, children and the poor. Her publicist must have been thrilled to death. But real blood on London sidewalks popped that balloon real quick. Nothing makes stage blood look sillier than real blood. Her publicist must have despaired. Damn that ISIS anyway, stepping on Kathy’s big finish. It’s too bad reality isn’t happening on a Hollywood set. Too bad reality ain’t reality TV. But maybe Hollywood should stop trying to score ratings and higher ticket prices by loudly announcing themselves as our consciences. We don’t need celebrities to tell us how to think. We don’t need comics to feel our pain. You have to be goddamned fool to think that Jim Carrey proclaiming that comedians are the last line of resistance against Trump is anything more than celebrity ego inflated to the size of the Hindenburg. Oh the humanity.

Kathy Griffin And Her Attorney Lisa Bloom Hold Press Conference

Oh Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me?

Only tweets will tell

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Unless you actually wander through the bizarre social media world of Trump supporters, you will really have no idea just how out there and paranoid their perception of reality is. I was amazed to see that they are becoming increasingly convinced that the London mayor Sadiq Khan has ties to ISIS, the implication being that he was somehow behind the terror attacks. There’s no proof of this whatsoever, of course, but it was a story in Breitbart, which means it must be true. Furthermore, as Trump, like his core followers, gets most of his news from Breitbart, does he think that the mayor of London is affiliated with ISIS? Only tweets will tell.

Mosul

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Mosul is not a battle, it’s a siege. There is no such thing as a surprise siege. This is such an idiotic debate point. When I saw Trump’s first tweet on this I laughed it was so ignorant. Sure enough, though, no matter how stupid and facile a point that Trump makes in one of his tweets–they all seem to begin as tweets–the press will feel compelled to ask the same question soon enough. Heated debate follows. Throughout this entire campaign year Trump has kept the process going that way. He’s obviously far too ignorant to be president, but the press’s admirable notion that they must be even handed means that such stupidity has to be treated as being informed and educated. Hence, the reporters repeating Trump’s question about why this Mosul operation–which began six months ago–was not kept a surprise. As if ISIS, knowing an attack was coming eventually and preparing for it for years, would have no idea that the build up of forces investing the city and the six months of aerial bombardment preceding it were not signs of an impending attack. But this is a siege of a fortified city, not a surprise attack on a sleeping army in the field. This assault can be no more a surprise attack than was the battle of Iwo Jima.

Thank God Donald Trump came to the rescue

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After the Paris attacks the GOP conveniently went after Syrian refugees which allowed the American Left to turn the debate of Islamic terrorism into a part of the 2016 presidential election contest. It became part of the classic battle between the Democratic party’s multi-culturalism and the Republican Party’s resurgent racist nativism. In the process the threat of real live Islamic terrorism was ignored, even belittled. I wondered, a month ago, how we on the Left would react when American Islamic terrorists, inspired by ISIS, would attack. Continue reading →

Two ISIS members shoot up a room full of social workers, and the Left blames the NRA and the Right blames Syrians.

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Watching the news, it’s fascinating how France and the US are dealing with their respective terrorist attacks. In France, the attacks are discussed in terms of radicalized Islam vs the French Republic. The enemy is ISIS and its supporters. But in the US, the attacks are discussed almost purely in terms of American presidential politics, and the enemy is either the Republican party or the Democratic party. It has yet to sink in who it is we are fighting. For Republicans it seems to be all of Islam, while for Democrats it seems to be the National Rifle Association. The fact that both Democrats and Republicans (aka conservatives and liberals) are both quite divorced from reality here is never mentioned, because to the next terrorists–and there will almost assuredly be more attacks–Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same. We’re all targets. As far as they are concerned this whole political debate, and the furor all over Facebook, is quite irrelevant. Continue reading →

Please let this be the last thing I ever write about ISIS

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(From my Facebook page…and it’s not very literary, I know.)

I keep seeing this line of thought on Facebook: “I firmly believe that airstrikes are only going to create more jihadist terrorists.”

That is so inane it’s infuriating. Bombing ISIS targets inside their Caliphate will no more create jihadists than bombing Nazi targets in the Third Reich created more Nazis. Just how stupid do we (and that’s a rhetorical we) think the 99% of the population in the Caliphate living under ISIS terror are? They are being executed by the hundreds by jihadists on a daily basis–shot, beheaded, crucified. So they join up when we start bombing? The US accidentally bombed a couple of Nazi concentration camps during World War 2, and the collateral damage was horrific, hundreds of dead Jewish inmates. Yet oddly enough, surviving Jews didn’t rush to join the SS. Of course, even had they wanted to they wouldn’t have been allowed. Then again, none of the apostates living inside the ISIS Caliphate (and nearly everyone there except ISIS members are considered apostates or potentially apostate, it takes very little to find yourself on the wrong side of a beheading knife) would be allowed to join ISIS anyway, even if they wanted to, because they are apostates. And that exclusion is the justification for executing them on a regular basis, either singly, in batches, or by the village full. It’s this tiny exclusive group (probably numbering less that 50,000 members) of extremely violent fanatics that is the source of the problem, actually. This is how it all began. The attacks on Paris and the like, going after us, the people who go to rock concerts and eat at little chichi cafes, those are new. Why this is so difficult a concept to grasp for some of us I do not understand. Perhaps we watch too much TMZ. Continue reading →