Defeating ISIS or ISIL or Whatever it's called

So as I was strolling facebook, thinking about short story and novel I have sitting on my hard drive I came across a Huffington Post opinion piece by Mr. H. Goodman (linked here Want to destroy ISIS.) and I think the man has some valid points in many regards, but overall like so many of us he is missing the forest because he is looking at a turkey in the road.  Ultimately this will be the cost of war in this country and you need to decide now, is it a price we want to pay, or do we want to pass that price onto our children and grandchildren?

See, where I can agree, at least in part, with Mr. Goodman is that to defeat ISIS (ISIL), we need to raise taxes to generate the funds to take the fight to them, if we are indeed to fight them.  For all the talk in Washington, we constantly hear calls for lower taxes, and the benefits of them.  But we are heading into a war people, we need capital to create bullets, missiles and planes.  If you want a war we have to pay for it today, not force our children and grandchildren to pay for it later.  This method of killing people in the name of freedom or God does not work. 

See ISIS is nothing more than the latest generation of Al Qaeda as Mr. Goodman sees it, and I think he is correct.  See, just because a terrorist organization is knocked down, the members are still there, they are just waiting on the next group to front them.  In truth, many of these terrorist organizations are nothing more than five to ten  people who temporarily align with a group long enough to get funding, because their ultimate goals are different in most ways.  Think of it like this, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now."  So we were fighting with Al-Qaeda from 2001 until 2010, a few years later ISIS (ISIL) comes along and picks up where Al-Qaeda left off, and in the future some other terrorist group will pick up where ISIS left off, after we "destroy" it. 

All the while, we are killing people in the name of stopping terrorism, and we are creating the next incarnation of Al-Qaeda.  So, to combat this, we need to massively raise taxes, close off tax loopholes, and start generating massive amounts of money for our already bloated military budget.  It is the responsible thing to do, if we are going to continue on this path of eradicating terrorism, because there will always be terrorists, and with war comes wounded soldiers who will need expert medical care.

But there is something else in Goodman's mind, we are going to not only need more money, but we are going to need more troops.  Well, since we know many people will not walk into the recruiting center to enlist, we might as well have a draft as well.  We are looking at a fight that will last at least five years, ISIS has gone to ground in Iraq and Syria, they blend into the background, they are in the communities, in the Mosques, and markets.  They are in the schools, and we do not know who or where they are, they are just there waiting for the opportunity to strike our forces and according to our leader the homeland.  So, that means that we are going to need massive amounts of troops, men and women, gay or straight, theist or atheist alike to go in there and roust them out of their hiding place, because as Goodman points out, bombing them isn't going to work out that well for us. 

So, those are our two options.  I don't like it.  Of course, if a draft were to be enacted I would be too old to be drafted, and its not like I make a ton of money so any increases in taxes would be nominal to begin with, and to end with would be returned to me at the end of the year.  The wealthy would be pissed that their taxes were increased and their kids might have to go fight in a war.  You would be pissed over your kids, and taxes as well.  So we know that will never happen.  There will be no draft because that will kill a political career faster than soliciting sex from an undercover cop in a public bathroom.  Raising taxes will be slightly less painful, but just the same it won't be pretty for those involved.

That leaves us with passing this little war onto the kiddies and grand kiddies, but hey them's the breaks ladies and gentlemen.  We tax and draft now, or the kiddies will suffer debt and countless other wars later.  That is if you really want a war to begin with.  I for one am tired of war, constant wars.  I want peace.  You say there is no peace with terrorists and you are right.  They want it their way, just like the GOP does.  So, I say we have a national vote for this war.  If you vote yes for a war with ISIS, your kids get drafted and your taxes increase.  If you vote no, carry on.

Otherwise we do have other options, and people will be very unhappy with what I am going to propose as a solution to the ISIS problem.  Since they are a "threat" to the homeland, I saw we completely withdraw from the Middle East.  We pull all of our citizens, our equipment, and our troops out.  If you say Israel, you are a fool.  Israel doesn't need us to prop it up anymore, it can fight its own wars, just like every other one of our allies, if they can't we can back them up like we did in the past.  Otherwise we need zero presence in the Middle East, we need to end tinkering with other countries there, and we need to understand that for most of Iraq's history it has been heavily contested.  Right now if allowed, it would likely break up into three different countries with borders that changed more than the lines during WWI or WWII. 

Alright so we all take a step back and we let the Middle East take care of its own.  Sure it would be a problem if Iran became the leader over there, but the Saudi's are in control, and given how tied together our nations are, it wouldn't be much of a problem if we allowed them to rule the roost for the time being.  See, the terrorists do not hate us because we are free, or we are not Muslim, they do not hate us for our gays or abortions despite what you may think.  They hate us because we are constantly in their countries telling them what to do.  They hate us because we are constantly killing their families and friends in the name of freedom and democracy.  

I think there is a lesson to be learned here.  Right.  You Tea Baggers constantly bitch and complain about the government telling you what to do, you posture and threaten, you actually act like pissants.  This won't instantly solve the problem, but it will certainly stop the creation of more terrorists.  That should be the goal, not a body count.  The fewer terrorists that are created, the fewer terrorist attacks will occur.  The choice is ours to make, and we are about to make the wrong choice again.  If we do, we consign ourselves, our children and several more generations to war and hatred.  It is time for us to grow up, and leave the path of war behind us.