France’s response to the Paris massacre should be defined as lukewarm at best. Several fighter-bombers dropped some ordnance on a few locations, where the ISIS idiots have been sheltering. France is now placing a lot of importance on “returning to life as usual” as a major form of resisting ISIS. Is this because the Christmas shopping period is coming up? Where is the big punch, the overwhelming response, the shock&awe?
While “boots on the ground” are now unrealistic and would provide ISIS fighters with an opportunity to fulfil their greatest desire of fighting the American devils on middle-eastern soil, the world does have other response mechanisms. Ones that would provide the crazy extremists with what they desire – death (their own). And, lots of it.
Question 1: Where is Curtis LeMay, when you need a crazy general from Strategic Air Command, quoted as: “I’ll tell you what war is about, you’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.” Simple. It cannot be 20 aircraft bombing some targets on a large territory. The challenge is to undertake a sustained, effective and overwhelming campaign, which will prevent ISIS from renewing its resource base. Ergo: destroy their assets faster than they can replenish them. This requires a coalition effort or just an angry US with 2 aircraft carriers in the region and some strategic bombers flying long-range missions (are they still based in UK?).
Question 2 (resulting from the above): Don’t you think that Saddam is now vindicated in his strategies? Remember when US invaded Iraq and Saddam started burning oil fields? A cool strategy of “denial”, that will work against ISIS as well, seeing that the terrorists are earning an estimated 50 million USD per week from sales of oil. That in turn means that they have unlimited money for buying weapons, equipment, food, etc. Did you notice that the Toyota pickups they always use, have been getting newer and better? Who is the Toyota dealer for Iraq?
Question 3: Where is SOCOM when you really need them? US special Operations Command has proven itself as a hyper-effective tool for the elimination of Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, so why not shift their efforts and capabilities to a new target? In all types of ideological movements, the secret to their defeat is to attack the leadership – those who put stupid ideas into heads of idiots and then tell those frenzied idiots to go and do crazy shit. So, as SOCOM already did in Afghanistan, you go after the ISIS leadership with surgical drone strikes and targeted assassinations. As an illegitimate non-state pretentious wannabe, ISIS leadership are not state leaders, so they will not find protection under international law. Good. Their morning coffee and cigarette on a balcony will now be done with a though that a drone could be just over the horizon.
Question 4: will Anonymous help the various governments by providing vital digital data about ISIS’s online operations. This cooperating would be unprecedented and, undoubtedly, short-lived as the hackers and Western governments have only ISIS in common. Nonetheless, ISIS digital operations would be a source of good targeting data – imagine an ISIS leader talking online and that data passed to a circling American bomber with a nice 500kg “gift” to be dropped on THAT particlar “internet location”. If the hackers could wipe out more accounts, steal money from the rabid crazies, that would be even cooler.
Question 5: when will European governments shift their security policies to preventative detentions, targeted removals of individuals with proven links but against whom no “binding in court” information can be acquired? What about stripping of nationalities from extremists and kicking them back to the sand dunes that house ISIS? Is anyone deluding themselves that Europe will NOT go towards deportations? The current softness towards migrants is a temporary thing, trust me.
All we need is some political courage.