John C. Wright reminisces about the days when ISIS was killing on a regular basis, and the bold response from the West, including the Obama administration, was that it's the new normal. ISIS is here to stay. People gotta die. It's a crying shame. Back to the latest smartphone apps.
Of course the Obama administration was one of the worst presidencies in American history. Because to say so openly would lead to accusations of racism, most of the public appraisals of the Obama years are variations on 'awesome, let's move on.' The fact is, our country emerged barely discernible from what it once was, and not in a good way.
Racial tensions boiled over, divisions like nothing since the Civil War, an anemic economic recovery for most of the eight years, and a foreign policy that ranks as one of the most disastrous in American history define his legacy. Only proximity to the equally disastrous Bush years makes it seem less than it was. Perhaps realizing that the last three presidents were among the worst our country has had, yet each was reelected for a second term, might help explain things.
Nonetheless, as Mr. Wright points out, this has not been a policy of haphazard drone strikes, murdered wedding guests, and hoping that ISIS just kills my neighbor rather than me. It has been deliberate, precise, and effective. While you can't eliminate everyone in ISIS, and its very nature can keep the killing around for years to come, the beast's back has been broken. The lack of twice a month killings attributed to ISIS, mixed with the periodic destruction of priceless historic locations, is proof enough of that.
And we all say we're glad, even if we have to choke on our pride and give credit to Trump for his part in the turnabout.
Why should he get credit, though? It seems to me the Kurdish peshmerga, ethnic-minority militias and the U.S. forces were doing just fine mopping up ISIS in late 2016, before Trump's inauguration. And has his policy really been that much different from his immediate predecessor's?
ReplyDeleteI can see your point. And there are still obviously grave troubles in our military that need sorted out. But the point isn't so much that they scraped everything and started from scratch. It's that they pushed up the timeline. I remember well, in 2016, that the whole narrative was 'ISIS: Here for the long haul." They didn't say ISIS would win, but it was clear that it was going to be years and years before even their main power base was broken, much less all the lone wolf operatives tracked down. I remember a segment with Fareed Zarkarai, in which they basically said just that. Trump has, by all accounts, gotten the military to step it up, gotten out of the way, and the results have been far more in a quicker time than anyone imagined two years ago.
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