Tuesday, December 19, 2017

We Won!

Suppose we won a war and no one noticed. In this case “no one” does not mean “no one.” After all, this very blog reported on the American victory over ISIS ten days ago.

And yet, the mainstream media has not been touting the great American victory in Iraq and Syria… because, to their minds, if it makes Donald Trump look good, you must ignore it completely.

In the case of the war against ISIS Trump knew enough to put the generals in charge. He did not hamstring them with legalistic rules of engagement. He told them to do the job and they did the job.

Ross Douthat has the story (via Maggie’s Farm):

There is nothing more characteristic of the Trump era, with its fire hose of misinformation, scandal and hyperbole, than that America and its allies recently managed to win a war that just two years ago consumed headlines and dominated political debate and helped Donald Trump himself get elected president — and somehow nobody seemed to notice.

I mean the war against the Islamic State, whose expansion was the defining foreign policy calamity of Barack Obama’s second term, whose executions of Americans made the U.S.A. look impotent and whose utopian experiment drew volunteers drunk on world-historical ambitions and metaphysical dreams. Its defeat was begun under Obama, and the hardest fighting has been done by Iraqis — but this was an American war too, and we succeeded without massive infusions of ground troops, without accidentally getting into a war with Russia, and without inspiring a huge wave of terrorism in the West.

Yes, indeed. As Roger Cohen also averred in the same New York Times, the war in Syria was an Obama administration failure. The administration let ISIS run free and that meant torture and executions, sex slavery and rapes, throwing homosexuals off of buildings. All the while the Obama administration stood by, impotent and whining in its cocoa.

Of course, the press is not reporting the victory because it would make Trump look good.

But this is also a press failure, a case where the media is not adequately reporting an important success because it does not fit into the narrative of Trumpian disaster in which our journalistic entities are all invested.

Douthat had not been optimistic about Donald Trump’s ability to conduct foreign policy. Neither had I. And yet, the facts are the facts… don’t you remember when everyone was so concerned about the facts… and we must report them fairly and objectively:

But if you had told me in late 2016 that almost a year into the Trump era the caliphate would be all-but-beaten without something far worse happening in the Middle East, I would have been surprised and gratified. So very provisionally, credit belongs where it’s due — to our soldiers and diplomats, yes, but to our president as well.

9 comments:

Ares Olympus said...

Is it time for the "Mission accomplished!" banner?

I don't suppose its worth mentioning that Iran helped in this fight against ISIS?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iran-was-at-the-forefront-of-the-fight-against-isis-now-it-has-to-face-the-militants-at-home/2017/08/14/e4fb735a-7dfe-11e7-b2b1-aeba62854dfa_story.html

It does make me wonder if Prince MBS's arrest of 11 princes and other wealthy individuals was a part of this final collapse, assuming they were a part of the funding of ISIS, but maybe that was the final straw that convinced ISIS to disperse into the desert so they can fight another day?

And everyone can be glad the Mosul Dam survived this victory. If ISIS wanted to destroy that and flood large parts of Iraq, they could have done that if they wanted to achieve maximum hatred in their collapse.

Jack Fisher said...

Stamping out ideology isn't this easy. If ISIS is gone, radical islam will return under a different guise.

trigger warning said...

Mission is certainly accomplished for this stage of the fight. IS has been driven out of their strongholds, their stolen petroleum cash flow has been shut off, and they are hiding in the desert, New York City, Berlin, London, and Paris. Unfortunately, the dithering prevailed long enough to permit the irrecoverable destruction of Palmyra and other priceless historic sites, as well as the barbaric murders of many people for the IS YouTube marketing programs.

But a given mission is only one stage, a demarcation point, on the road to victory. Victory requires an assenting vote from the losing side. IS barbarians, like an infestation of cockroaches or gangrenous tissue, must still be extirpated from the wadis, caves, and souks of the Middle East and the streets and communities of North America and Europe.

Sam L. said...

The media just cannot bring themselves to say anything good about President Trump, or that might reflect well upon him.

Anonymous said...

AO,
Walter Duranty?

JPL17 said...

"The media just cannot bring themselves to say anything good about President Trump, or that might reflect well upon him."

Nor can Ares Olympus, it seems.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Ares Olympus doesn’t say much that is positive about anything at all.

Ares Olympus said...

TW: IS barbarians, like an infestation of cockroaches or gangrenous tissue, must still be extirpated from the wadis, caves, and souks of the Middle East and the streets and communities of North America and Europe.

I have no objection to calling many of participants in ISIS as barbarians, but do they have tattoos so you can identify them? I'm sure many of the young ones, the JV team perhaps, the ones lucky enough to escape alive will just go home and pretend they were never there.

The primary thing left is ordinary law enforcement to deal with people who are violent, whatever their previous or current allegiance.

But for the victims, I'm sure there'll be lots of stories to tell. And lots to rebuild, and hopefully people will be more vigilant to their own ability to believe in fantasy utopias under any religious law.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yazidi-isis-sex-slave-rape-survivor-nadia-murad-a8064311.html

trigger warning said...

Olympian, I really doubt that intelligence agencies rely on tattoos to identify terrorists. Besides, tattoos are haram.

Your imaginary friends who mutter in your ear, Anima and Animus (aka Harvey and Casper), are letting you down.