Earlier this evening the aircraft carrier Intrepid, now a museum in New York harbor, hosted the Democratic and Republican candidates for President. It wasn’t a debate, since they didn’t go head to head, but the forum was the first time they have shared the same stage as their parties candidates. I had church this evening and was thus unable to see the event live, but I did see speeches earlier in the day that ramped up to this performance, which focused on the military and veterans affairs.
Needless to say, neither of them have impressed me on the subject of war. I won’t got into to many details on my opinions, since they are only opinions, but I will say this. The military is just fine, it is not in shambles, it is not in horrible shape. We could stand to have some financial pressure relieved, but frankly that could be done by just having Congress make a choice, which is something they are loathe to do these days. You can have more people, you can have have new equipment, but unless you want to raise taxes or tell your pals in the military industrial complex to start building stuff A) that you actually ask for and B)for a reasonable amount of money, you can NOT have both. Hell, we should have raised taxes by 10% when we invaded Afghanistan and kept them in place for the duration of The War on Terror.
Lastly, you can NOT defeat ISIL, at least not the way both candidates seem to think is the way that matters. Bullets and bombs, troops and jets, can kill fighters, take back land and help reastablish lines on a map, but they won’t beat ISIL. After all, ISIL is more than a group of terrorists. It is an idea. A thought, whispered in the ears of people who have been raised in an environment so foreign to most people in the USA it might as well be on another planet. We “defeated” Al-Qaeda, right? Sort of. You “defeat” one group, the thought will only metastasize into another, perhaps deadlier group. ISIL is dangerous in a way that Al-Qaeda was not. ISIL WANTS the war, the need the war, it is their final act to the End Times for them. Al-Qaeda, at it’s core, just wanted the West out. Terror is something that we have had to deal with since the dawn of time, and as long as there are haves and have nots in the world, it will never go away.
How we deal with it is important, and I am not sure either candidate this year has a good plan to do that.