Letter 2 America for September 2, 2014.

Dear America,

Last Saturday, two elder statesmen from the Republican Party...ostensible moderates...sent President Obama a letter through the New York Times OP-ED page.  It was about ISIS, the group preying on the internecine Islamic schisms that have plagued the middle east, what ISIS and others historically have called "The Levant," for centuries.  The crux of it was that ISIS is a threat to us one and all, not just those who live within the ambit of their terrible oppression, and military confrontation will be to no avail unless the mutual antipathy of the parties to the Iraqi government can be put aside and a functional, inclusive government can be formed and maintained, but we need a plan.  The plan of these two moderates, Senator John McCain (R) of Arizona and Senator Lindsey Graham (R) of  South Carolina, is to logistically support the various armed factions in the war against ISIS that is raging in Iraq and Syria and to provide them with what used to be called "advisors" during the first years of the Vietnam era.  We should also bomb ISIS in concert with our local allies through a new alliance of like minded nations in the region, and President Obama should accomplish all this by submitting a plan to congress for its ratification in the form of legislation and funding.  If you've been listening to our president speak to the subject over these past couple of months, you have heard these ideas in various forms before...from him, not from Republicans, so what are these Republicans doing with this OP-ED piece?  You have to translate if from politician to civilian to understand.  The translation goes like this.

A guy walks into a pharmacy and asks the clerk where he can find the talcum powder.  The clerk says, "Walk this way."  And the customer replies, "If I could walk that way I wouldn't need the talcum powder."  It's like the Chinese recipe for rabbit stew: first you catch a couple of rabbits.

This little grand stand play by McCain and Graham is not quite transparent, but to those of us who watch Washington not just for what it does but for how it gets away with it, it's just more of the same old stuff.

The first problem posed by McCain's and Graham's solution is creating an alliance in the middle east.  The reality is that ISIS is just an enormous Islamic mafia engaged in extortion of funds from its own constituents, bestial violence intended to keep them in line, and outright theft of all the resources they need from those whom they can beat into submission.  The impact of their criminal syndication will be felt by all the nations in the area including some with enormous resources of their own: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Israel, Yemen, Lebanon and, of course, Iraq and Syria.  While Syria is no longer a functioning state, the others all are, and they don't need us to lead them to the conclusion that their own suzerainty is at stake.  Common sense should have led to each of them sheathing the saber it waggles at the others and at the recalcitrant within each toward the end of unifying an effort at mutually beneficial action against ISIS, but as everyone can see, that hasn't happened.  Iraqi Sunnis still murder Iraqi Shiites, and the Kurdish militia known as pesh merga is busy concerting its own efforts toward not just holding ISIS at bay but forging a position from which it can assert its own autonomy when all this is behind us.  Syria is its own story of chaos in the face of a need for unity of this single purpose, and none of them will ever turn to Israel, which may be the only nation with the real power to save the region from descent into medieval feudalism.  Of course there is the incomprehensibly wealthy aggregation of emirates and kingdoms in the Persian Gulf, but despite their resources, they don't do anything for themselves...some kind of entitlement thing, I think.  That's the first rabbit President Obama is supposed to use in McCain's and Graham's recipe.  But The President says that without an alliance, we aren't going to do anything, because the last few times we have tried we have paid in blood and dollars for something that never eventuated.  Though McCain and Graham seem to think that we benefited from what they characterize as changes of heart by presidents, none of those they cited yielded anything...except the genesis of ISIS and the problem they now want to solve with the same strategy.  George Bush's "surge," which was a revision of the preexisting Iraq policy, didn't save the United States from defeat.  It just prolonged a futile effort to make enemies drink from the same trough.  And Jimmy Carter didn't do the United States any favors by changing our policy toward the Soviet Union when it invaded Afghanistan.  In fact, all we wound up doing was to arm the very anti-soviet mujahideen groups that ultimately became Al Queda.  And then of course there is their recommendation as to The President's course with congress: the second rabbit.

Getting this Republican House of Representatives and the filibuster-bound Senate to do anything he wants is like herding cats into a room and prevailing on them take their medicine.  There are 535 members, and none of them wants to do what will help any other who isn't in his own party.  No plan submitted by this president would pass congressional muster, and unless both McCain and Graham have reached their dotage, they know that.  So, what's this all about.  The answer is the Fall elections.  What should be happening now is that the Republican House should be passing a bill proposing funding for a complex of anti-ISIS activities, and The Senate should be passing it when it comes to them--including endowing The President with the power to make the necessary wartime decisions--so that President Obama can go to those in the middle east and say we have the money and the planes, but you have to put the boots on the ground.  In fact, something similar should be happening in Europe so that the United States isn't the only country dropping bombs on these nefarious, glorified "gangbangers."  But McCain and Graham both know that there isn't a chance in hell that the Republicans who keep our legislature from acting in every other arena are going to turn over a new leaf just for this.  So instead of pointing a finger at their own, they are pointing it at President Obama, as if he can actually do anything to overcome the concerted effort to thwart him that has been the hallmark of this Republican era, and that is what it is.  So don't be fooled by some disingenuous editorial essay intended to misdirect the attention of the American people from the role that McCain's and Graham's party has played in bringing this country, and indirectly the world, to its knees.  In the end, their "plan" is a good idea.  They just want the wrong guy to change in its service.

Your friend,

Mike