We can't end wars if our enemies want to fight them forever (or until Allah grants them victory).
Biden really isn't ending the "forever wars":
Forever war keeps on simmering, and it could all too easily boil again.
No kidding, Sherlock. Our jihadi enemies vote and they want to keep killing us.
Although to be fair, our jihadi enemies want to kill everybody.
The wars are simmering for America now because we did heavy lifting after 9/11 to help allies get the ability to kill jihadis, too, without our heavy direct commitment of troops.
Case in point, the much reduced ISIL threat in Iraq and eastern Syria:
The Islamic State group remains a threat seven years after it swept through Syria and Iraq, but it has not mounted any deliberate attacks on coalition forces in over two years, the U.S. military said.
And if we don't wage this lighter load of Global Troubles successfully with those allies, you're darned right it could all easily boil again:
I'm not the only one to notice that we really aren't in "endless wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan any more. What we are doing is committing troops and money (and yes, occasional casualties) to defend what we achieved. All without "exit strategies." Let's keep it that way.As I concluded in a later post building on that:
We've come a long way from those days. What Sunni-majority state supports terrorists who target America? How many states now work with us to fight terrorists--including Iraq, which is amazingly overlooked? What terrorist groups seem poised to strike big at our homeland today?
The threat still exists. But we can afford to set aside our biggest hammers and use different tools than those we needed to use in the aftermath of the threats made apparent on September 11, 2001. ...I've long said that our war on terror is a holding action to prevent collateral damage from the Islamic Civil War from hurting Americans at home. In many ways we've done that and paid the price to achieve it.
While there are still military tasks to be done in the fight against jihadis, America and the West need different tools from those that dominated in the decade after 9/11 to finally defeat the Islamo-fascists that wish to kill and define all of Islam as an expression of that will to kill.
We are in the age of the Global Troubles now.
You don't turn your backs to murderous scum and expect them
not to take advantage of that. Do we have the national leadership to do
this despite the calls from the left and right to futilely try to end so-called
"forever wars" unilaterally?
