Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Montana’s candidates for federal office — for the U.S. House and Senate — generally avoid discussing foreign policy. But discussing foreign policy will be harder to avoid in a few days.
President Obama will announce on Wednesday, 10 September, a plan for dealing with ISIS, aka Islamic State, the reactionary Islamic fundamentalists who have seized control of significant parts of Syria and northern Iraq, and who want to return to the purity of the Eighth Century.
He’ll probably announce that the U.S. and his handful of allies will provide air support for ground operations by local opponents of the ISIS. That will, of course, also mean more U.S. advisors on the ground, serving as tacticians and target designators. At some point, there will be U.S. casualties and personnel taken prisoner by the ISIS
I can’t think of a group more deserving of being carpet bombed and obliterated than ISIS. They’ve earned every pound of TNT that explodes on them.
Whether they pose a threat, let alone a serious threat, to the U.S. is another question. They’re intent on establishing a medieval Islamic theocracy in the Middle East, not on Long Island. Whether they plan to commit terrorists acts in the U.S. is not clear, but I suspect if they had the capacity to do that, that’s what they would do instead of producing snuff videos of beheading Americans in their custody.
Montana is far from the Middle East — but Montana’s sons and daughters fight and die in places far from Montana. Beginning with the Korean War, VetFriends.com reports that 441 Montanans have died in foreign wars. Thousands more have returned home maimed, missing arms and legs and eyes. Some suffer terrible brain injuries from which they never recover fully.
So, after the President speaks on Wednesday, we need to hear from you, Steve Daines, Ryan Zinke, John Lewis, Amanda Curtis, Roger Roots, and Mike Fellows. How would you deal with the ISIS? And how would you help the American men and women who fight our foreign wars and who come home alive, but are never again the same?