While We Were Watching The Election Campaign

Yesterday Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article about the battle in Dabiq, Syria.

The article reports:

Dabiq is the Syrian village that ISIS promised would be the scene of an apocalyptic showdown, an Armageddon, in which Muslims would win a great battle against the infidels, consisting of 80 nations each ten thousand strong. But recently, as I noted here, ISIS had to abandon Dabiq under pressure from Free Syrian rebels backed by Turkish and U.S. air power.

ISIS’s occupation ended not with an apocalypse, but a whimper.

ISIS has an explanation, though. Will McCants of Jihadica reports that ISIS says the conditions for its apocalyptic prophesy were not present in Dabiq just now. For one thing, the “Mahdi,” a messiah figure, did not appear to lead the battle (the reason for his no-show is unclear). Not only that, the expected 80 infidel armies did not turn up to be defeated.

Prophesy is a difficult racket.

It is good to know that some progress is being made against ISIS. However, we need to remember why ISIS exists. ISIS is the result of the failure of the American State Department under the Obama Administration to secure a reasonable status of forces agreement with Iraq after President Obama took office. President Obama was so obsessed with being the President who ended the war in Iraq that he did not take the necessary steps to secure the victory. A war is not over until both sides have stopped fighting. Somewhere along the way, President Obama decided he had the power to unilaterally end the war in Iraq. Obviously, he didn’t, and our military is currently paying the price for that decision. Unfortunately, the Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton, is no smarter now than she was then. A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for further chaos in the Middle East. However, it is good to know that at least in this case, ISIS was routed and their plans altered.

When Politics Trumps National Security

A U.S. Coast Guard vessel patrols Guantanamo B...

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Today’s Wall Street Journal (no link–subscribers only) has an editorial entitled, “The Daqduq Disgrace.” It deals with terrorist Ali Musa Daqduq, a Hezbollah operative involved in the planning of the kidnapping and murder of American soldiers in Karbala in 2007, who is also guilty of arming and training Iraqi insurgents. Daqduq is in Iraqi custody. It is expected that Daqduq will be released.

The article reports:

The Administration contends that its hands were tied by the U. S.-Iraq status-of-forces agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration, which required Iraq’s consent–not forthcoming–to remove any prisoners from the country. But it’s hard to see why that stipulation would apply to Daqduq, who is not an Iraqi citizen (he is a Lebanese national).

The Administration considered bringing Daqduq to the U.S. for trial in federal court or a military tribunal (showing that the status-of-forces deal was not insurmountable).

The article in the Wall Street Journal points out that the place for Daqduq to go was Guantanamo. Unfortunately, although the Obama Administration has not been successful in its attempts to close Guantanamo, it has refused to send anyone there.

Daqduq will receive a hero’s welcome in either Beirut or Tehran. It is a shame that politics have prevented us from locking up someone who will probably do harm to America in the future.

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