A Modest Proposal for the Middle East

Much to our chagrin, President Obama has gone through with airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq.  Apparently, we have scraped the bottom of the barrel and found a terrorist group worse than Al-Qaeda, and even Al-Qaeda is afraid of them.  They seek to establish an Islamic "caliphate", and will stop at nothing to achieve it.  They will literally kill, rape, torture, and/or enslave anyone who stands in their way, especially women and children, and the TSAP feels that animals like that need to be humanely euthanized, and even that would be too kind.  That said, we also feel that war is not the answer, since American intervention was what created the conditions that allowed ISIS to take root in the first place.  Violence only begets more violence, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and if you fight fire with fire we ALL get burned.  And there is clearly no such thing as "humanitarian" bombing, regardless of what some war-hawks may claim.

But since President Obama has already begun the airstrikes, the TSAP hereby makes the following modest proposal to him:

1)  First, take the War Powers Act extremely literally for once, and draw a line in the sand that we will completely abort the bombing mission after 90 days (if not sooner), no ifs ands or buts about it. No escalation either, and certainly no boots on the ground. After that, the Iraqis are completely on their own, period.

2) Pull all troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, like you promised.

3) Stop supporting Israel's genocide (yes, that's what it really is) of the Palestinians, and pressure them to end the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and implement a two-state solution.  For the Golan Heights, leave it up to the residents.

4) Cut the "defense" spending by half, establish a Department of Peace, and set up a sort of "Marshall Plan" for the Middle East region using a portion of the money saved.  And perhaps do these things as well, which certainly couldn't hurt.

5)  Finally, and we are only half-joking about this: when we finish "playing exterminator" and pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., we should give every woman over there an AK-47 and tell them to take over their country and mow down anyone who stands in their way. Let Allah sort it out. But of course, the powers that be over here would never support that. After all, they wouldn't want women in this country getting any ideas, now would they?  (Actually, replacing all of our Big Wetiko "leaders" with women wouldn't be a bad idea, but that's a topic for another discussion)

But hey, what do we know?  We're just the 800-lb gorilla (or is that guerrilla?) in the room.