Don't Join ISIS! #3

    A very practical reason not to join ISIS this week is that it is on the run,
pouring out of Falujah, being easier to rout than expected - so the news goes.
The news in the Wall Street Journal today includes a big article about the antiterrorism programs in Germany brought about by the sharp increase in joining the Salafi strain of Islam. The article was prompted by some young guy who threatened to break the neck of a Jewish student and was enrolled in a program designed to stop would-be terrorists from becoming ones. This young guy did well in the program, which is apparently talking therapy, giving no indications supposedly in counseling he was about to pop, but he did. He threw a bomb at a wedding. No one was hurt. He's charged with attempted murder. But his computer shows he was still enthralled with terrorism. So how do you talk someone out of it? Germany is changing its laws to allow greater electronic surveillance. This makes sense since very few people seem to become terrorists by themselves. That is, without communicating it. People who say they want to break a Jew's neck should be monitored closely in most cases, I'd say. History is prelude. Want to know what a person is going to do? Look at his history.
    I am reading three books about ISIS and Islam and am in The Problem With Islam, the deepest. What I've been struck with are the contradictions of the Koran which can only be solved if you take it metaphorically and not literally.
I am a literalist by nature so I'm not comfortable with a metaphorical Koran, no more than I was comfortable with the Episcolpalian priest telling me, about a year ago, that the Bible was a series of metaphors. My reply was "Then it's all solipsistic, then?" This merited the priest muttering something to the priest on the other side of him, who laughed harshly and replied, "Now remember. we're supposed to have a big tent!" They were sick of me asking so many questions, and that was my last day at that church.
    I also recognize that this is not a good time for you to be looking for people to respect. I may be behind the ball but my understanding now is that the most powerful man in the world, as president of the USA, Barrack Obama, is claiming that he ordered a military rescue to Benghazi, but the order broke down in the chain of command. I have concluded that the best way to understand Obama, using Occam's Razor that recognizes the overall accuracy of the least convoluted thinking, is to posit that Obama is an Islamist soldier. Has anyone taken him or Leon Panneta, the Secretary of Defense, at their word and asked, "Who broke down the chain of command and why didn't you fix it? You just don't command and go  to bed. You command and make sure your command is executed. Let me assure you that there are men in America - I'm one - who, if the chain of command was broken in the military, and I couldn't fix it, I would have grabbed a rifle, torn the Secret Service away from their prostitutes, and headed for Air Force One. We'd reinforce the Benghazi Alamo by ourselves if needed. Of course, if a president acted like a man, like that, he'd have been followed by everything America had, not just all the Army, Navy, Marines, Seals, Deltas, etc, but by the Conservatives, the Tea Party, and some southern Democrats with their bear, hog, and deer rifles. That's what real man, a real leader, does. He leads and not from behind and not from his bed.
    It seems like all you have to compare ISIS right now is cowardness, lying, and other weaknesses in the West. But look again. Look at Brexit. Look at the fact that Obama's Islamic Sister, Hillary Clinton, is spending millions of dollars with a super-organized party apparatus to demean and beat Donald Trump who has only one million dollars in his campaign budget and no party apparatus. Yet based on the electoral college vote, the race between the two is very, very close. How can that be? It is because the support for Trump is organic. It doesn't come from Hillary's screeching lies or all her money. It comes from the people who are fed up with the lies and the arrogance of the public employees who have become
interested only in themselves and how much they can get from the people and how many laws they can jam down the people's throats. The people are tired of the tail wagging the dog, and they're not going to take it any more. Hillary can lie, slander, and screech all she wants, and it's not going to make any difference. The people know she's no good and nothing good will come from her. They'd rather give their vote to the buffoon Trump who might just stumble onto something good. Certainly, their guts tell them that Trump would go to the rescue of our Americans who were in a 13 hour gunfight at Benghazi.
     Have some hope in the Western world. We have the freedom to question the leaders and make changes. You do that in ISIS, and you're dead or worse.
Peter Nickerson, Philosophy Major, Class of '68, College of William and Mary.