Former president Dick Cheney has criticized Barack Obama and Joe Biden for allowing ISIS to grow. Cheney claims that if Osama Bin Laden was able to assemble a force to attack America with airplane tickets and box cutters, then America could be at great risk because ISIS has the ability to get their hands on much more powerful weapons. He claims that ISIS could get their hands on chemicals that could inflict great pain that Americans should not be faced with. http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/31/politics/dick-cheney-terrorism-threat-isis/index.html Dick Cheney sights Obama as the fault of ISIS. He feels that when he and president George W. Bush left office in 2009 America had Iraq under control, but Obama allowed Iraq to be left without American military soldiers. In doing so, Americans saw the rise of ISIS. According to Cheney, the most concerning issue is how ISIS is able to recruit people from America to fight in Syria and Iraq. Without high level security these Americans could return to the U.S and inflict serious pain. http://www.wdsu.com/politics/cheney-warns-of-potential-for-another-911/35020886 Cheney also referenced that ISIS is extremely terrifying with the prospect that a nuclear weapon could be made in the middle east. I feel that Cheney is trying to bring worry to Obama's foreign policy. He is calling for a much higher security and may be referencing that we must take a stand against ISIS. http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/08/31/cheney-we-could-see-another-911-with-much-deadlier-weapons/
While I feel that ISIS is a big risk, I feel that it is unnecessary to automatically take a military stance against ISIS. While ISIS is a dangerous organization, a war could not prevent deaths and would not lessen the tension between America and ISIS. However, I am fearful that American citizens that have joined ISIS could inflict damage to the U.S. I, however, trust American security and feel that we must just be cautious and prevent people from joining and strengthening ISIS. I do feel that we must not let ISIS obtain too much power because it would put America at risk.
This can be tied the to the Bill of Rights and how citizens have the right to bear arms. However, I feel that if people are putting the U.S at risk then they may be punished for their words. I feel that if Americans support ISIS then they are putting America at risk and therefore are subject to questioning.
4 comments:
That is a frightening prospect, however I think that Cheney may be exaggerating the correlation between Obama's administration and the rise of ISIS (perhaps a personal vendetta or something...). I found an article that says the ISIS has been secretly manufacturing M16 rifles (http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-shows-u-s-made-weapons-n419371), and so Cheney might be right about the ISIS doing serious damage to the US. I agree with you that it is unnecessary to take a military stance against ISIS because all of these are simply speculations. However, it is better to be safe than sorry and it wouldn't hurt to strengthen American security. Not only would it put America at risk, it would also impact the the citizens of Iraq and I suppose the entire world. Recently, ISIS took down an ancient temple in Syria (http://wtvr.com/2015/09/01/how-the-isis-demolition-of-a-syrian-temple-impacts-the-world/). This is showing the extent of the growing power of ISIS, and as Erin Thompson state in the article, "They are using, essentially, the media to convey to potential recruits this idea that the West is powerless to defend against ISIS’ destruction of things that are so important to us." America does need to take a stand, but not a military-backed stand, to prevent the ISIS from growing. ISIS is affecting the whole world and attacking and killing citizens of Iraq and Syria. America must make greater efforts to prevent people from joining the ISIS and punish those that do because not only are they harming US citizens, they are also harming the wellbeing of Iraq and Syria and eventually a bigger part of the world.
Regarding Cheney's implied statement that Obama's actions in Iraq somehow had a hand in raising ISIS...correlation does not imply causation ;). Instability in the Middle East, anyone? Seems to me like this is a version of spin in the making.
Dealing with ISIS will be one of the biggest issues our country has to face over the next year, perhaps even the next decade. There are two very different roads we can take: one, follow the call of both Democrat and Republican politicians alike, and ease back our intervention in that region. After all, the United States is often criticized for being the "world police," and it is the general consensus amongst Americans that we don't really want a repeat of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On the flip side, however, ISIS is doing some absolutely terrifying things. Stoning people to death, drowning people alive in cages, throwing homosexuals off of rooftops, and the forced conversion to Islam are just a few of the atrocities that ISIS has committed and continues to commit as we speak. http://www.christianpost.com/news/convert-to-islam-or-die-iraq-christians-warned-by-isis-as-largest-christian-city-in-iraq-taken-by-jihadists-124551/
It's certainly a huge fork in the road, and the decision is in no way an easy one. While Cheney may seem to be warning of a doomsday "end of times" scenario,which probably won't be taken seriously, it is true that if ISIS continues to grow in influence, they will absolutely pose a threat to us in the States. So do we focus on repairing the major problems that exist in our own country, or do we prevent ISIS from expanding their reign of terror and influence to even further reaches of the globe? The next President is in for a rough time.
I see terrorism as a cycle, the more we fight terrorists, the more we create and we're making more than we can kill. I think this happens because of civilian casualties, destruction of homes/towns, and simply targeting the wrong people. We get to a foreign nation, that has a majority of the population who doesn't like us in the first place, and we disrupt a lot of innocent lives in search of a few terrible people in the midst of the good. We foster more hate and anti-American warriors. In the case of ISIS and their chances to get nuclear weapons, it may be too late to stand passive. The United States has to be careful, but Cheney dogging on Obama doesn't seem legitimate. Obama's withdrawal of troops from Iraq, seemingly, could not have increased anti-American terrorists' drive. I know in my gut that something should be done to protect the people of Iraq and Syria but I don't know enough about ISIS to even throw out a bad idea.
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