Geraldo, You Had Me from 'Declaration'

Quick, someone at American Thinker tell the Devil to check his ponds for skim ice. I know it’s gotta be starting to freeze over down there, because I just found myself nodding my head and agreeing with Geraldo Rivera in his appearance on the O’Reilly show. Geraldo pointed out to Bill that the optimal course to take in dealing with ISIS is to formally declare war on the Islamic State, uniting the Congress and the nation in a determined campaign to ensure the total and complete destruction of said Islamic State. He made the excellent point that ISIS has declared itself a state and has real military and political control over large geographical areas, which means it has therefore self-identified as a nation and is consequently subject to a declaration of war.

Why? Because the world’s newest nation has defiantly thrown down a gauntlet of challenge to the United States by publicly executing two American citizens in the most bloodily brutal way imaginable. Further, they have publicly announced their determination to attack the United States on its home soil. Even the Germans and the Japanese never publicly executed American citizens as an act of provocation, nor did they announce to the world prior to our declarations of war against them any avowed intentions to destroy us. I confess that Geraldo caught me completely off-guard with his proposal. I previously hadn’t drilled down far enough to consider a declaration of war as being the course to pursue in bringing down this new manifestation of fascism cloaked in Islamic clerical garb. But it does make sense that we turn the tables on ISIS by giving them the formal recognition they want and then use that affirmation of their political existence to pound them into smoking rubble. A formal declaration takes away some of the restraints that have limited our offensive attempts up to now. In a declaration, our Congress can make it crystal-clear that the intent of our nation is to obliterate theirs, thus making it one of the most short-lived nation-states in history. With such a declaration, America’s gloves come off, because in said declaration we have informed the world of our intention to unconditionally and totally destroy this Islamic State. Surrender or a formal ceasefire is not an option – only obliteration. And then, as if I hadn’t been surprised enough by the common sense flowing from beneath that ridiculous moustache, Geraldo floored me again with a second recommendation that made at least as much sense as the first: bring Gen. Stanley Mc Chrystal back to active duty and put him in charge of building a Kurdish Army, now loosely defined as the Peshmerga, to help defeat ISIS and then serve as a counter-force to the rise of another such fanatical foe. The general may be a bit too liberal in some of his views for die-hard conservatives, but he’s a tough SOB who knows the terrain and the Middle East mindset. Damn all, Geraldo, you ruined my Friday night. I’m still sitting here shaking my head at the possibility that we could be in agreement.