“When a fool is championed by other fools, he suddenly becomes a genius.”

The greater fool?

Of course, as King Solomon observed, “A fool is wise in his eyes.” So by that measure there are only wise people—those who think they are and those who really are. On the other hand Ben Franklin thought the matter boiled down to unexamined, loose “canonish” complaining and criticism. But true to form, MT had the best solution for ferreting out the true fool—“There’s one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he’s crooked.”

Political opinions and loyalties flit about on the winds of knee-jerk reactions to changing events, and with events changing so rapidly it’s hard to keep an accurate ledger of who fits where. One moment a fool is an enemy and the next an ally. It all boils down to who is telling you what you want to hear or not. With elections approaching, this phenomena of whimsy is particularly true. One might be fooled to consider our Vice President an ally of our President. The prior has long been considered as a loose canon by friend and foe alike, but within the past few days he has been especially vociferous with his expressed outrage (perhaps understandably) by stating that “we” will chase ISIS to the doors of Hell. I suppose the “we” he is referring to is someone other than the Washington crowd, regardless of political affiliation. But his heart-felt conviction falls prey to MT’s thoughts on unexamined rhetoric.

The vicious and disturbing actions of ISIS do stimulate passions of retribution quite the same as following 9/11 and just as Saddam Hussein did prior to our invasion of Iraq. That too was an unexamined act that ripped apart the fabric of a largely Muslim country and lead to the mess we have today. It was a nasty tyranny that needed correction but it’s debatable if the invasion was thoughtful.

Saddam, you may recall, was a member of the Ba’ath Party which eventually aligned themselves with the Sunnis. Our elimination of Saddam wreaked the delicate balance of Iraq but was good news for the Sunnis since it left the country in disarray.  Oh, and let us not forget that it was only due to our support of Saddam against Iran (largely a Shia nation) that Saddam prevailed. That war began in 1980, lasted for eight years and resulted in at the very least, half a million and possibly twice as many troops killed on both sides; at least half a million became permanent invalids, some $228 billion were directly expended, and more than $400 billion in damages. 

Now we come to today and ISIS, the Sunni terrorist organization which grew out of the assorted rebels fighting in Syria against the Bashar al-Assad regime (Shia) with the backing of Iran (also Shia). Their stated goal is to establish a non-geographic caliphate and governed by Sharia law. So to examine Biden’s “follow them to the gates of Hell” becomes a very sticky wicket. By eliciting the support of Iran and Assad against ISIS makes us allies of previous arch enemies.

For the uninformed, we need to take a look at this wicket. While Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60% of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20% is in the Middle East and North Africa. However, the Middle East-North Africa region has the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, more than half of the 20 countries and territories in that region have populations that are approximately 95% Muslim or greater. There are roughly 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, and the percent of Sunni Muslims in the Islamic faith is roughly 85-90%. Thus, around 1.5 billion of the total 7 billion people of the world population are Sunni. If ISIS is successful in recruiting a mere 1% from this vast pool, it would result in a force of 15,000,000 fighters; not an insignificant contribution.  

The bluster of Mr. Biden, while emotionally appealing (and fuel for the hawks), makes his bombastic pronouncement somewhat daunting. Boots on the ground? Mission creep? This is all sounding like déjà vu: remnants of Vietnam which was also a costly debacle. According to a new study by a Harvard researcher, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost U.S. taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to the forces depleted by more than a decade of fighting. 

It is hard to argue the case that we did not create this mess. We did. And to now to rush willy-nilly into the Middle East fracas without thorough examination will undoubtedly  bankrupt us financially, morally and physically. With the pressure to reign in fiscal spending, the glaring question is, how to battle ISIS and at the same time slash spending. And far from an unimportant footnote, we must remember the alliance between Russia, China and Iran all of whom share a common interest in limiting the political influence of the United States in Central Asia.

So who’s the greater fool? The ones who profess wisdom (but have none), or the ones who swallow their unwise bait like a fish caught on a hook? What a mess!

“The trouble isn’t that there are too many fools, but that the lightning isn’t distributed right.” MT