100

100 being the number of Isis members that the Honduran government has told ours they have snagged trying to join the so-called caravan heading north towards us.

Leaving aside that Mexico has offered that mob everything on a silver platter and they've rejected it, that alone is enough that the soldiers being placed on the border should be authorized to do anything necessary to stop them.

Isis cut the head off of this 14 year old boy in front of his parents because  he missed religious services.

Things That Make You Go "Hmmmm..." - Habakkuk

I've had a bee in my bonnet the last couple days about reading some of the shorter prophetic books of the Bible, and one that was niggling at me was Habakkuk.  Such a cool name.  And way shorter than Isaiah.

According to the various sources I looked at, Habakkuk dates from somewhere between 605 - 597 B.C., an era of Babylonian expansion that was capped by Nebuchadnezzar's victory over Judea and his capture of Jerusalem.  The city was pillaged and thousands were deported to Babylonia.  In 587 B.C. his forces destroyed the city completely.

Habakkuk is only 3 chapters long.  The first 2 chapters are in the form of a dialog with the Lord - Habakkuk's lament and questioning of the Lord's government of the world, his horror at God's use of evil and destructive men to bring His people back from their failings and sinful ways, and the Lord's answers.  The last chapter is a canticle, a hymn exulting the glory and power of God that ends with a statement of faith in the face of trouble:

For though the fig tree blossom not
   nor the fruit be on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive fail
  and the terraces produce no nourishment,
Though the flocks disappear from the fold
   and there be no herd in the stalls,
Yet will I rejoice in the Lord
  and exult in my saving God.
God, my Lord, is my strength;
  he makes my feet swift as those of of hinds
   and enables me to go upon the heights. (Habakkuk 3: 17- 19)

This shift from lament to rejoicing reminds me of Psalm 22, the beginning of which is familiar to every Christian:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? (Psalm 22:1)

Unlike many Christians of today,  faithful Jews of Jesus' time would have known that Psalm 22 ends in victory and rejoicing:

All the ends of the earth
  will worship and turn to the Lord;
All the families of nations
  will bow low before you.
For kingship belongs to the Lord,
  the ruler over the nations.
All who sleep in the earth
  will bow low before God;
All who have gone down into the dust
  will kneel in homage.
And I will live for the Lord;
  my descendants will serve you.
The generation to come will be
  told of the Lord,
  that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn
   the deliverance you have brought. (Psalm 22:28-32)

But I digress...

Back to the Prophet Habakkuk.

Chapter 1 really got my attention.  Basically, the format is:

Habakkuk:  Lament
God:  Reply
Habakkuk: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

How long, O Lord? I cry for help
  but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, "Violence!"
  but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin;
  why must I look at misery?
Destruction and violence are before me;
  there is strife, and clamorous discord.
This is why the law is benumbed,
  and judgment is never rendered:
Because the wicked circumvent the just;
  this is why judgment comes forth perverted. (Habakkuk 1: 2-4)

I don't know about you, but this pretty well expresses how I feel day in and day out anymore.

The Lord answers:

Look over the nations and see,
  and be utterly amazed!
For a work is being done in your days
  that you would not have believed, were it told.
For see, I am raising up Chaldea,
  that bitter and unruly people,
That marches the breadth of the land
  to take dwellings not his own.
Terrible and dreadful is he,
  from himself derive his law and his majesty.  (Habakkuk 1: 5-7)

The prophet is horrified at the tool God chooses:

Are you not from eternity, O Lord,
  my holy God, immortal?
O Lord, you have marked him for judgement,
O Rock, you have readied him for punishment!
Too pure are your eyes to look upon evil,
  and the sight of misery you cannot endure.  (Habakkuk 1: 12-13)

You know how stuff just wanders around in the back of your mind before something makes you think about it?

Hm.  Where did Isis come out of?  Iraq and its neighbors...

Yeah, I'm not real happy with Habakkuk and his prophesy right now.

All Over Again

History repeats.  It's happening all over again.

The White House says that we need a political solution.  The world is on fire.  The same brutal barbarians that have swarmed it repeatedly since the 7th century are slaughtering their way across the Middle East and Africa, and infiltrating the rest of the world, leaving a blood trail in Europe and America.  A trail that's only going to get bloodier. And we have no Roland, no Richard Lionheart, no Jan Sobieski, no Charles Martel.

Where jihad goes, it slaughters.  Right now what they are showing us are only the images of adults.  Horrific, but adults.

But where jihadists go, they torture, crucify, rape, and murder.  Men, women, children. 

The Yazidi of Iraq cry out: first their men are executed, then the women and children are sold into slavery.  Slavery, Jesse Jackson.  Slavery, Al Sharpton.  Slavery, Barack Obama.  First, though, the girl children are raped.  Eight years old, nine years old.  Eight. Years. Old.  In keeping with islam's founder's tradition, I guess.

For those who have trouble relating, as many must since they are happy to let little brown people take care of problems like drilling for oil rather than take responsibility for it on our own land, this is what an eight year old looks like:

Giver her brown eyes and dark hair.  Make her one of the little brown people.  That's who they are raping.

Now, I realize that things are a little different for women in the U.S. It's clear that the women of the U.S. believe that women are so emotion-driven, so unable to keep their legs from flopping open at the drop of a pair of pants, that they have to demand to be provided with free contraception.  And that that is The Most Important Thing In The World. If they didn't believe that they wouldn't be using the ACA to bludgeon businesses like Hobby Lobby or religious organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor.  But other cultures are different.  Maybe the women and children taken by the jihadis believe that their bodies are not something to be thrown away.  And maybe American women should think about that as they slavishly support a guy who is watching a repeat of the 30s and says that it can be handled with a political solution.  Between rounds of golf. And selfies.

And oh, by the way, Chris Cuomo, you are a moron.  As is anybody who agrees with you.  Because if our rights come from the government then the Holocaust was justified.  The Reich was the government.  In your world, the Reich was the source of rights for its people. 

The Problem Is...

Or at least one of our many problems.

We shouldn't be putting troops into Iraq.  Not advisers (and make no mistake, those advisers are fighting), not air strikes, not boots on the ground.  We have no real strategy.  We have rules of engagement that guarantee that our soldiers will die.  And we will be acting as functionaries of Iran, who people seem to forget are well on their way to nuke power.  The bad kind.  The kind they can use to make a big mess in the Middle East.

We should be streaming materials to anyone in the area that wants to fight isis.  And at the same time we should be sealing our borders and doing some man-hunting here in our own country.  And not sending major bad guy leaders back to the field.   

But you know what the Dems need right now?  A war.  All the excitement and rallying.  They aren't looking good going into November.  So, suddenly, isis isn't j.v. league anymore.  In a couple weeks time, the yawning has turned into war drums beating.  Hagel, Kerry, Elizabeth Warren - a ton of people who have have been silent for months as isis slaughtered its way across Iraq.  I realize that their victims were only Christians, but, still.   I realize that the danger is coming across our open border, but still.  Look at those polls.  Something has to be done.  So, war.  And does any one want to take bets on whether or not Obama, once they get him off the golf course, bothers to go to Congress to get authorization?

Isis is a horror that I would like to see turned into a smear on the sand, with no pieces or fragments left.  I'd say they are animals but that would be an insult to animals.  They need to be removed from the face of the earth.  But if we go in there in our current state, under our current "leaders", all we are going to have is a lot of dead Americans and only some of the heads of the Hydra cut off.   Give the people looking into the eyes of the Hydra the means to cut its heads off over there, and concentrate on cutting off the heads that have come here.

h/t Jeff Kuhner, whose reasoning goes against my impulses.  But I have to agree.