Appearing on "Hardball," GOP Senator Ron Johnson just delivered a remarkably muddle-headed position on American ground troops in Iraq and Syria.
Would he support American combat troops in the region? Yes, he certainly would, even though he insisted that the "conundrum" of ISIS can be resolved only by regional Muslims rejecting fanatical Islam. He further insisted that ISIS wants us to engage militarily, on the ground, because they know, they just know, he said, that we don't have the staying power. In a year or two we would pack up and go home, he added, parroting Charles Krauthammer. And then they could gloat.
Johnson didn't seem to grasp that ISIS wants us on the ground because nothing would further their fanatical cause more than intimate American involvement--yet again--in the region's sectarian politics. We'd be fighting in defense of Shiite Iraq and alongside Shiite Iran in effective support of Syria's Shiite regime.
This is not hard. But to Sen. Johnson, it is apparently incomprehensible. In one breath he insists that Arab Muslims and only Arab Muslims can solve the problem of ISIS, and then recommends American interference with the next. It utterly escapes his senatorial mind that ISIS desperately wants his recommendation to materialize--because, in their minds, and in the minds of growing numbers of regional Muslims, we would be Allah-sent and primed for destruction.
It is shocking that any member of the United States Senate (aside from James Inhofe, of course) could be so staggeringly clueless. Shocking, and profoundly depressing.