By Judd Gregg - 09-08-14 05:41 AM EDT
The Senate and House are returning for two weeks. Those members who are not up for reelection will then head off to travel, while the others will go home to meet their employers before the elections in November.
Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously declared, “a week is a long time in politics.” So just think how much can happen in two weeks.
There are those who will scoff and say, “The Congress is not going to do anything in the next two weeks. They are just going to mark time before the election.”
But that cynicism is misguided. There are many important things that Congress could, in fact, do.
They could make it clear that we are going to stand up to the very real and growing threat from ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. On this matter — and on the threat of terrorism more generally — we can no longer afford the denial of the elite, who claim that there is no evil in the world because all things are relative.
ISIS is as real and as evil as any enemy we have seen since Nazi Germany.
It is asymmetrical in its threat, making it even more difficult to deal with in many ways than the Soviet Union.
It is driven by a view of the world and of life that we Westerners cannot wrap our minds around. That worldview is simply not rational by our standards, appearing instead as an incomprehensible fanaticism that has no apparent boundaries to its hatred and violence.
But this obscures the fact that we have seen similar periods of fanatical chaos in Western history: the Inquisition, Hitler’s Germany and even (albeit to a lesser degree) the ethnic strife that tore apart the Balkans in the 1990s all spring, grimly, to mind.
We should not, therefore, be surprised that people can organize around a banner of such vicious, essentially genocidal activity.
We should instead acknowledge it for what it is — a real and present danger not only to those in its immediate path, especially the Kurds, but to us right here in America.
These folks do not throw out idle threats. When they say they want to do us harm, they mean it. They intend, if they are capable, to do that harm in a major way here.
Some good fortune has fallen on us, though. The leaders and followers of ISIS have organized themselves into something resembling a country. Thus, rather then having the advantage of being a non-identifiable moving band of cells, as in the case of al Qaeda, ISIS is a very identifiable and findable nascent nation-state.
As a result, ISIS can be targeted and attacked. Such a U.S.-led effort would not be about saving Iraq or returning to Iraq — it would be about stopping, or at least massively degrading, a clear and present danger to the American people.
Where do the president and Congress come into this effort?
The president should address the Congress.
He should confirm the threat.
He should take the opportunity to call in Middle Eastern states as well as Western nations. There are many nations in the Middle East that must be genuinely concerned about the methods and goals of ISIS.
The president should also ask for additional appropriations to significantly upgrade our intelligence-gathering capabilities; to arm the Kurds; to assist the Iraqis to the extent it makes sense; and to use force, not boots on the ground, to dramatically undermine ISIS and those in Syria who support ISIS.
The purpose here is not to nation-build. It is to destroy an evil masquerading as a nation.
Obama should, above all, define the threat as real and immediate and lead the country in confronting it.
Congress should support him in a bipartisan manner that leaves politics in this instance at the water’s edge, election or no election.
This situation has disturbing historical references. In the mid-1930s, America, dealing with its economic troubles and in a post-WWI isolationist stupor, allowed Nazi Germany to rise and commit the world to a path of war. The result was genocide.
Although ISIS has nothing close to the economic or structural capability of Hitler’s Germany, it does have strengths that make it hugely threatening.
It is in the process of creating a fundamentalist religious state that makes Iran look rational. It has the capability to speak for and to millions of Muslims across the globe — especially from Libya to Pakistan — who are angry and disgruntled about their lives and who seek a path to purpose.
Remember, there are one billion Muslims in the world. If only 1 percent of those people were to be attracted to the hate of ISIS, the group would have a following of 10 million. It took only 20 to attack us on 9/11.
Such a threat cannot be ignored. It should be confronted now.
The next two weeks, while both the president and the Congress are in Washington, is the right time to start.
Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations Subcommittee.
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