ISIS, Bullies, and Bloody Noses

            I’m worked over this, so that’s why I blog about it.

            Have you ever heard this?  At Reykjavik in 1972, during Game 1, Bobby Fischer tells Boris Spassky, “I don’t have a strategy to deal with you.”

            You haven’t?  Me neither because it never happened.  Every grandmaster has some strategy in mind for beating his opponent before the opening move is played.

            Yet, President Obama has told ISIS (or ISIL; I prefer ISIS for interesting reasons), during the middle-game, “I don’t have a strategy for dealing with you.”  Not subtly nor  through a mouthpiece, but directly and openly in front of cameras.

            So what did ISIS do?
            They have beheaded American journalist Steven Sotloff, successfully carryinng out a threat they made at the end of the video of the beheading of James Foley. 

            When I was in high school, I was a member of a Boy Scout troop.  Ideally, a BSA troop should not have a pecking order (outside Senior Patrol Leaders, Patrol Leaders, etc.) but they often do.  This one not only had a pecking order, but a bully at the top of the food chain.  My first day there, this kid challenged me to a “friendly” arm wrestling match.  After it was over – ending in a draw – I found out I was the only one he hadn’t beaten. 

            I knew at that moment I had a target on my back.

            A few weeks later, during a campout, this bully followed me and a fellow patrol member around.  As he did, he repeated kept throwing a football into the back of my friend’s head.

            I got to the point where I’d had a enough.  Picking up the football, I threw it into a nearby cemetery.  The bully ordered me to go get it.  I refused.  What happened next was a good ol’ fashioned donnybrook that ended with me forcing the bully to capitulated while only sustaining a black eye in the process.  (I put him in a head and threatened to bite his head if he didn’t stop.  He squealed like a little girl and I found it quite satisfying.)

            He never bothered me or anyone else again.

            You can’t let bullies have the run of the yard or else they’ll run you over.  I learned that a long time ago and it’s a lesson a I haven’t forgotten in the 21 years since it happened. 

            I also learned, playing various sports and games, that you never telegraph weakness to your opponent or he’ll eat you up.

            These are things I learned in high school, in my formative years that our middle-aged adult President hasn’t seemed to grasp. 

            ISIS is a bully and bullies only understand violence.  That’s why when you break their nose or black their eye or best them at fisticuffs they stop screwing around with you and leave you alone.

            But ISIS will never stop doing what it’s doing.  For them it’s not about the exercise of raw power to intimidate people and getting their jollies from that.  They are driven by a malignant religious ideology that will ensure they fight to the last man in much the same fashion Japanese soldiers fought to the bitter end in WWII.  (It should be noted that I don’t believe all Muslims hold to a “malignant religious ideology” in much the same way I don’t think all Christians are Baptists, or Catholics, or abortion clinic bombers.)

            And if you’re wondering why I prefer ISIS?  Because that was the name of a pagan goddess of Ancient Egypt. 
            Consider it a subtle insult.