On the anniversary of the Battle of Heliopolis, Barack Hussein Obama stopped by the Pentagon to tell everyone there that their big guns couldn’t beat ISIS because "Ideologies are not defeated with guns”.
This would be news to the American GIs that beat Nazism, not with hashtags, but with bullets. WW2 propaganda, much of it of a crude nature that would make a modern sophisticated progressive turn up his nose, helped boost morale, but it was the firepower that took down Adolf’s armies.
On a July 6th, long ago, the Muslim hordes that were the ISIS of the day defeated Byzantium in the Battle of Heliopolis. Since this was the 7th century, it is safe to say that there were no hashtags involved. The outcome of that battle however is the reason why Obama’s middle name is Hussein instead of Harry.
The Battle of Heliopolis gave the Caliphate control of Egypt and opened the gates to Africa. Islam was the last man standing among the ruins of empires and it proceeded to enslave, oppress and convert by force to expand its ranks in a manner quite similar to its modern ISIS successor.
Obama isn’t wrong when he suggests that ideas need to be defeated with ideas. But they’re not the ideas that he has in mind. ISIS’ idea is that its enemies are subhuman cretins and that its victories are inevitable. Obama’s idea is that we are a deeply flawed and racist nation, but still sorta better than ISIS.
The only people inspired by that idea are the Americans converting to Islam and joining ISIS.
The uncertainty of the Byzantine Empire doomed it to defeat at the Battle of Heliopolis. The Muslim invaders benefited once again from a united front while their enemies were divided and quarreling among themselves. Without these divisions among Christians, between Christians and Jews, and the various pagan tribes, Islam would never have become anything other than an obscure silly cult.
and quarreling among themselves. Without these divisions among Christians, between Christians and Jews, and the various pagan tribes, Islam would never have become anything other than an obscure silly cult.
At the Pentagon, Obama stated, "Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas. We will never be at war with Islam." He isn’t talking about uniting us behind a better idea. Instead he would like Muslims to unite behind some sort of better idea. It’s not clear what that idea is, but he can tell us that it doesn’t involve accepting the reality that we are being attacked in the name of Islam.
Obama wants to fight ISIS in a battle of ideas without having any ideas. It’s like being unarmed in a battle of wits, except it’s more like the witless trying to fight a battle of ideas while being shot at.
Like the Byzantine Empire, we’re a divided people wearied by war and burdened with poor leaders. The 7thcentury ISIS that beat them wasn’t so much tactically brilliant as it used daring and deception to exploit opportunities created by the incompetence and demoralization of a falling empire.
Obama is speaking in terms of an ideological thirty years war, saying, “This larger battle for hearts and minds is going to be a generational struggle.” But like the armies of the Caliph pouring through the porous borders of a retreating empire, ISIS is moving far too quickly to wait around that long.
Liberal foreign policy experts give a great deal of credit to its social media presence while misunderstanding its significance. The Islamic State’s use of social media to message, recruit and gloat is part of its larger tactical strength as a mobile and adaptable organization. ISIS isn’t winning the war on Twitter. It’s using Twitter the way that it adapts and uses everything else that it comes across.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
Obama wants to fight ISIS in a battle of wits