Secretary of Defense Ashton (not Kutcher) Carter told the House Armed Services Committee that the war machine is giving birth to a "specialized expeditionary targeting force," to be sent to Iraq, the country President Obama promised we'd be done with militarily during his administration.
     This force will conduct raids, rescue hostages, and, judging by their wordy title, will not act as U.S. troops on the ground.  Still, they'll have guns and other weaponry, and will fight and kill ISIS fighters, as well as capture ISIS leaders, if they're successful.
     Carter is the latest in a series of meaty-looking war department leaders, always acting before the camera with their "this is serious" faces, and "we've got a tough road ahead of us, make no mistake" tones.  His predecessor, Leon Panetta, revealed in a recent documentary that one of his most difficult moments as defense secretary came when he was attending a funeral.  A phone call came at the cemetery.  The president wanted him to know about a terrorist currently in the sights of a killer drone in the sky.  The wrinkle?  Women and children in the potential blast zone.  The decision was left up to Panetta, causing me to wonder about Obama's mind, dismissing the killings of women and children by ordering his Defense Department tool to decide whether or not to "take the shot."
     As related by the documentarian, Panetta decided to kill the terrorist, and, "there was collateral damage."
     Hearing this story made me sick, not patriotic.  I guess there's something wrong with me for regarding President Obama as a cold-blooded man who tacitly accepts the dismemberment by missiles and bombs of women and children, and simultaneously condemns the up close and personal beheadings committed by ISIS killers.  Am I crazy for being against both methods of obliterating lives?
     I've written elsewhere about the use and misuse of language by those seeking and wielding power. "Specialized expeditionary targeting force" doesn't sound any less mechanical and inhuman than most Pentagon-derived word clusters, but coming now, in relation to the Paris attack of November 13, and the continuing (and continuous) war carrying on for Dick Cheney's pleasure since 2001, it just seems like another mistake doomed to succeed, as a mistake.  Senator McCain has long argued for American troops in their thousands on the ground in Syria and Iraq to combat ISIS.  He's right in that a ground war of major strength is needed to fully beat the motherfuckers.  He's wrong in that such an escalation of the war will give ISIS what it wants: lots of Americans to kill, capture, torture, and fuck with in ways we haven't yet seen.
     In France, Donald Trump-style, three mosques have been closed because "radical" ideas have been spoken there.  This is insane.  If mosques do better as recruitment centers for ISIS and other terror groups than the Internet, the world must be revolving in a pre-1990s reality.  Continuing war in the Middle East by the U.S. and its allies only ensures the continuing and future existence of ISIS and whatever comes after it to act as politicians' cause in fighting evil come the next campaign season.  Donald Trump and all the other candidates have no idea what to do, practically and humanely, when it comes to fixing the problems America helped create when its foreign policy makers decided to start fucking with the world after hearing about the sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898.
     A specialized expeditionary targeting force is really just Special Forces, the kind that Kathryn Bigelow makes movies about, the elite teams who see green when they stalk at night, the trained killers who get lauded almost to the point of sexual excitement by pundits and politicians.  Obama's war practice is one of specialization, maybe because he's such a cerebral SOB.  Robot aircraft firing missiles at little kids who get in the way of terror suspects, operated in a different hemisphere by a fellow with a joystick, impersonal long-distance obliteration; not getting the hands dirty, like John McCain wants to make others do.
     Send your specialized expeditionary targeting force, Mr. President.  You could call them repairmen if you wanted to, but really, they're soldiers entering a space you said we were done with.      Liar.

                                                                               Vic Neptune