David Frum, Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullvan

++David Frum who gave us the axis of evil opines that Obama's speech was poor and Obama can not answer what ISIS has to do with threatening the United States. As opposed, I guess, to Bush claiming Hussein did. But Frum has a point, which goes to a larger one, in the 21st Century when the Middle East is no longer necessary for our energy sources,what is the national interest? Frum claims that Obama didn't mention the other nasty folks--the Iranian regime, Assad and Hezbollah. Which raises another question? What is our national interest, other than sentimentality, of protecting Israel?

++Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo wrote an interesting column today on the real 9/11. Many Americans, including myself, thought 9/11 ushered in an age of terrorism. But it did not. Josh writes that in retrospect it looks like 9/11 was an anomaly. He raises the thought experiment about what if we just mourned and had the funerals and did nothing. Yes, we interrupted a few plots like the underwear bomber but did the fight against terror have to costs trillions of dollars,an invasion of two countries, and substantial loss of our civil liberties? Josh looks around at the terrorist manques and doesn't find many heavyweight contenders. As one leftwing blogger cheekily wrote, "More Americans are killed by toddlers than terrorists."Even at once in ten years, you would have to say terrorism is an anomaly.

++I share much of Andrew Sullivan's concern about Obama losing his narrative. But his response to ISIS is not Bush-lite. I have serious reservations about his strategy. Markos Malitkos at the Daily Kos complains why do we have to fight somebody else's wars? For instance, where are the great armies of the Middle East on this issue? David Frum is right that the Iranians are really our foot soldiers now. And President Obama's incremental increase of our soldiers to Iraq to over 1,500 is inching to the number he wanted as the residual force in Iraq anyway. I agree with Andrew that a residual force in Iraq would not have made much difference. I was there and outside of the Green Zone, it was still a carnal house. 

++Mossad influence Debkra said that there would be coordinated 9/11s all over the world today and that they were saving the United States for a few months. The New York Times printed a story of how the media and the pundits have exaggerated the threat of ISIS to the United States. Remember after 9/11, the Bush Administration said there were 1,000s of Al Qaeda cells all over the country? Our Homeland Security says today there are "Zero","Zilch" ISIS cells in the United States. In fact, military analysts have done thorough analyses of ISIS military capability and found them severely lacking. 

++Before we succumb to the war psychosis,we should release the chapter of the 9/11 Report on Saudi Arabia and the whole torture report on what we did post 9/11. Whatever myths exist that torture de-railed domestic terrorist plots have to be exposed. Reporter after reporter has debunked this myth. It took simple detective work without torture and rendition to solve the terrorist plots.

++Andrew Sullivan has hoped that President Obama could have escaped the world of the neo-cons. But knowledgeable students of the Terrorist Industrial Complex from Dana Priest to Rachel Maddow to Bacevich have all warned how extensive this combine is and how it is so woven into our economy and policy-making. It would take something even more than the collapse of the global economy to change the dominance the MIC in the old language has over the society and our politicians. 

++The terrorist "scare" goes back to Woodrow Wilson's time with the original "Red Scare", which crushed the labor movement, socialist entities and anyone who even remotely had a radical idea. The terrorist scare is an instrument to enforce conformity.The wish to break out of that surfaces from time to time like with the Occupy Movement but it is crushed by the State. To believe that President Obama faced with ceaseless opposition by our most entrenched interests could move this rock is to be naive. 

++It seems to me that citizens should start asking some basic questions? What are our real national interests in the Middle East? What is the real threat of terrorism and how much is it costing us? Who is paying for these operations? And how long are these operations supposed to last? Andrew's point about seeking some legality to our actions is a good one. European allies are starting to back away from air strikes in Syria because there are serious issues about international law.