How ISIS Got So Strong

How ISIS Got So Strong, So Fast 

Ricochet News

November 16, 2015

By Herbert E Meyer

Decades ago in London, a rising English journalist named Paul Johnson was interviewing Prime Minister Harold Macmillan about the upcoming election. Assuming that Macmillan wanted to talk about one of his party’s central campaign issues — how to revive Britain’s struggling economy and the new Tory healthcare plan — Johnson asked one of those bland questions that give politicians the elbow room to blather on about whatever they want: “Prime Minister, what worries you the most?”

Macmillan’s reply, “Events, dear boy. Events!” was so unexpected, and so clever, that decades later, Johnson, who by this time had become one of Britain’s greatest historians, would recount it gleefully to anyone who had the good sense and the good fortune (including me) to spend an evening with him.

Well, an Event just changed the course of history.

Until last week, “ISIS” was a minor political issue that only a few of the more hawkish GOP candidates for president wanted to talk about. Now, after the attacks in Paris, “ISIS” may well emerge as the dominant issue of the 2016 presidential election.

Before we all start arguing over what to do about ISIS, let’s take some time to try and understand how it got so strong, so fast. How did a terrorist group that barely existed five years ago pull off an obviously well-planned and co-ordinated attack in Paris, bring down a Russian jetliner over Egypt and, most importantly, take over vast swaths of territory in the Mideast and create what amounts to a twenty-first century Caliphate?

I can give you the correct answer in two words — Barack Obama — but that’s a soundbite rather than an explanation. Since our survival depends on getting this right, I’m going to take a bit more time and space than usual to illuminate ISIS’s path to power. Please be patient, and when you start squirming in your chair, remind yourself of that wonderful story about the day Richard Feynman, one of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, was awarded the Nobel prize. A young reporter called him and said: “Please explain to me in thirty seconds what you did to win the Nobel prize.” Feynman replied: “Kid, if I could explain it in thirty seconds, it wouldn’t be worth a Nobel prize.”

Why We Didn’t Bring the Boys Home in 1945

When World War II ended in 1945, all we wanted to do was bring home our troops. We’re Americans, after all, so bringing the boys home was at the top of our national agenda. But we didn’t. The people who led our country then — Democratic President Harry Truman, Republican members of the Senate — understood that the war wasn’t over just because the bullets had stopped flying. It takes a long time for things to become stable — in the same sense that after a forest fire is extinguished, rangers stay on patrol for days, or even weeks, just in case there’s a flare-up long after the fire seemed to be out. Moreover, the post-war leaders of Japan and Germany, such as the great Konrad Adenauer, asked us to stay. Very quietly, without any public acknowledgement of what they were doing, they told our leaders they were afraid that if we pulled out the lunatics might return.

So we kept tens of thousands of troops in Germany and Japan. They’re still there, and it’s been more than 70 years since the war ended. No one knows how to calculate the cost; it’s probably hundreds of trillions of dollars. And there’s no way to know for sure what would have happened if we’d have brought our troops home in 1945. But it doesn’t take much effort to imagine what might have happened. If a mob of Nazis had hit Munich in 1946, or a battalion of fascist military officers had attacked Osaka or Tokyo in 1946 or 1947, the newly-formed governments of these countries wouldn’t have been able to cope. They were still too shell-shocked, too disorganized, too distrustful of one another, too busy clearing rubble off the streets.

That’s why the decision by the US and our allies to keep our troops in place when World War II ended will go down as one of history’s very greatest decisions. We kept things stable, we kept the lunatics from coming back and causing chaos, we gave the fragile new governments of Germany and Japan the time and breathing space they needed to get a grip on things and learn to become modern, successful members of the world community of nations.

Now let’s look at Iraq. Whether you think our 2003 invasion of Iraq was a good idea or a ghastly mistake — we can argue about this another time — the invasion happened and in the real world, there’s no rewind button. We made huge mistakes, as always happens in combat, but by the end of 2008 our troops had won the war. Iraq was stable, intact, at peace — surely you watched those extraordinary videos of millions of Iraqis voting in elections and proudly holding up their purple thumbs — and some measure of normal, modern life was starting to emerge. 

Electricity was back on, oil production was rising, restaurants were open and packed with customers every evening, and I even remember reading that the Baghdad Philharmonic, or whatever the orchestra was called, had announced a concert schedule for the upcoming season. In short, the Armed Forces of the United States had — once again, bless them — done a great job and won an incredible victory.

Then we elected Barack Obama as our president, and he pulled out the troops. He and the leaders of those countries that had fought along side us did in Iraq precisely what President Truman and his counterparts in England, France, Canada and elsewhere, didn’t do in 1945. Truman and his fellow leaders stood up to public opinion, and stayed. Obama and his counterparts pandered to public opinion, and pulled out.

Of course the lunatics came back. Of course the new leaders of Iraq were too new to power, too shell-shocked, too busy fighting among themselves, to stop them. It was obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, a basic grasp of history, and one iota of political courage — in other words, none of the over-educated idiots in Washington — that this was going to happen. It’s a classic example of the old saying that the first lesson of history is that we don’t learn the lessons of history.

It’s Obama’s Blunder, Not Bush’s

Reader, there is no possibility that ISIS would even exist today — let alone be powerful enough to cause havoc throughout the world — had President Obama kept our troops in place in Iraq. And it was his decision to pull out, not President Bush’s decision to invade, that will go down as one of history’s greatest blunders. Yes, I know this is a controversial point, and that half of you reading the previous sentence are about to explode. But before you do, bear with me a bit longer while we conduct what scientists call a thought-experiment:

Imagine that we’d pulled our troops out of Germany in 1945 and then, in 1946, a mob of armed Nazis re-surfaced and threw the Bonn government, and Western Europe itself, into chaos. Can’t you just picture the scorn and abuse that would have been hurled at President Truman by his political enemies for throwing away the victory his predecessor had fought and won?

President Obama isn’t likely to acknowledge that his decision to pull our troops out of Iraq has been a catastrophic failure. He’ll find a way, yet again, to blame it all on President Bush. And while he’ll make some cosmetic changes to our military strategy designed to show he’s tough, he probably won’t unleash our armed forces so they could actually eliminate the threat from ISIS. He’ll leave that to his successor.

I said earlier, the first lesson of history is that we never learn the lessons of history. Perhaps I overstated it just a bit. Sometimes we do learn from experience, and if the experience of the last century is any guide, the lessons some of us have learned are these:

     First, the world can never be safe, but the world is safer when the US plays a leading role.

     Second, diplomacy is important, but sometimes there’s just no substitute for military power. You cannot contain thugs, or negotiate with them.

     You must obliterate them, and not lose sleep over collateral damage.

As of right now, our nation is showing no signs of having learned either of these lessons.

That’s why the question every candidate for president now must answer is: What will you do about ISIS? The election will depend on whichever candidate comes up with the best answer. So will our lives.

 

Ralph Gates Mission at 86 - 2011

Ralph Gates is on a mission. “No, not that kind of mission,” he's quick to add. It's his favorite joke these days. No, his mission is to capture on DVD the life stories of “the passionate people of Park City.” That's what he calls us. At 86 years old, he's in a hurry to get the job done.

Gates is that rare individual who seems to be more interested in telling other people's stories than in telling his own. This in spite of the fact that his is more interesting than most. Talk to him long enough and the story eventually emerges.

Gates joined the Army in 1944, expecting to be an infantryman in the European theatre. Instead, the 20-year-old college engineering student was secretly shipped to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he worked under Oppenheimer developing and building the first Plutonium “A”bomb, the one that resulted in the surrender of Japan in July of 1945. But that's not what he wants to talk about.

Born in Chicago, Ill., Gates grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. “I never told anybody in town that I was born in Chicago because I didn't want my pals to know I was a “Yankee,” he chuckles. As a boy, Gates wandered the nearby woods, swimming in ponds and hunting quail and doves. “Back in the 1930s, Nashville was a small town, only about 160,000 people. I didn't have to go far to be out in the country.”

As a teenager, Gates frequented the “Grand Old Opry” and danced to all the big name bands that came to town.

After graduating from high school at age 17, Gates enrolled at nearby Vanderbilt University and studied chemical engineering. But the war was on and he was eager to join the fight. He was turned away and given a student deferment the first time the tried to join. “Don't worry,” said the recruiter. “We'll call you up when we need you.”

The call came a year later and Gates soon found himself caught up in the most secret war project of the last century. His job at Los Alamos was to melt and form the highly explosive concoction of TNT and other chemicals that encased the plutonium and triggered the nuclear fission reaction. “We used steam to heat up the TNT in a big sugar melting pot,” says Gates. “It was dangerous, yes, but our lives weren't any more important than the foot soldiers in the foxholes.”

Gates recalls having lunch with Oppenheimer. “He'd come into the lunchroom and sit down at a table with the rest of us. He was just a regular guy, a good manager.”

Gates was discharged soon after the war ended and went on to complete his engineering degree at Vanderbilt and a master's degree at MIT. He then embarked on a 40-year career as an engineer in product development and technical sales with Stauffer Chemical Co. His job took him successively from Illinois, to Connecticut, to New York.

After retiring in 1990, Gates and his wife, Fran Kennedy, moved to Park City. They had visited Utah to ski in the 1980s, and knew that they wanted to live here. “As soon as we got here we wanted to build a fence around the place,” he laughs. Avid outdoor enthusiasts, they took to the mountains with gusto. “There aren't too many places that we didn't visit skiing, back packing, hiking or camping in the Uintas and the state and national parks,” he says. Sadly, Kennedy passed away ten years ago and Gates has been going it alone since then.

The story Gates really wants to talk about began just a few years ago. It seems he's always had an interest in film and video. “ I was shooting home movies of the family way back in the 1930s,” he says. “I got a camcorder several years ago and a big idea came to me. My passion, my mission now is to record visual life stories of mostly ordinary people who have lived through some of the most turbulent times in our history. I don't want their descendants to just read about them or hear about them years later. I want them to feel their emotions as they watch them talking in living color.”

Gates continues: “The world is changing so swiftly now because of unlimited communications that such experiences will surely be helpful in guiding our lives positively. Admittedly, that's my 'constrictive optimism' coming through, but it's the only way to go!”

He began by taping fellow war veterans, but has since expanded into taping many prominent Parkites. He calls them “the passionate people of Park City, people with imagination, initiative and perseverance” and believes they have “immigrant” genes in them. “How could they be better described. Some came for economic reasons. Some came because they have the 'free spirit' gene. They think, 'hey, there's something better I want to do.' That's what the ski bums were all about. They wanted to ski so badly they would do anything to stay here. They took two or three jobs, bought houses dirt cheap and made a lot of money. They have the immigrant gene too.”

In the last few years Gates has taped the life stories of many local residents who have since passed on, including Jim Santy, Roger Harlan and Mel Fletcher – all men who figured prominently in the history of this town. “That can happen to anybody at anytime,” he reminds us. “That's why any time anybody in town retires I'm in their office the next day to do their life story.”

To date he's taped over a hundred life stories, among them those of Mayor Williams, Gary Cole, Blair Feulner, Nan Chalat-Noaker [editor of the Park Record], Lisa Needham, Lew Fine, Sally Elliott, Tom Clyde, Jack Wells, Bill Coleman, Tom Cammermeyer, Meeche White, Tom Ward, and the list goes on.

What began as a labor of love has evolved into a business of sorts for Gates. Though he initially did his video stories for free, he now charges a modest fee for his stories. “I can only do about two stories a week, so I'm not getting rich doing this,” he says.

Gates admits to a growing sense of urgency regarding his work. “I really think these stories are important and should be kept somewhere in Park City so others can see them. I'm open to any ideas for a place where t growing library of life story DVDs can live. Like I said, I'm on a mission man!”

For more information about Life Stories, or to suggest a home for them, contact Gates at frkenn@comcast.net

VITAL STATISTICS

Favorite things to do: ski, hike, sing with the Park City Singers, play bridge with friends at the

senior center

Favorite foods: anything except okra and very spicy food.

Favorite reading: biographies, scientific journals, historical fiction and poetry from the 1800s.

Favorite music: classical, country & western and vintage big bands

HEAD: PC “Life Story” Video Man Built “A” Bomb

DECK: He worked at Los Alamos in waning months of WW II

QUOTE: “As soon as we got here we wanted to build a fence around the place.”

CAPTION: Ralph Gates is on a mission to record the stories of as many Park City residents as possible. He's searching for a public place where his “life story” DVDs can be viewed free of charge.