Q: "Daddy, Are We At War Again?"

A:  "Depends on how you define the meaning of what IS is..."


Q:  Don't we need Congressional authorization to go to war?
A:  "Depends on how long the military campaign lasts..."

Q:  How long is the military campaign expected to last?
A:  "A few months... through the midterms..."


Q:  The midterms?
A:  "Midterm elections.  Stop thinking all schoolboy and get with the game played in this town.  Look around you:  Ain't no college town here..."

Q:  Strategic question?
A:  Shoot.


Q:  If we've got people abandoned on a mountaintop, surrounded by advancing fighters, and the "war" plan is only to hold them, not to defeat or drive them back... and we're really not sure how well that will work, as we're crippled by our mighty powerful, but often inefficient air power -- bombing from above only gets you so far...
A:  Is there a question in there, somewhere?  *checking watch*  Those tee times wait for no man...


Q:  Just thinking out loud here, but... if there's no plan to bring them down, or relocate them, and as you indicated, this current air assault has a limited time frame.... is is a good idea to be dropping tarps and tents and encouraging them to set up camp?  Shouldn't they... shouldn't the people be thinking about their long-term survival?
A:  Huh?


Q:  Aren't you just bedding them in for a slaughter?
A:  Wait a minute... we're helping!  Food, shelter, water... they came running to us for relief.


Q:  But are you then encouraging them to be dependent on our help, when -- if we're not committing to anything, any protection long term -- they might be better off formulating their own plans for survival...  Thinking about a way to get off the mountain, to split up if needed, to think about their own fates, once the bombing campaign is no longer called for?
A:  You always think so negative?

Q:  I think realistic.  I think no country is too big to fail, no little ragtag band of fighters (and the IS fighters rolling on, are most definitely not) is necessarily so small they lose.  They can, and have, inflicted an awful lot of damage... and they're well armed.

Some say we're dropping bombs now on American-supplied weaponry... any chance they could shoot down a relief helicopter?  Then what?  War-war, the real thing?
A:  Listen -- I'm not going to sit here and listen to this naysaying.  We're number one.  We fight harder...  (or is that number two?)


Q:  Don't you think you'd be fighting on firmer grounds if you "sold" this bombing campaign better?  Took a few days off vacation, and came out and better explained why -- and especially how --  we're going to save the Yazi's?  Some of us think "Yaz"?  Oh, the wonderful Upstairs at Eric's !  Now, digging a little deeper, it appears what we're really working to do here is to at least try and protect part of partitioned Iraq -- Kurdistan.

Is the plan to get the Yazi people to Kurdistan, and then to undertake an timetable-less committment to defending the religious minority from her neighbors in the region?  Are we now committing to protecting the Kurdish state as well?  Will you be able to sell the American people on this new regional committment, do you think?
A.  No comment.


Q:  Ok, finally then:  has the recent non-success of the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza -- you can only inflict so much damage from above, and the overkill! -- given you any second thoughts about how effective this latest warmaking will actually prove to be?  That is, are we becoming over-reliant on our military might, at the expense of reasoned solutions?
A:  Oh please, how do you reason killers?  Don't talk to me about being practical anymore.  I give up on that "justice" talk long ago.  So much for speaking loudly, and promising a new schtick!  Nope, we're playing it safe through the midterms;  giving the people what they want...


Q:  The Yazi people?  Giving them food, water and supplies... up through the midterms?
A:  The American people.  The elderly patriots and airchair "fighters".  They don't want weak, I'll show 'em America's power... the power, to protect.


Q:  Yeah, but what happens... if you don't.  If we fail, again, to protect the people in the region, and actually make their lives -- on the ground -- demonstrably worse.  That they would have fared better if we indeed had left them to their own devices, not promised paternal protections that weren't properly delivered, and never dumped our armaments into the region.  Left them to kill and maim and slaughter and rampage ... with only whatever weapons they had at hand...
A:  You do realize other players, other "bad guys" to simplify here, are stocking the fighters and have reason to interfere in the outcomes as well?


Q:  Were they there, fomenting these wars, before we went in?
A:  Done.  Once an interview becomes a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg...


Q:  Thank you for your time.  We'll see you again in the coming weeks.  And btw good luck, Mr. President.  We really are pulling for you, even if you're not pulling too hard yourself.  There's a lot riding on your game, you know.  A people, a party, a presidency...  "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? ... What good will it do for people to win the whole world and lose their lives?  ~ Matthew, Mark, Luke.