Someone asked me this week why I haven’t been posting to my blog… “You need some new stuff up there,’ she said. “What’s going on, you have writer’s block?” ‘No,’ I smiled, ‘of course not,’ I replied without giving it much thought. “I’ve just been busy.” Well, here I am sitting at the keyboard and guess what? I’m blocked! Well, maybe blocked isn’t quite it – maybe it’s stuck.

There are so many horrible things happening in the world, so many dangerous hotspots, I don’t know where to begin much less pontificate about. Regrettably, I declare myself among the millions of uninformed or barely informed Americans who get by on CNN and online news briefs. But, I am aware enough to be worried … no make that horrified.

First, as examples of international impotence, there are those 200 missing Nigerian girls kidnapped in the middle of the night by the Boka Haram. Despite the huge international outcry and pleas for their return they are still out there somewhere. How can that be with our “eye in the sky” satellites that can detect a wisp of smoke from about a million feet in the air? It doesn’t make sense. They can’t be that hard to find! Where is our international A Team when we need them? Where are our Navy SEALs or Britain’s SAS or Russia’s Spetsnaz? There are specially trained tactical forces all over the place skilled enough to rescue a bunch of girls hidden somewhere. Where is everybody? If it had been government or political officials would we be sitting on our hands? What if the President of Nigeria had been taken? Would his family members be out there with placards crying out for someone to help find him? I think not.

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It’s not that I know much about the world. I have to admit, compared to professors, researchers, academics, covert information gatherers and world leaders, good and bad, I know nearly nothing. History, political science and government are classes I took long ago and probably they have little to do with world conflict today. While I freely admit I have little factual information about the world’s hot spots, I think I may know something about people. I also think I may know a little something about what is or is not reasonable. So when I say I want to make some remarks about the group called ISIS or ISIL, it is with a 100 foot high disclaimer in which my ignorance is duly noted.

What little I know, however, is scary. Damn scary. That a small, determined, hate-filled force can gather so much momentum and attract so many fighters and manage to expertly train those fighters in such a short amount of time is awesome and terrifying. This group has no moral code, not scintilla of doubt about the rightness of their murderous rampage. There are no limits to their destructiveness, their violence, their homicidality. It matters not a whit that they are murdering human beings by the thousands, that those human beings are their brethren or at least are sheltered under ‘Semitic’ people category, referring to their common language base or that they dwell in the same part of the world and labor under the same difficult political, economic and familial circumstances. No, apparently none of that matters. What seems to matter is land…they want more and more land. Why, not to develop peaceful communities where their families can live in peace. NO. They want land so they can control and monopolize the entire region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. Why?? I’d just be guessing here, but I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s about control. Control of the region, control of the oil in the region, control of every country in the region until, as each nation/government falls before them there will be One Single Arab presence in the world. One Arab Country controlled and led by one ‘duly elected’, though through armed violent takeover, government.

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