Attention Islamic State the Fat Lady is singing

The Islamic State rose into power not because of what they did but because of the sudden and great interest shown by the public about them and what they were all about.  It’s troop levels grew because of the lack of richness in the country, the lack of advancement of its society, the lack of leadership within its ranks and most importantly because of a few who saw an opportunity to get rich quick by jumping on the “infidels bandwagon”.  They used the fear of the people to accept them and grant them overlords to the sparse freedoms that they had.  We made them larger than life by all the reporting and the touting of their power.  Countries trembled at the very mention of their name and citizens turned on one another to avoid their deadly rampage but what many forgot and only a few knew, the Islamic State is just like any other organization in the world.  You hit them hard and heavy with a consistency that only a country like the United States can.  You hit them where it hurts at its communications, leadership and most importantly funding source.  This strategy is never designed to eliminate a threat quickly but it has worked for so many years and continue to work because those who first proclaimed themselves bullet proof soon began to realize that they are not.

This could be no more evident than the recent article titled “Islamic State suffers double blow as Ramadi falls, leaders killed written by Ahmed Rasheed and Stephen Kalin.  The reports detail that “a U.S.-led forces have killed 10 Islamic State leaders in air strikes, including individuals linked to the Paris attacks, a U.S. spokesman said, dealing a double blow to the militant group after Iraqi forces ousted it from the city of Ramadi.  Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi planted the national flag in Ramadi after the army retook the city center from Islamic State, a victory that could help vindicate his strategy for rebuilding the military after stunning defeats.  One of those killed was Abdul Qader Hakim, who facilitated the militants' external operations and had links to the Paris attack network, U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamist group also known by the acronym ISIL said. He was killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Dec. 26.  Two days earlier, a coalition air strike in Syria killed Charaffe al Mouadan, a Syria-based Islamic State member with a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the coordinated bombings and shootings in Paris on Nov. 13 which killed 130 people, Warren said.  Mouadan was planning further attacks against the West, he added.  Air strikes on Islamic State's leadership helped explain recent battlefield successes against the group, which also lost control of a dam on a strategic supply route near its de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria on Saturday.  "Part of those successes is attributable to the fact that the organization is losing its leadership," Warren said. He warned, however: "It's still got fangs."  The Iraqi army's seizure of the center of Ramadi on Sunday is its first major victory against the hardline Sunni Islamists that swept through a third of Iraq in 2014, and came after months of cautious advances backed by coalition air strikes.  The government has designated the mostly Sunni city of Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad, as the next target for Iraq's armed forces.

Truth be told, those who began this group of liberators had no true intention of ridding the world of infidels, they had complete and total concentration on robbing their own country of all its power, resources and wealth that they could get their greedy little hands on.  They were willing to use any means necessary and found the only thing that they thought would sustain them which was the Quran.  The only unifying feature for all those who were born and raised within that countries’ and neighboring countries borders.  This only lasted as long as those “true” Muslims stayed quiet but when they began to denounce the actions of the Islamic State, combined with the constant air strikes from US led coalition and the death of so many they looked up to have now cause the bigger rats to desert the ship or tunnel even further down in their holes.

Few knew this would happen but all those blinded by the actions of a few could never accept this premises.  They were so sure that these Islamic State fighters were the best of the best and that the forces, manpower and military might of the United States would never be a match to them.  That’s what they wanted to believe and that is what the cowards belonging to the Islamic State wanted us to believe.  As long as those who continued to praise their accomplishments and push the fear was allowed a voice, the Islamic State terrorist would remain a force to be reckon with.  The leaders of this rag-tag group had other ideas however, theirs were to allow those pushing fear to continue to push their agenda and those who allowed themselves to be bought would be the ones dying instead of them so as long as that was the case, why not continue to pretend that you are the biggest bully on the block except do so under the cover of your burrowing hole or standing behind a bunch of civilians, school children and women.  Now what is left is the remnants of a once feared group of frighten people hiding behind masks trying to make the world stand up and take notice.  A group who could care less about the Quran or what it really stood for and like some we know here in the U.S. so well, quite content to use the words to fit their agendas. 

Oh yea the Islamic State is falling and falling fast but mostly because those who were so boisterous in their demand for a place in history has crawled back to the depths of their lonely existence while leaving those that they were able to manipulate, control and trick into giving up their lives to make theirs richer to die for a cause that they know very little about.  The only thing that the Islamic State terrorist has proven is that any fool can be convinced of anything if you offer them money to believe and if you make it sound half-way decent, you could even get those absence of intelligence to fight and die for a cause that they could personally care less about.  As the Islamic state masterminds and media-worshipped geniuses find their hiding places or are killed off, the Islamic State fighters will soon make a quick exit and leave the world a little torn but still salvageable for those who truly want peace world-wide.  Those who first proclaimed their dominance will soon find another group to exploit and build up only to be cut down and the world will continue to spin, history will still attempt to repeat itself and none of us will remember the death and destruction except those who carry the wounds on the outside but most regretful on the inside as well.  Sing on fat lady, sing on.