Don't Be Poking The Sleeping Tiger

I wrote this blog before yesterdays blog. Do to the terrible happenings in the news, I pushed this off by a day. That is why they overlap to some extent.


ISIS does enjoy talking about their successes. And they certainly have some. They may be vicious barbarians, but they are not without skills. If you watch videos from the Middle East, you may observe that the average Muslim fighter uses the spray and pray system of marksmanship. In other words, they hold their beloved AK someplace over their head pointed in some general direction. The scream "Allahu akbar" and pull the trigger. The basis for this system is that Allah will see to it that the bullets will hit those that Allah selects to be hit. Not a system that is accepted at any ranges where I have shot.

ISIS fighters, on the other hand, seem to have at least some marksmanship training and actually use the sights. This alone makes them much more effective than the average. They also appear to have a semblance of military discipline. In other words it will take a real army to defeat them. Maybe not a great army but better than what the Iraq army had become.

ISIS neither thinks small nor talks small. From what I can gather, they have between ten and twenty thousand fighters. They have taken some territory in two countries, but with that they pronounce it the new Caliphate. They have no navy. They have no air force. 

For comparison, Saddam Hussein had an army of one hundred thousand, an air force and a navy. You will recall how long he lasted. I believe it was about three weeks.

But now ISIS is announcing they will be attacking Great Britain and the United States. Talk about biting off more than you can chew. Will they actually attack the West? I think they will. I suspect that they may have enough fifth column entities in place that they can do some very bad things.

They would be wise to remember Admiral Yamamoto's observation when his country bombed Pearl Harbor. He said, "We have woken the sleeping tiger".  And Japan was destroyed in three years, in spite of the fact that it was one of the most powerful countries of it's time.

But like so many foolish people, being religiously founded, they think Allah, their God, is on their side. If I were them, I wouldn't plan on much help. And I wouldn't poke the sleeping tiger.

Rhode Island Farm in Winter