Careful what you wish for, Bill Maher, lest you give off the impression of indifference to genocide.
Never one to shy away from the outrageous or asinine, the liberal comic said something on his HBO show Friday night that qualifies as both.
During a discussion with his guests about Iraq, an exasperated Maher said he hopes ISIS takes control of its capital city, home to one in four Iraqis, as a tangible way of demonstrating that the United States is no longer policing the global beat --
MAHER: Let's talk about Iraq a little bit because Obama this week, getting us back in there. He must feel like Michael Corleone in (The) Godfather (Part) III, every time I want to be out, they pull me back in, except I don't know why he has to go back in. Yes, ISIS took Mosul about a year ago. They took Ramadi a couple of weeks ago. Does it really matter who controls Ramadi or Mosul to an American? You know, this war does not have to go on forever. Even American Idol is ending. (laughter and applause from the audience.) I just don't think we have to always be the world's policeman.
And who would you prefer in that role -- the kleptocrats in the Kremlin? The benevolent souls running the show in China? Perhaps the sensitive theocrats in Tehran.
Ever notice how anyone spouting this line never says who should fill the void that most assuredly would get filled?
GOP STRATEGIST AND DAILY BEAST COLUMNIST RON CHRISTIE: Right, well I want to know what the mission is, right, because he said this week he was going to put 450 American troops in. Then he said he wanted to have more forward operating bases, and then it starts to ...
MAHER: Advisers, not troops.
CHRISTIE: Right, but again, if you're an American ...MAHER: What new advice could they give them?
ALEXIS GOLDSTEIN, COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR THE OTHER 98 PERCENT: And they've been there for 12 years!
MAHER: Yes, what's the advice?MIKE PESCA, HOST OF SLATE'S THE GIST: The maniacs with the beards -- shoot them!
GOLDSTEIN: Well, and we can't be global cop for the world forever and I also think that every time we go into this region, what happens? We pick a winner, we pick a loser, and then five years later the winner that we picked is all of a sudden the force that we're fighting.
What's the point of ever forming alliances abroad anyway?!
GOLDSTEIN: And Barack Obama said that there is no military solution to ISIS and I think he should listen to his own advice in this category. (applause)
PESCA: No, but ISIS needs to be the loser. ISIS is not along the lines of, oh, just another sectarian force. I'm not saying that they will definitely overrun everything. We have the resolve to fight them despite what the critics like Lindsey Graham say. We can beat them but they must be defeated. They're a horrible force.
MAHER: Well, first of all, they cannot be defeated. They cannot, you cannot defeat an idea.
The once widely-held belief that the world is flat, and that everything in the cosmos revolves around us. Or that people should be able to own other human beings, regardless of whether the other people oppose this. Or that political power should be held only by a tiny number of people in the same family and passed down to their descendants in perpetuity. Or that a woman should not be able to register to vote unless accompanied by her husband (which happened to my mother in 1960 on Cape Cod, as she often reminded her family years later).
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come, Victor Hugo observed. And invariably when this occurs, other ideas are defeated. History is largely the study of dubious ideas that met a deserved demise.
MAHER: Second of all, they just like any other group. They're just better at social media.
And they're way out front when it comes to appalling depravity. You forgot to mention that, Bill.
GOLDSTEIN (back to Blaming America First): And it's a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, right, and every time we go into this region, what happens? First, we arm the Islamists against the USSR. Then we go in, we take over Iraq and then we, you know, de-arm the Iraqi military and then the Sunnis get pissed off and then the Sunnis form ISIS, right? Every time we go in ... we mess things up! There's no, we can't be ...
MAHER: I hope ISIS takes Baghdad.PESCA: C'mon on!
CHRISTIE (also taken aback): Why?
MAHER: Why? Why would you hope ...
MAHER: Because maybe then it would awake the people in the region who are so worried but seems to always have to rely on Uncle Sugar to do their work for them. (applause)
That'll show 'em!
"Would awaken the people in the region" -- with the obvious exception of a staggering number of people -- thousands, tens of thousands, the mind reels -- who would be slaughtered en mass if the unspeakable evil that is ISIS gained control of a major city. Has it occurred to Maher that such an eventuality would whet ISIS's appetite, not sate it?
It would also awaken people around the world to the folly that was Obama's capricious withdrawal from Iraq, rather than engage with its government in a new status of forces agreement that would allow the American military to remain there until the country was genuinely stable. The Iraq war had been fought and won by the time Obama took office, but it was a victory he was blithely willing to squander.
Belatedly it has dawned on Obama that George W. Bush, a convenient scapegoat for only so long, won't get blamed if Iraq falls to ISIS and we witness a horrific reiteration of the genocide in southeast Asia and mass exodus from its shores 40 years ago after the United States abandoned another ally.
