Since President Obama has indicated that he will not go to Congress to request that it declare war on ISIS, Congressmen must begin to act like adults and perform their constitutional function to protect our country. They should as soon as they return for the next Congressional session, declare war against ISIS (which has openly declared war on us). It should be approved by bi-partisan, almost unanimous votes in both the Senate and the House.

Our country is threatened and our president makes light of it. Congress should also assume the task ignored by our president of restoring our declining military superiority and upgrading our homeland security by initially allocating at least a trillion dollars for such purpose. An enormous sum, but at least that amount will be needed to enable our military to fight the necessary war against ISIS and attempt to prevent, defend against or recover from the terrorist attacks that are likely to be planned or carried out on our shores by Islamic terrorists and their followers.

We must reverse the deliberate decline in our military strength orchestrated by President Obama during the first six years of his presidency in order to be able to provide government funding for Obamacare and other rapidly growing welfare entitlements and his politically oriented green projects. We must develop and have available a broad array of new and improved offensive and defensive weaponry to defend against attacks on our citizens and our infrastructure.

We must begin by currently repairing and upgrading and taking further steps to protect and provide redundancy and back-up for all aspects of our infrastructure (including our transportation infrastructure, water supply, power grid and the Internet) and added protection for all of our strategic places. Our cities and states with CIA and FBI assistance have since 9/11/2001 upgraded their anti-terrorist preparedness. We have placed reinforced cement or steel pillars around many of our strategic places to prevent an attack. However, the Boston Marathon bombings and other acts of Islamic sponsored terrorism demonstrate how difficult the task is. As was also true for the 9/11/2001 attacks, we always seem to miss the available clues that could have led to the prevention of the terrorist acts.

We need enhanced federal financial assistance to the cities and states and a USID card with constantly updated electronic linkage to the CIA, FBi and other security agency databases to assist in identifying potential terrorists and preventing their attacks. I refer you to the book I published in 2003 entitled “Homeland Security and Economic Prosperity” that proposed and described a USID card. We should be strengthening the relationship of the police, our first responders, with the residents they are hired to serve and protect. We should not be stirring up and promoting antagonism, for political purposes, against our local police forces for protecting the property of law-abiding people in their communities from looters.

Some people look at our $17 trillion deficit and ignorantly blame it on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most people do not understand that increased military spending on those wars generated millions of tax paying jobs and as a result of a multiplier effect, resulted in GDP growth and federal income tax revenues that financed them. The increase in the National Debt is largely attributable to the Great Recession that resulted from wrongful and ridiculously stupid mortgage lending practices, excessive use of leverage by our bankers investing other people’s money, and failed government regulatory actions that promoted the wrongdoing.

President Obama’s naive and inept foreign policy decisions have led to the growth of Islamic terrorist groups throughout the world and encouraged Russian and Chinese aggression. Combined with the opening of our southern border to terrorists and criminals following the illegal invasion, encouraged and welcomed by President Obama, of infants and families from Central America, they have placed our homeland in jeopardy.

The ISIS land and weapon grabs in Iraq and Syria, barbaric acts, and open declaration of war on the US, coupled with Russia’s outrageous takeover of Crimea and other parts of eastern Ukraine, is serving as a wake-up call to an increasing number of Americans. However, even though our homeland is threatened, most Americans still remain oblivious to the dangers we face. They are unaware of the extent to which our military strength and homeland security have been weakened.

President Obama, who got reelected by concealing the truth from voters and spent months acting like “Mr. Cool”, as the crises developed, does not seem prepared to deal with them. When Russia moved into the Ukraine, he chose to ignore our prior commitment to give the Ukraine military assistance if attacked. When we had the chance, why didn’t we bomb the Russian tanks moving inside Ukraine’s border? No risk, no gain. A coward is afraid to take the risk. JFK responded to Russian aggression by blockading the Russian ships during the Cuban missile crisis. President Obama’s only response to the Russian advances in Ukraine was to threaten and then take what have turned out to be ineffective sanctions that are also harming the European and indirectly our economy.

After the sudden rise of ISIS occurred President Obama acknowledged that he had no strategy to deal with ISIS in Syria. We now know that he should have been prepared. He had been briefed for more than a year by our military leadership, the CIA and his cabinet members. Maybe he just didn’t want to acknowledge that almost all of his prior foreign policy decisions during his years as president, including his failure to negotiate an agreement to leave troops in Iraq, were wrong. He is a commander-in-chief of our military who always favors personal political considerations over the taking of appropriate military action to protect our homeland.

This is not the time for political rhetoric and gamesmanship. President Obama constantly tells the enemy what he will not do and often tips his hand on what he will do. Even a child knows that you greatly hinder your chances of winning in a game of war if you tell your strategy to the enemy. ISIS is attracting thousands of followers and getting stronger each day.

Now, after dallying for months, President Obama says he wants coalitions with our allies, including NATO members and Sunni controlled countries, to provide ground combat troops. However, he is not leading by example by offering to include American troops in the force. In what appears to be a domestic political ploy rather than a useful military strategy, he is moving 5000 free Syria Army fighters, who had been fighting against the Assad forces, to Saudi Arabia for 6 months to a year of training.

We know that bombing ISIS in Syria and ultimately obliterating ISIS will require significantly more US troops on the ground. However, our president plays semantic games by insisting that he will not place troops on the ground, meaning combat troops. How can we gain the respect of our enemies or even maintain the strength of our awesome army if we keep reducing its size and we commit in advance not to use it? We should be putting together a force comprised of US combat troops, fighting along-side Kurdish and Free Syria Army combat troops and those from Sunni controlled countries to take the war to ISIS now! As we ready the force we should use our special operations forces to wipe out ISIS command posts and positions and then immediately withdraw. The longer we delay, the more difficult it will be to wipe out ISIS and other Muslim terrorist groups and the more casualties we will ultimately incur.

The situation is complex. Some of our friends have in the past befriended ISIS. Attacking ISIS in Syria may improve the chances of an Assad victory and be interpreted as our favoring Shiites over Sunnis. It happens that ISIS consists of Sunni terrorists who have been funded in the past by the Sunni countries, whose support we now seek. We seek Turkey’s assistance in stopping the growth of ISIS, but Turkey has been helping ISIS and is happy to see the Kurds destroyed by ISIS. Assad is not threatening to attack the US homeland, but defied international law and President Obama by gassing his own people. His principal sponsor, Shiite controlled Iran, is developing a nuclear bomb that it has threatened to use to attack Israel, and is supporting Shiite Islamic terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Hamas. We must not make foolish concessions to Iran to enable it to develop a nuclear bomb that will be a threat to the US as well as Israel and should clarify that we will also take steps to curtail the terrorist acts of Hezbollah and Hamas.

We need imaginative thinking. Might there be an opportunity for President Obama, who wants to be remembered as the man of peace, to immediately attempt (independent of Iran and Russia) to use secret diplomacy to work together with Turkey to broker a cease-fire followed by a peace treaty between Assad and the Free Syria Army and Kurdish forces we support (the “Grand Middle East Peace Treaty”)  The could then join with our air and ground support and other coalition air and ground forces of Sunni dominated countries, including Turkey to eliminate the ISIS peril? Assad, whose future role, if any, in the Syrian government could be discussed, could be granted immunity from war crimes. Syria could become the showcase country where Shiites and Sunnis share power over identifiable parts of the country. Shiites would have control of the federal government, but they would recognize the historical borders of tribal dominated areas and guarantee that local control of such areas be retained by the tribal leaders.

Regardless of the actions we take or fail to take in Syria, we should immediately take steps to strengthen our military and secure our homeland. Our country has faced and immediately responded to previous wake-up calls. In the years that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, we rose to the challenge. Our parents and grandparents were drafted into and enlisted in the military to fight to preserve our freedom. Others worked day and night to develop a superior military capacity that enabled us to defeat our enemies in World War II in less than four years. When the war ended we had developed not only a great military, but also an unparalleled industrial complex that enabled us to escape from the Great Depression and establish American exceptionalism.

How many Americans know this aspect of American history? Not many of us have done anything to earn our freedom. It has been won and defended by heroes of prior generations whose efforts established American military superiority, defeated our enemies, and handed us our freedom as a gift. Now, a majority of voters take it for granted. Millions of Americans never learned in school about the history of military conquests over thousands of years. Most Americans are upset as they learn of the terrible atrocities being perpetrated by Islamic terrorist groups throughout the world, but they think that the current military superiority of the US guarantees that our homeland is secure. They seem to have already forgotten that Al Qaeda recruited, sent to the US, and financed the terrorists who carried out the attacks on 9/11/2001. We had adequate available information to have prevented those attacks. We remain vulnerable to an ever more dangerous variety of attacks against our infrastructure and our population.

The attacks on 9/11/2001 should have been a wake-up call. We stirred for a while and then fought two long wars foolishly aimed at establishing western type democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008 we elected a president who promised hope and change. He naively believed that all wars must end, and sought to eliminate the role of the US as the world’s only reliable defender of freedom. He downplayed, even refused to acknowledge, the spread of Islamic terrorism throughout the world. President Obama used the Great Recession, the winding down of the war in Iraq and then sequestration as an excuse to reduce the size and preparedness of our military. The American public, our press and politicians talk about being war-weary. What does that mean? We spent a lot of money and sustained injuries over a long period of time. Yet, our foolish disengagement from Iraq has made us vulnerable to what might be an imminent attack on our homeland. Our president and most Americans do not want “boots on the ground”. That’s gibberish. We have boots on the ground. They mean that they do not want to use our infantry in hand-to-hand combat. Even though we have a volunteer army, they don’t want to bear the costs of war.

They are misled by the president’s repeated talk about the trillions of dollars spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans do not understand that it was our bankers and not the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that created the Great Recession. Wars create jobs and prosperity. Ending the war in Iraq was counter-productive to our economic recovery.

President Obama has enlarged the risk of terrorist acts within our homeland by ignoring and thereby allowing the rise of ISIS and by weakening border security to permit large numbers of children from Central America to enter our country for his own political purposes. We must postpone immigration reform and concentrate on the immediate need to control our borders to keep out terrorists, weapons of mass destruction and the diseases that might be brought into our country.

President Obama knew that his policies relating to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan would ultimately lead to disaster, but obviously felt the problem would not deteriorate until after the end of the term of his presidency. He therefore misled voters about our military problems and concentrated his efforts on domestic issues. A majority of Americans care principally about the US economy and jobs and their own favorite social issues. President Obama and members of his administration wrongfully use their governmental authority to silence their opposition and to sensationalize racial and immigration issues to gain political advantage.

His obvious aim is to create a single party system that a majority of voters rely upon for financial support. He doesn’t seem to care about the detrimental effect of Obamacare on the middle class who are paying excessive premiums and deductibles to finance the subsidized benefits for the poor and the sick. Nor does he seem to care about the negative impact on healthcare providers who are receiving reduced fees for services. He and his administration have lied repeatedly and withheld information to prevent voters from discovering the truth about Obamacare. He wants employers to convert full time 40 hour per week jobs into less that 30 hour per week jobs and stop paying for healthcare, when the employer mandate becomes effective. The low-income employees will be forced to seek and become dependent upon Medicaid and subsidized Obamacare policies.

It is probably not be too late to stop the spread of terrorism overseas. We must mobilize the effort. If we spend to significantly upgrade our military capability to deal with the growing terrorist threats we will at the same time create millions of full-time tax-paying jobs and stimulate the mediocre and disappointing economic recovery from the Great Recession. The trillion dollars we spend will generate the greatest prosperity in our history. We need a spokesman to step forward and lead the effort. We should coordinate such spending with our European allies who should also be convinced to spend to grow their military capability and ward of terrorist and Russian threats to their and their neighbors’ security. We might lead by example by offering to purchase the French aircraft carrier being built for sale to Russia.

We should immediately take steps to make our oil and natural gas available for export to Europe to break our allies dependence on Russian sources. It is commonly believed that even if we change our export laws, we will be unable to deliver significant amounts of oil and natural gas to Europe for years. That’s nonsense. Let’s change the laws and find out how fast we can supply energy for Europe by using American ingenuity and capability. I think we will be pleasantly surprised.

President Obama has recently shown signs of awakening by authorizing limited bombing of ISIS forces. It’s time for him to take the reins and act like a commander-in chief. However, he appears to be doing just enough to try to hold on to control of the Senate this November and to pass the risks of terrorist attacks to the next president. History will frown on his presidency if he fails to prevent serious acts of terrorism by Islamic terrorists and their supporters within our homeland.

I note that although I refer in this article to the Muslim terrorist group as ISIS, our president for some inane political reason, before the be-headings and other atrocities committed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq and his decision to bomb ISIS elected to call the group, and continues to call it, ISIL to avoid referring to Syria in its name.