Joe HonickJoe Honick

In the wake of the Paris attacks, the suddenly proffered "genius" from all directions sounds more like the conjuring of people who either were never in any intelligence capacity or had to analyze the potentials of bad people without land armies and bigger forces.

While security measures need always to be updated, shooting from the hip, as the old saying goes, offers not one thing to the discussion, and that is precisely what is what we are seeing on the pages of media where everyone suddenly has solutions.

Where these folks were, if only quietly, before suggests what we are hearing and reading suddenly is not worth much and could be even more dangerous.

First, there are those who urge the idea of everyone being armed, as if the mere possession makes anyone either competent or psychologically oriented to kill without thinking twice. Certainly the idea of crowds in social and theatrical situations suddenly springing to respond to nutcases needs more than a little rethinking.

Hence citing the NRA with its special interests as our guides overlooks numerous realities, both of the terror in Paris and what might lie ahead elsewhere.

Second, much of what took place in the theater and elsewhere had to do with people wearing suicide belts that can be and were indeed exploded to kill many around each of the wearers without either the necessity for someone to draw a gun in response or even the opportunity.

Some months ago, I tried unsuccessfully to get across the many questions raised by something called ISIS, our presidential and military old line responses that wide scale bombing can do the job and other aspects that made a lot of business for defense industries while apparently failing to plan for the kinds of surprise attacks that took place just a few days ago.

One thing that not only ISIS but any other contender has learned is how to destabilize and disrupt much larger enemies. They have learned clearly they don’t need to confront big land armies or air forces so long as they can sneak small suicide units or individuals into populated areas and key gathering places and cause both damage and death, leaving the locations struggling for lack of any planning in the face of current events that should have demanded something better than everyone should carry a weapon.

It sounds good and tough when recited by supporters of guntoting for everyone. It was both insulting and insensitive when GOP Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson suggested that armed Jews could have been effective in the face of the Holocaust. Beyond insensitive and insulting, it was simply dumb. Fact is in numerous countries where the Nazi power was swarming everywhere, many Jews were armed but not with tanks and artillery to contend with both the German and their allied armies AND the reality of citizen support for those taking the Jews to the ovens. Perhaps the best(or grizzliest)example of armed Jewish resistance was the Warsaw Ghetto I visited recently. In that instance, the courageous fighters managed to kill a reported 13 German military while losing about 13,000 of their own.

So enough of the Wild West promoters who think the provocateurs of terror are stupid and don’t plan as well as we do….or seemingly do not. After all, how many suicide squads have you read about in American and/or European military successes. Better yet: how many American and/or European military successes have you read about at all lately?

Enough of media assaults on the President for not knowing suicide squads would invade public places. Where were all the military geniuses trying to influence this or any other president with better foresight of all kinds? Making this whole nasty business just one more cause for political attacks will do nothing to plan for future unpleasantness any more than our anti-terror response to 9/11 did this time around.

For openers, I would urge reader attention to my piece on October 6,2014 titled: Be Wary Of America’s Arab Anti-ISIS “Coalition.”

Some final questions that call for answers and now:

Why are Arab League nations seemingly not terribly bothered by ISIS….and continuing development of skyscrapers and tennis tournaments?

Why have we openly disregarded Israel’s vaunted anti-terrorism capability….even to the point of keeping her out of an important anti-terrorism conference fairly recently?

What does the sudden diplomatic “love affair” with non-democratic Arab governments really mean?

What happened to the highly publicized “coalition campaign” to fight ISIS that had Secretary of State Kerry scurrying about the Middle East?

Out of left field: Did Ed Snowden know any of this when at NSA and fail to blow his whistle then…or was the agency out of the loop as well?

These are but a few questions that need calm but urgent answers. But the single worst reality, as I wrote more than a year ago, is “that there are no leaders emerging from anywhere in either party of the stature needed right at this moment. 2016 is not the time to get the answers.” Is it too much to ask that all the political combatants in the current campaign travesty remember their responsibilities to the country as a whole and not t heir parties to help rebuild our flagging reputation in the world?

Of course it’s too much to ask . . . dammit!

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Joseph J. Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.