Letters in the News

Strikes me as interesting, if nothing else, that just days after a general called SISI was sworn in as President of Egypt a group called ISIS has overrun northern Iraq and now threatens Baghdad.

Such is my weariness of endless civil wars—or such is the poor quality of normal reporting in the media—that I had never heard of ISIS until Mosul had fallen to them. Now I learn that this group controls, more or less, significant sections of Syria and that its acronym derives from the translation of a name in Arabic, literally Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), but “the Levant” is translated as “Syria,” hence ISIS. These complications caused some interesting sputtering on the PBS News Hour by one of the anchors, telling me that they had not been all that familiar with this would-be emirate themselves.

The aggressive advance of ISIS is developing into a new uproar in this country, with some people sounding like they’re about to blame President Obama for loosing the glories won in battle by President Bush.

I would suggest calming down. We have something neither the Egyptians nor the Arabs have. We call it the MISSISSIPPI. If only we could relax, the Old Man would just keep rolling along.