Carly Fiorina's Medieval History Degree Will Help Her Beat ISIS, Crush Albigensian Heresy

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. Carly 2016!

Carly Fiorina took a break from her heavy schedule of lying , lying , lying , and more lying to engage in some plain old stupid bullshit for a change. She recently explained to a New Hampshire audience that her bachelor's degree in medieval history and philosophy has prepared her to fight ISIS. Campaign watchers agreed it was a refreshing change of pace to hear her not so much lying as simply sounding like a job applicant explaining how working at McDonalds gave her "people skills."

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Replying to a military member's question about her foreign policy qualifications at a town hall event in Windham, Fiorina detailed why she is totally ready to take on the self-proclaimed Islamic State:

“Finally my degree in medieval history and philosophy has come in handy,” Fiorina said Sunday night, “because what ISIS wants to do is drive us back to the Middle Ages, literally.”

She offered some tough talk about being tough and working with allies in the Middle East, said that she'd help Turkey establish a "no-fly zone" along its border with Syria (without getting into the ugly details about how that could be complicated by the arrival of Russian fighter-bombers), and called ISIS "an evil that must be defeated." But what was that about her medieval history degree again?

Fiorina listed off a number of brutal techniques that ISIS is using that were common in medieval times and said it is not an exaggeration to say that the group is operating under a mentality based in the Middle Ages.

“Every single one of the techniques that ISIS is using, the crucifixion, the beheadings, the burning alive, those were commonly used techniques in the Middle Ages,” Fiorina told reporters during a media availability, “so we can’t avert our eyes and pretend it’s an exaggeration that ISIS wants to take its territory back to the Middle Ages but that is in truth what they want to do and are attempting to do.”

We're not sure how carefully she thought through that comparison, though. So what she's saying is that ISIS is behaving like a bunch of feudal Christians?

As far as any practical strategic insights her education may have equipped her with for dealing with the Islamic extremist group, Fiorina was considerably more vague. It wasn't clear whether she was advocating a Crusade, bringing back the Inquisition(they wouldn't be expecting that -- no one ever does),or perhaps hoping that the adoption of craftsmen's guilds and establishment of trade routes would create economic expansion that would leave ISIS without a constituency.

We'll just hope she's not suggesting that the United States adopt the tactics of Abbot Arnaud Almaric in the 1209 sack of Béziers . Ordered by Pope Innocent III to eradicate heretics, but not able to distinguish the faithful Catholics from the heretical Cathars in the defeated town, Almaric cited 2 Timothy 2: 19 as an excuse for a massacre: " Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius, " translated into American as "Kill them all, for the Lord knoweth them that are His." And that, kids, is where we got the T-shirt slogan "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." It's a memorable bit of medieval history, but we're not sure we'd recommend it as foreign policy.

Or perhaps Fiorina simply means that we'll have to wait for the civilizing influence of the Renaissance to come along and calm things down a bit.

As a campaign talking point for someone whose primary foreign policy experience is selling Hewlett-Packard printers to Iran , we suppose it's at least as good as saying you have experience making sure that Putin's not rearing his head over the Bering Strait, or claiming that you can beat ISIS because you stared down a teacher's union. 

[ ABC News ]