Another Military Misadventure Coming Up

How to Put Stars on the Banner of ISIS

There are few things more dangerous than when politicians get smitten with nationalistic hubris, replete with lumps in throats and tears on cheeks, whilst they are deciding or voting on military affairs.

In the US House of Representatives a recent vote was taken as to whether the Congress would approve the arming of “moderate” Syrian rebels.  Despite all the evidence and experience of disastrous outcomes of decisions to arm such groups in the past, the House duly voted to approve the action.  Can politicians really be this dumb?  Yes they can.

But not all.  Some of those who voted “no” explained their reasons.  Their justification for voting against the resolution to arm the “moderate” Syrian rebels shows up their yea-saying colleagues to be dumb, dumber and dumbest.  Here are the words of Justin Amash, a so-called Tea-partying congressman:

What have we learned from the last decade of war?

Those years should have taught us that when going to war, our government must:

(1) be careful when defining a military mission,
(2) speak forthrightly with the American people about the sacrifices they will be called to make,
(3) plan more than one satisfactory end to the conflict, and
(4) be humble about what we think we know.

These lessons should be at the front of our minds when Congress votes today on whether to arm groups in Syria.

Today’s amendment ostensibly is aimed at destroying ISIS—yet you’d hardly know it from reading the amendment’s text. The world has witnessed with horror the evil of ISIS: the public beheading of innocents, the killing of Christians, Muslims, and others.  The amendment’s focus—arming groups fighting the Assad government in Syria—has little to do with defeating ISIS. The mission that the amendment advances plainly isn’t the defeat of ISIS; it’s the defeat of Assad.

Americans stood overwhelmingly against entangling our Armed Forces in the Syrian civil war a year ago. If Congress chooses to arm groups in Syria, it must explain to the American people not only why that mission is necessary but also the sacrifices that that mission entails.

The Obama administration has tried to rally support for U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war by implying that our help would be at arm’s length. The amendment Congress will vote on broadly authorizes “assistance” to groups in Syria. It does not specify what types of weapons our government will give the groups. It does not prohibit boots on the ground. (The amendment is silent on the president’s power to order our troops to fight in the civil war; it states only that Congress doesn’t provide “specific statutory authorization” for such escalation.) It does not state the financial cost of the war.

As we should have learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must plan for multiple satisfactory ends to military conflicts before we commence them.

If the Syrian groups that are “appropriately vetted” (the amendment’s language) succeed and oust Assad, what would result? Would the groups assemble a coalition government of anti-Assad fighters, and would that coalition include ISIS? What would happen to the Alawites and Christians who stood with Assad? To what extent would the U.S. government be obligated to occupy Syria to rebuild the government? If each of the groups went its own way, would Syria’s territory be broken apart, and if so, would ISIS control one of the resulting countries?

If the Syrian groups that we support begin to lose, would we let them be defeated? If not, is there any limit to American involvement in the war?

Perhaps some in the administration or Congress have answers to these questions. But the amendment we’ll vote on today contains none of them. [Emphasis, ours.]

Above all, when Congress considers serious actions—especially war—we must be humble about what we think we know. We don’t know very much about the groups we propose to support or even how we intend to vet those groups. Reports in the last week suggest that some of the “appropriately vetted” groups have struck deals with ISIS, although the groups dispute the claim. The amendment requires the administration to report on its efforts to prevent our arms and resources from ending up in the wrong hands, but we know little about those precautions or their effectiveness.

Today, I will vote against the amendment to arm groups in Syria. There is a wide misalignment between the rhetoric of defeating ISIS and the amendment’s actual mission of arming certain groups in the Syrian civil war. The amendment provides few limits on the type of assistance that our government may commit, and the exit out of the civil war is undefined. And given what’s happened in our country’s most recent wars, our leaders seem to have unjustified confidence in their own ability to execute a plan with so many unknowns.

Some of my colleagues no doubt will come to different judgments on these questions. But it’s essential that they consider the questions carefully. That the president wants the authority to intervene in the Syrian civil war is not a sufficient reason to give him that power. Under the Constitution, it is Congress’s independent responsibility to commence war.

We are the representatives of the American people. The government is proposing to take their resources and to put their children’s lives at risk. I encourage all my colleagues to give the decision the weight it is due.

The desperation to be doing something usually results in the worst unintended outcomes.  The bellicose United States goes to war at the drop of a hat.  It is “led” by a pacifist-orientated Commander-in-Chief whose liberal world-view sees all wars as unnecessary and preventable because all human beings are really creatures of enlightened good-will.  When this has not not worked out, he has lurched from one military misadventure to another with both his eyes firmly fixated on his own polling numbers.  He has no strategy, no doctrines, no guiding principles.  It’s all about him. 

Congress is no better.  It has not grown up and matured to the point where it understands that when it comes to sending the military to war, overwhelmingly, far more often than not, the best and right decision is to do nothing.  The phrase “clear and present danger” has been inflated to where it is a meaningless concept.  An ant walking upon a sidewalk in Outer Mongolia would constitute a “clear and present danger” to the United States in the minds of most of the current crop of Congressmen.

Evil exists.  People die at the hands of unimaginably evil predators.  But need does not constitute a duty–or a right–to intervene so that “good guys” get to kill “bad guys”.  The world is just not that simple.  It is not a narrative of cowboys and Indians. 

We make a prediction which doubtless many will consider so extreme and unlikely they will write us off as complete idiots: as a result of arming “moderate” groups in Syria, the civil war will intensify, more people will be killed than otherwise, and US armaments and military weapons will end up in the hands of the most brutal and ruthless of the fighting cliques.  Our critics will have conveniently forgotten  that it is the US which has indirectly armed ISIS, thereby enabling it to expand rapidly into Iraq and western Syria.  Will such things happen again?  Inevitably.  But the militaristic heart which beats throughout the land in the United States runs on the high octane fuel of patriotism, nationalism, and exceptionalist hubris.  This time . . . this time it will be different.  We swear.

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? 

The star spangled banner of ISIS, that is.  Enabled and facilitated by the unintended consequences of foolish US military misadventure. 

The world would be a very much safer and saner place, if the US Congress were populated throughout by more Congressmen like Justin Amash. 

Triumphant Irrelevance

The West Does Not “Get” Islam

The usual world-view applied to the Islamic wars in the West  is, unsurprisingly, Western.  Wars such as the Syrian civil war are understood through Western glasses, which see the “real” conflict as fundamentally secular, non-religious, focused upon political struggles over power and of who is going to rule, and not infrequently with a Marxist chaser thrown in–poor versus rich, possessed versus dispossessed.  It is assumed that issues of freedom, democracy, free elections, the rule of law, and so forth, are intrinsic to the struggle.

Western diplomacy presupposes that all these Western pre-occupations are the “real issues” and seeks to persuade, cajole, bribe, and threaten accordingly.  If the Sunni rebels are “freedom fighters” they have our support.  If the Shi’ite Alawites are authoritarian tyrants, they become a Western opponent, if not an enemy.

Rarely does the role and critical contribution of Islam come into consideration.  The explanation for such a glaring omission is straightforward.  In the West’s worldview, religion is an irrelevance.
  All religions are  erroneous and false, concerned with unreal matters, with fantasy, and whilst the Western humanistic doctrines of liberty whilst professing  to respect religion, only tolerates a religion which stays within the confines of one’s home. 

But there is an exception.  The only time the West will give a fig for religious belief is when it can be co-joined with a deeper Western narrative of neo-Marxist oppression.  If devotees of  a religion can be fitted into a narrative of exploitation by Western capitalist and imperialist forces, then suddenly their religion becomes something to respect, nurture, and even celebrate in the face of Western hegemonism.

Hence the wide-spread kowtowing to Islam amongst the chattering classes and the Commentariat.  Islam is the religion of the poor and the exploited, of the oppressed and the downtrodden.  Therefore, the West must not join with the oppression of Islam.  It must seek to lift it up, respect it.  Eventually, or so runs the eschatology of the neo-Marxists, Islamic religion will wither away, to be replaced by “scientific” Darwinian secularism, even as it has in the West.   The West’s “respect” for Islam is, thus,  paternalistic and condescending at best.  

Herein lies the reason why Western “policy” towards Islam and Islamic nations has been an abysmal failure in recent decades.  It fails to see the elephant of Islam sitting in the room, because the ruling paradigm of the West is secular, which means that the religion of Islam is not in any sense an elephant, but a mouse, or a cockroach–an irrelevance.  But as for free elections, and human rights, that’s another matter entirely.  We doubt not that the most perplexing question furrowing the brows of Western leaders and Foggy Bottom bureaucrats is whether Syrian Sunni “freedom fighters” can be persuaded to hold free and fair elections sooner rather than later, in exchange for more Western support. 

But let’s move outside the suffocating myopia of the West to reality on the streets of Damascus.  Mariam Karouny, has been published in Yahoo News! explaining what is going down on the on the ground. 

Conflict in Syria kills hundreds of thousands of people and spreads unrest across the Middle East. Iranian forces battle anti-Shi’ite fighters in Damascus, and the region braces for an ultimate showdown.  If the scenario sounds familiar to an anxious world watching Syria’s devastating civil war, it resonates even more with Sunni and Shi’ite fighters on the frontlines – who believe it was all foretold in 7th Century prophecies.

From the first outbreak of the crisis in the southern city of Deraa to apocalyptic forecasts of a Middle East soaked in blood, many combatants on both sides of the conflict say its path was set 1,400 years ago in the sayings of the Prophet Mohammad and his followers.  Among those many thousands of sayings, or hadith, are accounts which refer to the confrontation of two huge Islamic armies in Syria, a great battle near Damascus, and intervention from the north and west of the country.  The power of those prophecies for many fighters on the ground means that the three-year-old conflict is more deeply rooted – and far tougher to resolve – than a simple power struggle between President Bashar al-Assad and his rebel foes.

You don’t say.  At least Karouny gets it, whilst most in the West don’t.  At least Karouny takes the Islamic narrative seriously, and thus gets far closer to reality than most.

“If you think all these mujahideen came from across the world to fight Assad, you’re mistaken,” said a Sunni Muslim jihadi who uses the name Abu Omar and fights in one of the many anti-Assad Islamist brigades in Aleppo.  “They are all here as promised by the Prophet. This is the war he promised – it is the Grand Battle,” he told Reuters, using a word which can also be translated as slaughter.

On the other side, many Shi’ites from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran are drawn to the war because they believe it paves the way for the return of Imam Mahdi – a descendent of the Prophet who vanished 1,000 years ago and who will re-emerge at a time of war to establish global Islamic rule before the end of the world.  According to Shi’ite tradition, an early sign of his return came with the 1979 Iranian revolution, which set up an Islamic state to provide fighters for an army led by the Mahdi to wage war in Syria after sweeping through the Middle East.  “This Islamic Revolution, based on the narratives that we have received from the prophet and imams, is the prelude to the appearance of the Mahdi,” Iranian cleric and parliamentarian Ruhollah Hosseinian said last year.

This apocalyptic tradition teaches that there will be universal war in the Middle East, leading to such destruction that blood will flow knee-deep.  The protagonists believe that now is the hour foretold and promised by Muhammad.  In the face of this narrative, the world-view of the West might as well be from Mars.  It is a complete irrelevance.

Into the room the diplomats come and go
Talking of Michelangelo. 

The West’s grasp of what is actually driving the Syrian conflict is Prufrockian in its simplistic, irrelevant, naive inconsequence.

Syria’s civil war grew out of the “Arab Spring” of pro-democracy revolts in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 after Assad’s forces cracked down hard on peaceful protests.  But because Assad is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shii’ism, and most of his opponents are Sunni Muslims, the fighting quickly took on a sectarian character, which has largely overwhelmed the political issues.

“These hadith are what the Mujahideen are guided by to come to Syria, we are fighting for this. With every passing day we know that we are living the days that the Prophet talked about,” said Mussab, a fighter from the Nusra Front, a Sunni hardline group linked to al Qaeda, speaking from Syria.

Murtada, a 27-year-old Lebanese Shi’ite who regularly goes to Syria to battle against the rebels, says he is not fighting for Assad, but for the Mahdi, also known as the Imam.  “Even if I am martyred now, when he appears I will be reborn to fight among his army, I will be his soldier,” he told Reuters in Lebanon.  Murtada, who has fought in Damascus and in the decisive battle last year for the border town of Qusair, leaves his wife and two children when he goes to fight in Syria: “Nothing is more precious than the Imam, even my family. It is our duty.” . . . .

Abbas, a 24-year-old Iraqi Shi’ite fighter, said he knew he was living in the era of the Mahdi’s return when the United States and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003.  “That was the first sign and then everything else followed,” he told Reuters from Baghdad, where he said was resting before heading to Syria for a fourth time.  “I was waiting for the day when I will fight in Syria. Thank God he chose me to be one of the Imam’s soldiers.”

Abu Hsaasan, a 65 year old pensioner from south Lebanon, said he once thought the prophecies of the end of days would take centuries to come about.  “Things are moving fast. I never thought that I would be living the days of the Imam. Now, with every passing day I am more and more convinced that it is only a matter of few years before he appears.”

Peace?  Not a chance.  At least not until Islam in the Middle East becomes so weary of bloodshed it is prepared to look for another way.  But hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people will likely die before that day.

But in the meantime there is one thing to be done–humanitarian aid, as much of it as possible, delivered as effectively as possible, to whomever seeks it.  The more Christian charities that can become involved the better.  They will be far more likely to deliver aid without Western political strings attached. They will deliver aid out of genuine compassion for those who suffer, all in the Name of the Prince of Peace.  In the long term, He is our last and only hope.

 

From An Admiring Antipodean

Dear President Obama

I was greatly encouraged to view your recent address to ‘Planned Parenthood’ and rejoice in your warm endorsement of their work and in your wishing of the blessing of God upon them and all they do for the cause of women’s reproductive health and the right to take control of their own bodies. The practice of some 3,000 abortions a week in the USA is a ringing endorsement of their work and proof of their deserving your support.

I have long supported the ‘Pro Choice’ cause as you have, and must commend you for your courageous stand in support of late term terminations.
You are able to see clearly the issue at hand- that if a woman has the right and indeed the responsibility to control her own body as she thinks best, and if her unborn foetus is unwanted, then the life of that foetus must obviously must be subsumed to the greater cause of the free choice of the women.

Could I now plead with you to seize the time and further advance the ‘Pro Choice’ cause? For the greater good and survival of his clan and supporters, President Assad of Syria has (so we are told) applied poison gas to some 1,500 man women and children in the suburbs of Damascus. Though these terminations are a tad later then we would desire, I am sure that you will see that his actions are a courageous application of the work that you have so faithfully supported in the USA. What the President of Syria has done is a reflection of his right to take control of the health of his own community as he thinks best, and these unwanted lives have been subsumed to the greater cause of his right and freedom to be ‘Pro Choice.’

Please could I ask you to once again show the leadership and courage and foresight for which we all hold you in such high esteem and sound out those words once again, this time to President Assad and his helpers- “God bless you in all you do.”

Perpetual War

The Injustice of Even Contemplating War in Syria

As the war drums beat over Syria the controversy about casus belli rises again.  What are the just causes for going to war?  In the Western tradition what constitutes a just cause for war has become inflated significantly in the past two hundred years.  We see the fruits of that inflation in the debates swirling in the United States at present over Syria. 

The notion of a just war is rooted in Christian doctrine and in the first Christendom.  Whilst the idea of a just war is inherently right, the details can be diabolical.  Who or what determines what is just?  When you have medieval and post-medieval rulers fixated upon their own vanities the concept of justice can be stretched to cover a mountain of vainglory.  Any insult to the Sun-King of the day becomes intolerable; to punish the malefactors becomes cast as an act of retributive justice.  Therefore, to be genuinely so, the doctrine of a just war must be grounded in a higher law which defines wherein justice actually lies, not in the vanity of vainglorious rulers or nations. 

The situation got noticeably worse during the time of doctrines of the divine right of kings.
  King Henry VIII, for example, was an absolutist tyrant–his malefaction justified by the pernicious idea that he was God’s highest representative upon earth, and therefore the absolute ruler over church and state.  Wars under such misconceptions become manifestly unjust, and that very quickly.

The Christian concept of a just war can be neatly summarised, on the one hand, and tied to the teachings of Holy Scripture, on the other, by the doctrine of “clear and present danger”.  The phrase is regnant with significance.  A clear danger is one which is beyond doubt.  It is a danger not hypothetical, contingent, or theoretical.  It is self-evident.  It is a danger which threatens life and limb of citizens. It is a danger that even the cats and dogs can see. A present danger is one which is confronting a nation immediately, not contingently or potentially. 

The concept of a just war being tied to the doctrine of a clear and present danger means that wars ought  always to be defensive in nature. 

In modern and post-modern times the justification for war has expanded way beyond the strictures of a just war based upon a clear and present danger.  There are two additional doctrines which have overtaken the restrictive, yet inherently just, concept of defensive war.  The first is a war to defend national interests.  The second is a war in the name of humanity or human rights (that is, a humanitarian war). 

Many wars in recent times have been waged to defend US interests.  Since the US is the only remaining superpower, it has interests all over the show; consequently, under the doctrine of warring to protect national interests, one can expect that the US will be at war somewhere in the world all the time.  And so it has proved to be.  The doctrine of warring to protect national interests is really a continuation of the nineteenth century nationalistic imperialist doctrines.  It is also inherently corrupt.  Who, pray tell, determines where the national interests really lie?  National interests of the many immediately parley into the commercial interests of some.  The war powers of the state become applied to defend the commercial interests of the nation’s plutocrats. 

Hence, in the case of the recent wars in Iraq there was plenty of evidence that the West was thinking of its commercial interests in protecting its supplies of oil as the fundamental driver of war.  The fact that senior members of government had long-standing commercial interests in the region made the optics much, much worse.  Justifying war to defend (or promote) national interests is a pernicious concept.  It is a ghastly hangover from the period of Western imperialism where might made right and where pride was to be protected.  Wars waged to defend national interests are inherently immoral and unjust. 

The second modern justification is going to war to defend human rights, or in the name of humanitarian ideals.  This pernicious doctrine has been the stock-in-trade of the progressive movement in the West; it is regnant in the United Nations, and it now rules the war doctrine of the United States.  It turns the US into an international policeman, a Redeemer of mankind.  It is the most useless and empty justification for war imaginable.  For, in almost every case, it leaves the particular nation unfortunate enough to suffer the depredations of a humanitarian war far, far worse off. Wars in the name of humanity can destroy; they are powerless to build, restore, and reclaim.  They can tear down, but fail to built up.

Moreover, wars waged in the name of humanitarian concerns and human rights are always erratic and hypocritical.   A classic example is the current intention of the United States government to go to war in Syria.  Why Syria, and why now?  The purported provocation is the use of poisonous gas.  Apparently killing children with poison gas is beyond the pale.  Terrible as it has been, why now?  The civil war being brutally waged in Syria has killed north of  100,000 people, many of them non-combatant women and children.  Do they not count?  Are they not just as dead?  Are their human rights nothing?  Why does 400 children killed by poison gas become a cause c’elebre for human rights to be protected and avenged, but many thousands slaughtered in an ongoing civil war be regarded as “see no evil, hear no evil”.  Hypocrisies necessarily abound because man cannot remove evil from this fallen world.  Evil is ubiquitous, and mankind is not the redeemer: he is the problem. 

Wars in the name of human rights are riddled with inconsistencies, cant, and hypocrisy.  Therefore, they themselves are inherently unjust. 

As long as the war doctrines of defending national interests and protecting human rights are clutched to the bosoms of nations there will be no ending of wars and rumours of wars.  And the US, being the last super-power, will be at war all the time. 

If the question is asked, Does the situation in Syria represent a clear and present danger to the United States? the answer is self-evidently negative.  To consider war for a moment in such a case is wrong and unjust.  But if it were asked, Does the Syrian situation represent a threat to American interests?, or Does it represent a violation of humanitarian ethics? the answer can always be made affirmatively on both counts. 

When these doctrines are applied, the United States becomes like Sauron who would always have his wars.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Syria in a Sentence

Posted on Wednesday, September 4, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog 

I want Congress to authorize something I don’t believe they need to authorize, and which I reserve the right to do anyway whether or not they authorize it, in order that I might defend the credibility of a red line I didn’t actually draw, so that I may take decisive action that will not in any way affect the momentum of the Syrian civil war or, if it accidentally does, al-Qaeda will the stronger for it, in order that I might have a chance to do what I have spent a decade yelling about other people doing.

Bringing the A-Game to the Table

Russian Grand Master

Vlad the Impaler is making Obama look more and more foolish.  We are not sure whether this reflects a much more experienced “old hand” running the Russian government, or whether the Russian authorities have decided that Obama’s suit is filled with an effete mixture of hot air, hubris, and little else and they are mischievously delighting in exposing the emptiness to the world, or whether they are just far more sophisticated and clever than the inexperienced two-bit community organiser from Chicago.  Whatever–but the reality is that Vlad knows how to play a very sophisticated game of chess.  He also shows signs of having sized up his opponent all too well. 

Firstly, tactical move number #1: keep the whole Syrian thing boiling in the UN pot.
  This, in turn, keeps Obama in a vice of his own making.  He has been (up until now) the champion of humanitarianism and internationalism–and therefore of the UN–especially in matter of war.  There is not a hope that the UN Security Council will endorse military action against Syria.  Russia and China will effectively block it.  But it is helpful to the Russian/Syrian cause if the rest of the world can maintain some semblance of respect for the UN with a straight face and follow its lead. 

So, Vlad has acted masterfully to keep the whole thing in the hands of the UN, by getting Syria to agree to the handing over and destruction of its chemical weapon stockpile.  Count the months and months it will take to get the stockpile inspected, removed, and destroyed.  If Obama goes to war now, he will likely do so unilaterally and with the attendant brimstone stench of a warmonger.  All his previous trumpeting about internationalism and humanitarianism will be judged to be the empty braying of a donkey.  He will have lost all moral authority and respect. 

Tactical move number #2: having gained control of international sentiment, Vlad has left Obama out in the cold, having to make arguments to a sceptical US public–already stretched, disbelieving, and cynical–even while the casus belli has been surgically removed.  If it was going to be hard to get congressional approval before the dramatic Russian/Syrian move, it would be next to impossible after.

In addition, the US has been poorly served by an idiotic Secretary of State who has used the following to justify US military action (as quoted in the Guardian):

Kerry said the Americans were planning an “unbelievably small” attack on Syria. “We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war. That is exactly what we are talking about doing – unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”

So, US military action is now a mere token–“unbelievably small”.   Here is Obama in high moral dudgeon and all a-bluster telling us that terrible bright red lines have been crossed and that Syria must be called to account.  This is the Obama moral imperative, that was not his really but (he tells us) the whole world’s.  But at the same time his Secretary of State, John Kerry is also busy telling the world the US response will be “unbelievably small”, so don’t worry about it.  And, by the way, Syria can avoid suffering this “unbelievably small” military punishment if it hands over its chemical weapon arsenal.

No sooner had the words come out of his mouth, the Russians and the Syrians (having set the trap) said, “No problemo”, leaving Obama flapping in a receding tide, beached on the seashore.

That’s what happens when a consummate chess player sits down across the table with a blustering community organiser from Chicago.  It’s called checkmate.

Different Endings and Unpalatable Outcomes

Postscripts to Western Arrogance

As the war drums sound over Syria, it may be prudent to stop and reflect upon Libya.  Remember Libya?  The United States (along with NATO) decided that it had to get involved to support Libyan rebels attempting to overthrown dictator, Colonel Qaddafi.  The mission was eventually accomplished.  Poor old Muammar ended up in a culvert and was shot to pieces by vengeful rebels.

The US felt good.  Mission accomplished.  The US President and congressional hawks looked in the mirror and raised a few toasts.  The Lone Ranger and the Invincibles and the Super Heroes had ridden forth again, vanquished the evil one, and retired from the theatre.  They, no doubt, in raising the toast saw in the mirror adumbrations of one of the great fictional heroes of the West: “He was the man who rode into our little valley, out of the heart of the great glowing West and when his work was done, rode back whence he had come.  And he was Shane.”  Whoop-de-do.  Yeeeee hah.

But what of Libya?
  Stupid question.  It would naturally now rise to a better place–“up, up, up past the Russell Hotel.”  Actually, Libya has already disintegrated, into a lawless morass.  This, from The Independent:

As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria.

In an escalating crisis little regarded hitherto outside the oil markets, output of Libya’s prized high-quality crude oil has plunged from 1.4 million barrels a day earlier this year to just 160,000 barrels a day now. Despite threats to use military force to retake the oil ports, the government in Tripoli has been unable to move effectively against striking guards and mutinous military units that are linked to secessionist forces in the east of the country.

Libyans are increasingly at the mercy of militias which act outside the law. Popular protests against militiamen have been met with gunfire; 31 demonstrators were shot dead and many others wounded as they protested outside the barracks of “the Libyan Shield Brigade” in the eastern capital Benghazi in June.

Time and time again stupid Western ideologues use the pretext of horrors being perpetrated elsewhere in the world as a reason for military engagement–to sort it all out.  Fast forward a couple of years, and things in that place end up worse than ever.  Except now nothing can be done.

Where is that sense of humility which, at the outset, concludes that nothing helpful can actually be achieved by wars and that getting involved will most likely (if history is any guide) result in far worse outcomes?  Unfortunately such a mindset would deny the vaunted arrogance and ambition, the pride of rulers and political leaders.  Not to push the buttons and order the bombing, whilst acknowledging weakness and limits and impotence,  would be conduct unbecoming great leaders of great nations, don’t you know.

Though the Nato intervention against Gaddafi was justified as a humanitarian response to the threat that Gaddafi’s tanks would slaughter dissidents in Benghazi, the international community has ignored the escalating violence. The foreign media, which once filled the hotels of Benghazi and Tripoli, have likewise paid little attention to the near collapse of the central government.

The reality in Libya today is the dirty truth which self-important Western leaders (and the nations they lead) refuse to face.  Just move on to the next “crisis” which can be used as the next pretext to display our wondrous war-making capacities and powers to “set things right”. 

Libya is descending into multi-tribal warfare.  It will likely cease to be a country in any meaningful sense.  Ironically, prudent people warned that this would be the likely outcome well before US and NATO bombing started.  But they were ignored by the Western warmongers at the time.

Rule by local militias is also spreading anarchy around the capital. Ethnic Berbers, whose militia led the assault on Tripoli in 2011, temporarily took over the parliament building in Tripoli. . . . The Interior Minister, Mohammed al-Sheikh, resigned last month in frustration at being unable to do his job, saying in a memo sent to Mr Zeidan that he blamed him for failing to build up the army and the police. He accused the government, which is largely dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, of being weak and dependent on tribal support.

Other critics point out that a war between two Libyan tribes, the Zawiya and the Wirrshifana, is going on just 15 miles from the Prime Minister’s office.

Imagine a post-script to Schaeffer’s classic, Shane.  

He was the man who rode into our little valley, out of the heart of the great glowing West and when his work was done, rode back whence he had come.  And he was Shane.

Two months later the big ranchers banded together, hired some thugs, and systematically rode through the valley slaughtering the small-holders, before they turned their guns on one another.  

So it is turning out in Libya.  So, we predict, it will likewise turn out in Syria.  We would offer a humble proposition: the United States is not the Saviour of the world.  The Saviour of the world does not share His glory with the United States. Neither with NATO.  Nor with the West.  To which we would add this admonition: cease your arrogant and vainglorious pre-emptions.  Clothe yourself with humility.  Kiss the feet of the Saviour before His anger is kindled and He turns upon you and yours. 

Obama’s Relgious War

Perverse Vanity

The days of the Crusades are long gone.  But Islamists have so reconstructed history that they believe they are living amidst another Western Crusader campaign.  So, let’s leave them to that particular distortion and self-deceit.  What needs concern us in the West is the religious war about to be waged by President Obama.  It is our duty to think carefully through, not from Islamist eyes, but from clear sighted objective perception.  For many in the West amongst the Commentariat this would be painful indeed.

We would begin by observing that going to war, as Obama has declared himself bent to do, is always a religious act.  It always involves the imposition of a religion to one degree or other, because it necessarily involves the use of force–deadly force–justified by the beliefs of the aggressors, regardless of the non-belief of the targets.  “You rulers of Syria have done something wrong in our eyes.  We will wage war upon you for vengeance, because you have breached some principles (ethics, morals, fundamental beliefs) we believe are ultimate verities.” 

When Obama goes to war, we need to ask, In the name of what religion is he going to kill?
  To be justified the religion ought to be true, at the least.  Obama is not a religious man in a formal, creedal sense.  He is an Unbeliever, a secularist.  But, like all men, he is nevertheless deeply religious.  He has ultimate beliefs that he holds true, no matter what.  He believes that these truths are self-evident and binding upon all human beings.  He believes that violation of these truths is sufficiently blasphemous to warrant the use of deadly force upon the guilty.

This is becoming more clear as debate swirls about the US going to war in Syria.  Obama cannot point to a clear and present danger to the US as justification.  Neither can he point to a clear and present danger to the Sunni supported forces opposing the government in Syria as justification.  After all, over 100,000 people (warriors, women, and children, and other non-combatants) have already been killed in that conflict over a period of two years and Obama has not gone to war. And even if he could find a clear and present danger to Sunni insurgents, why does the United States have an obligation to go to war in their behalf?  And if it does, why just Sunni insurgents.  There are thousands of similar evils being perpetrated upon the globe at this very moment.  Why would not Obama have his wars defending them all?

But the president has revealed his mind in the matter.  He has declared that it is the moral obligation of the United States to go to war against the Syrian government and use deadly force, killing even non-combatants (what the American military euphemistically refer to as “collateral damage”).  How, moral?  What morality is this?  One nation is going to go to war against another in the name of a moral principle.  What is it?  Fortunately, Obama has been forthright: it is the moral principle of “humanity”–by which one presumes he means acting humanely, or acting for the greater good of all humanity on the planet, or something.  Who knows.  It is a swirling mist.

The particular occasion or provocation is the Syrian government’s use of poison gas (alleged at this point, but let’s grant it for the present).  That violates the moral principles of Obama and the entire United States (he reckons).  He no doubt wishes he could invoke the conscience of the entire world, but the UN–being made up of the entire world as represented through their respective governments–disagrees.  So now, Obama is manifest as one who believes (no doubt religiously) that the entire world’s conscience can be discerned by just one nation (the United States)–and more than that, by just one person within that nation, its president.  (It is true that Obama has sought the imprimatur of  Congress upon this decision, but he has also declared that whether Congress agrees or not, he will go to war.)  This one person, on behalf of just one nation, can declare transcendental truths on behalf of all other human beings.  More, he can buttress those truths by deadly force.  He can command his nation go to war in their defence. 

Behold Obama’s religion.  He would impose it upon all others.  He alone is so sure of these religious truths, so adamant in their verity, that in the name of the nation he leads, he will invoke his god and go to war.  The Syrian government will be punished and held to account before the countenance of Obama’s god. 

The Islamists are right to a point.  They are confronted with another crusade.  Different religion, but a Western Crusade, nonetheless, to invade and wreak vengeance, and kill in the name of a god.  But this time the name of the god is Man, and Obama is his prophet. 

How ashamed we are to be human and how loathsome is the false prophet.  How we detest such perverse idolatry. 

We expect that Obama will go to war.  He will bomb a few chemical weapon sites–now ensconced amongst civilians.  Men, women and children and materials will be destroyed.  Nothing will be gained.  The Syrian government will grow more determined, more deadly.  Many more lives will be lost.  The whole exercise will extol the perverse vanity of  the religion of humanitarianism.  Man as god always was, and always will be, a deadly doctrine.

Humilitation

Mockery Aplenty

The Obama administration has been reported as wanting to engage in tokenism against the Assad regime in Syria.  It just wants to get a point across for propaganda purposes.  Nothing serious.  Tokenism in diplomacy.  Basically, the President apparently wants to do something, but nothing too deadly.  Just enough to prevent the US government being mocked.  A symbolic gesture.

Recall that President Obama declared a bright line with respect to the Assad regime.  The use of chemical weapons would result in US military attacks upon that country.  Some critics have said that this “doctrine” had all the hallmarks of being an off-the-cuff remark in a news conference.  A typical Obama playing-to-the-crowd gesture.  Part of the photo-op session.  Well, it has come to pass that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons to deadly effect.  What now.  Obama has to live up to his words–or face the consequence of being seen to be an empty suit.

His Secretary of State, John Kerry has taken up the role of the Greek chorister, solemnly intoning the moral outrage of chemical weapon use, its condemnation by the international community, thereby reassuring the gallery that the Obama bright-line is corruscatingly intense.  Meanwhile, the British Parliament votes down the proposal by its Prime Minister to become militarily involved.  The list of US allies grows shorter by the day.  At last count it was just Australia and France.  The latter, intoned the Greek chorister, was the oldest ally of the US.  Kerry’s words will be empty before the month is out, we expect.  Meanwhile, the French want their own parliament to approve any military action–something the Hollande government has been reluctant to seek.  New Zealand has been asked for “moral support”.  Parliament will consider whether we will provide it–for what it is worth.  

Charles  Krauthammer had this to say:

“It’s rather shameful that while the British prime minister recalled Parliament to debate possible airstrikes — late Thursday, Parliament actually voted down British participation — Obama has made not a gesture in that direction,” Krauthammer wrote. “If you are going to do this, Mr. President, do it constitutionally. And seriously. This is not about you and your conscience. It’s about applying American power to do precisely what you now deny this is about — helping Assad go, as you told the world he must. Otherwise, just send Assad a text message. You might incur a roaming charge, but it’s still cheaper than a three-day, highly telegraphed, perfectly useless demonstration strike.”

Obama had been on record as a US Senator strongly opposing any war, without Congressional authorisation.  Now, he has had a change of heart.  He has reversed course and announced that he will seek such approval for war.  Congress will not reassemble for some time.  There is doubt that approval will be forthcoming.  

The United States is war weary, having shed the blood of loyal citizens it does not deserve in just about every place on the earth with no success or victories to be seen.  Even if approval by Congress is given, Obama is reduced to demonstration strikes–to enable the Administration to save face.  We suggest that as a result it will be Assad’s face that will be saved.  He will grow in stature, boldness, and reputation.  His use of chemical weapons will increase.  Obama’s hands will grow white with the wringing. 

Sometimes the most effective and powerful and right course is to make the ethical point and leave the Assadians and the Syrian rebels to the judgements of Almighty God.  But that is so hard for American administrations to do because they believe in the manifest global destiny of the United States.  A man, said Clint Eastwood, has got to know his limitations.  So do nations–particularly Western ones.   

Show Pony

 Reckless, Cynical, And Amoral

We don’t put much stock in predictions.  But sometimes tea leaves are easier to read than at others.  It is our expectation that President Obama will have his “military action” in Syria.  He will have failed to get UN endorsement of his recklessness.  He will go to war against one side in a civil war without any formal declaration of war.  He will act imperially, without Congressional approval, making the action unconstitutional.  But Obama has never been one to hold much respect for the Constitution of the United States. 

He will order missile strikes on Syrian government targets.  A few aircraft will do bombing runs.  A few civilian (collateral damage) casualties will be pronounced.
  There will be lots of smoke, noise, and a bit of “shock and awe”.  It will do nothing to stop the Syrian government using more chemical weapons.  In fact, it will probably make them a bit more reckless.  The Muslim world will strengthen its hatred of the United States.  The Great Satan will grow bigger horns in their eyes. 

We predict there will be no gains, and no resolution of the conflict–which, we repeat, is a civil war. It is unlikely that Iran will open a second front up against Israel.  The American action will be seen for what it is: temporary, grandstanding, a bit of failed gun-boat diplomacy.  It will be waited out.  Obama will be playing to his own galleries, trying to score a few domestic political points. 

According to the LA Times,

One U.S. official who has been briefed on the options on Syria said he believed the White House would seek a level of intensity “just muscular enough not to get mocked” but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia.  “They are looking at what is just enough to mean something, just enough to be more than symbolic,” he said.

In other words–it’s all a propaganda stunt.  

Where next?  Well, there is a bit of unrest beginning to bubble up in Nigeria.  How about rattling a few sabres down there? 

Prophecies

Nothing Beside Remains

Violence between Muslims is exploding again across the Middle East–adding to the internecine destruction already taking place in Syria.  Welcome to the Arab Spring.  Hail the wonderful new beginning–at least as announced by useful idiots in the West, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom should have known better.  Ah, well–at least it generated a couple of headlines and photo ops. 

The most likely prognosis in Syria these days is that it is shaping up to devolve into three separate regions run by warlords who will (literally) snipe at each other in perpetuity.  The regions will be, respectively, one run by Assad and his Alawite and Shi’ite supporters; the second will be a territory controlled by the Islamist rebels, supported by Sunni nations; the third will be a region controlled by Kurds. 

The smartest thing the West has done in this conflict in Syria is not to get involved militarily (something for which we have Russia to thank).
  The moral obligation to provide humanitarian aid to refugees and the suffering, however, remains compelling.  As is normally the case, private (non-governmental) charities will do a far better job and will create less resentment, provided they are allowed access.

Meanwhile sectarian intra-Islamic violence is exploding across Iraq.  The account below comes from Al Jazeera:

Tribal leaders in Iraq are warning of war unless the country splits into a federation amid a deadly new wave of apparently sectarian violence.  Monday’s car bombings across Iraqi cities left at least 77 people dead and more than 240 others injured, police and medics say, pushing the death toll over the past week to above 200.  The worst attack occurred in Baghdad, where 10 car bombs struck open-air markets and other areas of Shia neighbourhoods, killing at least 47 people and wounding more than 150, police officials said.
In the bloodiest incident, a parked car bomb blew up in a busy market in the northern Shia neighbourhood of Shaab, killing 14 and wounding 24, police and health officials said.

The bloodshed still cannot be compared to what reigned during the dark days of 2006-2007, when armed groups carried out retaliatory attacks against each other in a cycle of violence that left the country awash in blood.  Even so, the latest attacks have heightened fears that the country could be heading towards civil war.

The havoc and devastation being wrought in people’s lives is hard to conceive.  Less dramatic, but equally sobering is a report in The Guardian about the future of Bamiyan province in Afghanistan. This will particularly interest our New Zealand readers because the NZ army has been primarily responsible for “nation building” in that province.  It has recently withdrawn (having experienced the loss of ten army personnel to insurgents) but making what appears to be significant progress in neutering insurgents and building up Afghani capabilities.  Its work has been hailed as a model.

But, as feared, these are just stories we tell ourselves for our own comfort.  They defy reality.  Here is a more sober assessment from Emma Graham-Harrison:

Bamiyan is a magical place, where the ghosts of long-lost power and opulence haunt a valley of spectacular natural beauty. Near the university lie the ruins of a citadel untouched since Genghis Khan sacked it in the 13th century, and although the giant Buddhas lie in fragments, frescos painted over a millennium ago still cling to corners of monastic caves that honeycomb the cliff around them.

It is also haunted by more recent spectres, memories of those killed in Taliban massacres barely a decade ago. Home to a heavily persecuted ethnic and religious minority, it has remained one of the safest places in Afghanistan, partly because the memory of that suffering fuels profound hostility towards the insurgency. . . . That was fine when Afghanistan’s insurgency was largely contained, Taliban fighters still focused on areas like Helmand, and Bamiyan was left to its peaceful existence. It was probably the only place in the country where diplomats wandered freely and met Afghans beyond blast walls and security checks that constrict embassy life elsewhere. Even soldiers visited spectacular historical sites in the area, confident they would not be targeted, unthinkable on any other base I have visited in Afghanistan.

So great was the sense of security that Bamiyan was chosen by Nato to be the very first place in the country where Afghan forces officially took over from foreign troops, although the ceremony in 2011 was just a nominal shift to pave the way for real changes this year. But since then the insurgency has spread and violence lapped steadily closer to this virtual island of calm, isolated by mountain peaks rather than water. First one, then both roads to Kabul became a dangerous lottery. The head of the provincial council, a popular man who had done much to help development in a desperately poor area, was abducted and slaughtered in 2011. A US engineer is among the many others killed on the roads since.  The security of the province itself was next to crumble, with fighters pushing in heavily from the east but also testing boundaries to the west. Half of the New Zealand troops killed in combat during the decade-long mission died last August in the Do Ab area bordering Baghlan province, and their April departure was six months earlier than originally planned.

For those left behind, the threat is tangible. “I don’t see any Taliban in Bamiyan, but when the foreign soldiers leave they will return and be strong,” said Haider Mohammad, a 37-year-old who sold souvenirs to New Zealand troops for six years. Watching as preparations for the farewell ceremony got under way, he added: “When they go, I will leave as well.”

One can only hope that these civilians may find some refuge and security.

But once again the New Zealand Bamiyan experience will underscore the reckless millenarian folly of trying to “nation build” halfway around the world in an Islamic “nation”.  At least the New Zealand government had the compassion and decency to allow its Afghani interpreters and translators and their families to settle in New Zealand as refugees, since they would have been one of the first targets of the Taliban had they remained. 

Meanwhile, what do we think will be the actual tangible impact of Western interventions in the Middle East and Afghanistan in thirty years time?  Shelley’s immortal words will be a prophetic epitaph of that disastrous utopian adventure, we believe:
 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The Syrian Solution

Showing True Colours

A Saudi Arabian imam, who is a very influential cleric in jihadist circles, has issued a fatwa (religious edict) that essentially allows all jihadists fighting in Syria to rape women.

Muhammed al-Arifi, a Wahhabi religious cleric,  officially calls this act an “intercourse marriage” that can last only a few hours – “in order to give each fighter a turn” — and restricts the men to Syrian females at least 14 years old, widowed or divorced.

Al-Arifi, expressed his annoyance at the “warriors of Islam” being denied sexual pleasures while fighting in Syria “alongside the armed opposition forces” for the past two years.  He said this fatwa “solves [their] sexual problems” and “boosts the determination of the mujahideen in Syria and is considered a duty to enter paradise for those females who enter such marriages.”

The Arabic language news site Tayyar.org reports that critics of Al-Arifi have expressed anger about the fatwa, saying that it permits the exploitation of Syrian women through rape.

No kidding.  

Letter From the UK (About Syria)

Syrian Tragedy

It does seem as if the days of the Assad Alawite regime in Syria are numbered.  The tide seems to have turned in favour of the rebels.  What the longer term will bring is impossible to predict.  We need to keep in mind that this is a conflict between Islamic sects: Alawite (a Shi’ite sub-sect), Sunni, and Shi’ite itself.

The Guardian explains how the tea-leaves are indicating the end of the Assad regime.

Syrian Atrocities

Not So Fast . . . 

Western nations and their media have accepted beyond doubt that all the current atrocities in Libya are being perpetrated by the regime.  But maybe not.  We forget constantly that Sunni Muslims hate Shia Muslims.  Alawite Muslims hate Sunnis–and vice versa.  Moreover, we forget that Arabs are as skilled as anyone on the planet at propaganda and misinformation.

Consider the following, published in National Review Online:

Report: Rebels Responsible for Houla Massacre

 

By John Rosenthal

June 9, 2012

It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

The FAZ report echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region.

Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities’ being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery’s website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army.

“Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces . . . the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition,” Mother Agnès-Mariam wrote.

— John Rosenthal writes on European politics and transatlantic security issues. You can follow his work at www.trans-int.com or on Facebook.