Asking the Kurds to fight IS. A boy from 24 yrs ago pictured as a young resistance fighter against Saddam. Today he faces a greater threat from IS. If he is alive that is. Image Kurdistan 1991 |
Russia, Iran and Qatar are the world’s no 123 in that order. We side with Saudi and Qatar in the Proxy War and mostly ignore their public stoning and beheading of people convicted of crimes we find trivial normality. Like adultery or homosexuality. In the Arab world of retribution, public beheading is part of Sharia Law.
But then we also ignore how recent we were doing the same. Europe’s record of beheading convicts stretches centuries up till until as recently as 1979 in France. Germany managed over 16,000 in the 1930’s alone albeit it being the work of the Nazi Party!
Our blunders in Iraq created the climate for ISIS, Al Nusra, and the other off shoots to thrive and now, from a few dodgy dossiers we are faced with a mighty dodgy future.
Western allies have begun the standard process of demonising the enemy while assuring the public there will be no return to direct intervention. Everyone knows the Kurds and Shia militias cannot complete the job. And, is it fair of us to ask this sacrifice of them when so often we have let the down.
Some say military action can only hold the ring long enough for politicians to find a political solution. We are now way beyond this theory. We face the unstoppable rise of a new Muslim Empire stretching from India to the Mediterranean Sea. We helped create it; and all for a bucket of gas.
Heaven knows how mankind survives; because eventually it reaps what it sows.