Some of you have criticized my previous epistle: Three things I think I know about Iraq. You say that I am 'defeatist', that I advocate 'giving up' in the face of 'terror'. That if we don't kill the Jihadi in his den, then he'll kill us in our rumpus room. Poppycock! I have never advocated not killing a Jihadi when the Jihadi is killable in a manner that doesn't require us to kill 20 non-Jihadis living in the split level tract huts around him. I say Hellfire all the nutters and bankrupt Allah's Virgin Vault for all I care. I just don't like us going full napalm - it's makes for bad TV - particularly now with Hi Def and 70 inch screens...yuck. But what I really object to is the search for the mythical muslim moderate. The 3M if you will (screw you 3M, I got fair use on my side - go peddle your Post-It Notes somewhere else).
I mean everybody and their dog is searching for the 'Arab Moderate' - you know, the 'cat that is Muslim (he's got to be Muslim) male (he's got to be male) and not a scimitar waving loon or funding scimitar waving loons or willing to fund scimitar waving loons if they wave their scimitar in his direction. Who - and this is the important part - can take and hold power while simultaneously crushing the scimitar wavers and their admirers/fearers and keep his dainties white and fresh smelling, with minimal blood or viscera spatters. Because we know that Saddamites can keep the Jihadis in check, but at the cost of so much Borax that it isn't economical for a chock full of goodness democracy like ours to support it - I mean wood chippers? Just because the Coen Brothers are Americans doesn't mean we want to pay for a reality show produced in their honor.
So if the price of 'Moderation' is Saddamy, then we aren't buying. And I'm afraid that given the current state of play in the middle east that is precisely what 'moderation' means. There can be no truly successful moderates because becoming 'successful' requires so many immoderate things that it ends up being functionally equivalent to Baathist Saddamization. Which shouldn't surprise us because as we always seem to forget:our 'Good War' was only good from our perspective in that it required that we slaughter (often by burning alive) several million men, women and children in their homes, churches and elementary schools. To paraphrase General Sherman: war sucks.
No, our friends in the Middle East (and I use the word friend in the non-ironic, non-specific, non-friend way) are suffering from a virulent virus - Islamotosis and unfortunately the symptoms are much worse than bad breath. It has permeated Arab (and sadly Persian, Afghani and I fear Pakistani not to mention Nigerian, Chadian and the guys from Niger who I guess would be called the other Nigerians or the...nope, not going there) society to such a depth that the only true alternative for the uninfected world is to quarantine the most infected parts and let the pathogen (or in the case of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Pathangen) burn itself out. Burn itself out in a long running series of "wars of reformation" much like those the Christian world underwent back in the days when our steel clad Jihadis or as we like to call them Knighthadis were waving their version of scimitars around.
Which raises the obvious question: what are all those Euro descendants of the Knighthadis doing? Don't they know that quarantine is the opposite of let millions of most likely infected scimitar wavers in while saying "well they don't look like crazed murderers to me and if they are then where are their scimitars smarty pants?" But there's no accounting for taste or Euro rationality so if you want to see Notre Dame (not the Indiana one, the other one) or a West End musical I'd recommend pulling it forward - way forward - on your playlist.
Unless you're into murderous old world dystopias in which case you're going to have a lot if fun.
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