14A042 What if They Gave a War by Jim Davies, 9/19/2014    

and nobody came?

Our Dear Leader has already given one - another - but has said no American boots will touch the sand, so that bit is up to someone else. A USAF spokesman insists "it's absolutely crucial that pilots are talking to an American on the ground who can verify that the target is legitimate" and that sounds logical. So whose will be the boots, if ISIS is to be wiped out? And will they use unambigious, AF-speak English? Innocent lives depend on it.

The war tubs have been thumped for several days now, but so far no boots have been volunteered. Perhaps the Iraqi government did and I missed the news - it is their domain, after all - but the Syrian one, also having a direct interest, has not even been invited. General Dempsey, meanwhile, has said that no such war can be won without such boots and that he will recommend American ones if others are not forthcoming.

It's hard to imagine a more ludicrous situation. Back before 2013, KerryBama were setting their sights on Syria as the locus of their next war; I forget why, but governments seldom bother to reason, and usually fabricate lies to furnish a casus belli. That was upset badly by Comrade Putin, who favors Syria (for comparably obscure reasons) and KerryBama have been livid ever since, helping foment unrest on his Ukrainian doorstep and throwing threats and sanctions his way ever since, at great risk to what remains of world peace.

Up in the North East the Kurds have done some on-the-ground fighting against ISIS, but only so as to defend their homeland and I haven't heard that they are interested in taking the war to the enemy; if the new Caliphate stays within the area whose residents make it welcome, I expect Kurds to raise no objection. No Kurdish boots, then.

What of neighboring Turkey? - another enigma-wrapped mystery, for until recently the Turkish government was helping ISIS, so it's said (but then, until a bit less recently, so was KerryBama, in Jordan; I hope you're still with me.) Turks have had a long-running quarrel with Kurds, some of whom live on land claimed by the government of Turkey, so one can understand if it is reluctant to join forces with such an enemy. So, probably no Turks.

The unfortunate King of Jordan is fearfully busy caring for refugees, so he may well have none to spare either, and Lebanon is on the wrong side of Syria, so we're running very short of close neighbors; and Israel is not, of course, a name one would wisely use in such a context. As the good book says, "they all with one consent began to make excuse."

Saudi Arabia has plenty of boots, but is Sunni like ISIS, so may well be reluctant to eat its own kind; and is hostile (when I last looked) to ISIS' enemy, Syria. And while Western indignation has been aroused by tales of brutal beheadings, the Saudis behead their people as a daily routine, ten or twenty times as often as ISIS, for misdemeanors as well as for high crimes; so they may also lack enthusiasm for such a fight. The Iranians might lend a boot or two, but have not been invited for the same reason as Syria wasn't.

"Real countries" having declined, yesterday's news was that our ruling cabal has recruited a rag-bag of rebels in Syria to join the fray and get some of our money. These are people who have failed to make a dent in the Syrian army, being invited to defeat the one group that has made a dent in the Syrian army. You couldn't make this stuff up.

So at this writing, it looks as if nobody capable will come. The US/UK/France alliance has plenty of stolen money to disburse to any who do cooperate, and money always talks, so I could be wrong on this, but today that's the way it seems. The war on ISIS will fail, because there is a limit to the damage that can be done from the air. The Caliphate will survive - and, in the present context that other governments survive, that doesn't matter much and for sure it's no business of Americans. If the IS continues to behead its citizens arbitrarily it will rapidly lose them, for its borders are long and sandy and hard to fence; and like all parasites, it depends for survival entirely upon productive people.

So such a survival will not end the world. Muslim governments generally are a few hundred years more uncivilized than others, but there's nothing Western ones should do about that and it's more reasonable that residents of central "Iraq" should choose to live under a Sunni Muslim government if they are so foolish as to wish to, than to be governed by a Shia one in Baghdad, just because the French and British drew lines on a map in the 1920s. Let "Iraq" be partitioned, if that's what the folk there wish, just like those in Scotland (though, as it happens, they don't.) What on Earth does it have to do with the thugs ruling in Paris, London or Washington?

The folly of wishing to live under any government is unfortunately widespread, and it will be eliminated only by the kind of thorough, logical re-education offered in TOLFA. That process will in my view last longer in societies where religious mythology has a powerful hold over minds; hence, Muslim ones are likely to be among the last to throw off the curse of government. But it can be done, and will be done. There is no other way. Meanwhile, no reader of this ZGBlog should for a moment support the idea of using military force. The ISIS government, like all others, will vanish when, and only when, nobody will work for it.

Meanwhile also, the world would be a more peaceful place if the FedGov completely disengaged from the Mid East, including Israel, so removing motivation from ISIS to do us harm. That priceless advice I expect to be ignored.