I’m still recovering from the shock. There I was, thinking that Syrian rebels are driven by an urgent craving for parliamentary democracy hitherto denied them by the nasty Assad.
Then came an eye-opener in yesterday’s papers: of the variously counted 75,000-110,000 democracy seekers, 26,000 are rated as jihadists. Now the history of all past rebellions suggests that the most aggressive group within any movement invariably reduces everyone else to obedient acolytes (or kills them).
In other words, what we have there is a force the size of several divisions made up of crazed, blood-thirsty, heavily armed fanatics eschewing purely parochial aims in favour of something infinitely larger in scope.
Allow me, or rather my late friend Ayatollah Khomeini, to refresh your memory of what being a jihadist entails. This is what he said, and one must always listen to experts: “Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled and incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of other countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.”
What a bitter disappointment. Being an attentive reader of op-ed pages, I fully expected that DEMOCRACY IN SYRIA: ONE MAN (OR WOMAN), ONE VOTE would be writ large on the rebels’ banners. Turns out their designs are drawn on a wider canvas, implicitly with both you and me in the picture.
Just think: a mere couple of months ago my other two friends, Barack Hussein and Dave, were agitating for entering the Syrian civil war on the side of those who wish to conquer, and preferably kill, us all.
Only Republican opposition in Congress and Tory rebellion in Parliament (you don’t think Dave is a Tory, do you?) prevented our sage leaders from advancing the cause of Islamic aggression even further than they had already advanced it.
I shall refrain from comment on Barack Hussein’s and Dave’s personalities for fear of losing them as friends. They are what they are, the kind of leaders one-man-one-vote democracy run riot is guaranteed to throw up. Nor shall I comment on the moral fibre of the jihadist rebel force – not being a zoologist, I’m ill-qualified to judge feral beasts.
What I am, however, qualified to judge is the political philosophy underpinning the last 12 years of Western action in the Middle East.
Courtesy of American, and increasingly British, neoconservatives, the unsuspecting public has been sold an essentially binary view of the world’s political makeup, real and desired. In an acrimonious mood I’d describe this view as moronic; in my today’s kinder one I’ll settle for simplistic.
According to my neocon friends, the 206 sovereign states comprising the political map of the world are divided into two categories: democratic (good) and other (bad). No gradations are presumed to exist: the watershed between the two doesn’t just separate different systems of government. It separates good from evil.
If all democrats are our friends and all others are our enemies, then our enemies’ enemies are our friends, and therefore democrats. Applying this proven line of thought to concrete political situations, any group trying to unseat a non-democratic leader (our enemy) has to be by definition presumed to be made up of democracy seekers (our friends).
These are the terms in which neocon ventriloquists to whom Bush was the dummy justified the criminal aggression against Iraq (once it became clear that the WMD argument no longer washed). As far as they were concerned, all the boxes were ticked.
Saddam is nasty – tick. He’s a dictator – tick. He isn’t a great champion of either representative or direct democracy – tick. There are enough forces in the country who’d joyously eviscerate Saddam – tick. These forces have to be driven by a quest for American-style democracy or, at a pinch, the British variety – tick.
The yes-no binary system so familiar to computer programmers was thus applied to an infinitely more complex problem, that of human cravings. Saddam wasn’t a democrat – he had to be hanged. His opponents were – they had to be supported.
What resulted from this idiotic (sorry, simplistic) exercise in systems analysis was a catastrophe, first for Iraq, then for Afghanistan, then for the rest of the Islamic Middle East, emphatically including Syria. Moreover, it was a catastrophe so utterly predictable that it’s hard not to feel it was intended.
Now we’re all in peril, not just strategically but also tactically. For the army of jihadist-democratic cannibals includes thousands of Western-born Muslims, at least 400 of them British. By all accounts these chaps outdo the natives in cruelty and fanaticism, as neophytes so often do.
The papers are full of stories of those idealists torturing and murdering prisoners, with photos of blood dripping off their hands onto newsprint. Now what are they all going to do when the fighting in Syria stops? Are they going to go back to England, France and Germany and resume their careers in offices, factories and corner shops?
Anyone who thinks that needs a crash course in human nature. These chaps have tasted blood and power, which is a heady and addictive mix. They’ve learned that an ideology justifies murder and expiates sin, which is a monstrous but inevitable conclusion.
They also hate the West, whence they come, even more than they had before signing up for Syrian cannibalism. (They don’t hate Israel more than they ever did because that’s impossible).
The only field of endeavour in which they can possibly apply their talents, skills, beliefs and passions is murdering people like us. You and me.
They must and can be stopped, and we already have enough security personnel and special forces in the region to do so. I wouldn’t presume to offer technical advice, but one has to believe we have enough expertise in place.
The most effective method would be to put those repatriating jihadists down quietly before they ever catch a return flight to Britain or wherever else they come from. But this would go against the grain of multiculturalism to such an extent that criminal prosecution for racially inspired hate crimes would be unavoidable.
Having exposed my technical inadequacy, I now have to stick to the general principle. These monsters, regardless of where they were born, have forfeited every claim to British (or French or German) nationality. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to bring their hatred-charged passions back into the civilised world.
One way or the other, we certainly have the means of protecting ourselves and our friends. Yet, with the likes of Barack Hussein, Dave and François at the helm, one doubts we’ll have the will.