So Who Won Syria?

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Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Coffee, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, English Defence League, John Kerry, Obama, Obama Humiliated, Putin, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Syria, United States, Vladimir Putin

It appears the attack on Syria has been indefinitely postponed. Russian pressure on both Damascus and Washington has yielded a peaceful solution based upon the destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal. To this, it seems Mr. Assad has consented.

As to what to make of this turnaround, there are three popular interpretations:

1. America’s power has declined so far that it cannot now enforce its will on the international stage.
2. Barack Obama is a tactical genius who has shown how to deal with tyrants via the threat – not use – of military force.
3. Obama has been roundly humiliated by the wily and superior Putin.

The first, I believe, isn’t entirely baseless. American power is in relative decline, and has been so for many years. We would be wrong however to view a case like Syria as typical. Had the case for the intervention been more clean-cut and had it attracted support from the American public, there is every reason to believe that missiles would have been launched regardless of Chinese and Russian opinion.

The second interpretation has inevitably been promoted by the American Left, for whom every positive event in the world is part of Obama’s secret agenda. According to these folk, the Putin solution was what Obama wanted all along, and he was only threatening force to bring it into being. This is abject nonsense and can be dismissed without further analysis. If Leftists now believe Obama is imbued with powers of clairvoyance, that is their psychosis, not ours.

The third analysis here is the correct one. Obama and his government have been totally humiliated. The cause of intervention was wrong-headed from the start and both Liberals and Conservatives knew it. John Kerry’s stomach-churning speeches in favour of war were every bit as fake and shameful as Colin Powell’s notorious UN presentation in 2003.

We should be grateful to Russia for the outcome we now have. It would have been a moral disgrace to fire a single democratic bullet in the aid of Islamists. The US army could furthermore have been drawn in ever deeper, possibly tying up defence resources for many years to come. And this brings me to my next point:

There is a country the US army should be engaging, but it isn’t Syria, it’s Iran.

We are now perilously close to a nuclear Islamic regime in the heart of the Middle East. Such a regime would not only threaten Israel, but Europe, India and even China. We must never allow this. At the very least there must be a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, if not on its entire military infrastructure.

It’s a tricky situation, but the longer we wait, the greater the fallout will be.

D, LDN.

Syria: The Hard Truth.

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Bashar al-Assad, Chemical warfare, Chemical weapon, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Damascus, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, English Defence League, Middle East

Over recent weeks we’ve been treated to a horrid selection of photographs from conflicts in the Middle East. Hundreds of people have been killed, most recently over a thousand by the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Upon seeing such things, the natural human reaction is to say something like – “I don’t care what the situation is. There is no excuse for this.”

And I have some sympathy with that. Certainly the Assad chemical attack (and the sight of children killed by it) should depress us all. But despite this, we must keep in mind two essential facts:

1. In both Egypt and Syria, there are wars ongoing not between tyranny and freedom – but between secular government and Islamist terrorism.

And

2. Those who fight for the latter would butcher us all if they could.

These two facts must be preserved in our thoughts no matter how ugly the situation there becomes. When you see the bodies of innocent children killed by government retaliation – by all means cry for them, but never allow a moments sympathy for those who led them into harms way in the first place, and who prolong this conflict deliberately by acts of terror, and who would gladly bring the same conflict to where you live, exposing your loved ones to the same dangers.

The war between a strange and badly applied version of modernity (personified by the Assad government) and a force of 6th century barbarians hell-bent on Islamising the world should really be a no-brainer for anyone who values civilisation.

If Assad is now resorting to using Chemical weapons to repel the advance of the ‘rebels’, then perhaps the more rational countries of the West (as well as the famed ‘Moderate states’ of the Middle East) should provide him with more accurate non-Chemical weapons.

Assad is many things – a murderer, dictator, thief and anti-Semite – but his crumbling regime stands in the way of something unimaginably worse, not just for us, but for the people of Syria too.

D, LDN.

Counter-Revolution in Egypt.

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Arab Spring, Bashar al-Assad, Christopher Caldwell, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Hosni Mubarak, Islamism, Rihanna Muslim, Syria

“Revolution in the Middle East”… It’s become an almost banal concept by now, degraded by its regularity. After the high hopes typically invested in such events fade, reality usually shows the world to have been made worse by them. Such was the case with the so-called ‘Arab Spring” which was in fact a regional Islamist-uprising (admittedly, that’s not quite as catchy). Since then, most commentators are (or should be) more inclined towards caution when welcoming ‘democratic’ movements in the Muslim world.

Still, the revolution (or counter-revolution) over the past few hours appears (on the face of it) to be worth celebrating. Credit is due to the Egyptian people (and army) for ousting the Muslim Brotherhood from power. They have, at a stroke, made the world a lot safer, the possibility of a regional war less likely, and – should this military rule persist – the prospects for Arab social development a little brighter.

It will be interesting to observe the reaction from Mr Obama this time around. During the previous revolution, the White House shamefully failed to show support for their loyal ally President Mubarak (a man worthy of our gratitude incidentally) and saw nothing wrong in establishing relations (and new arms contracts) with the Islamist regime that replaced him.

Let’s hope for a good deal more from the ‘Last Black Hope” on this occasion.

Although the news from Egypt is welcome, don’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet. As one injury begins to heal, another is being gruesomely deepened by the hour elsewhere. David Cameron seems to be engaged in a battle to the death with the forces of logic on the Syrian civil war. There are still plans being made (and for all I know, perhaps already being carried out) to ship some of the world’s most advanced weaponry to some of its most loathsome militants.

Dissent is thankfully mounting to this ridiculous idea from more authentic conservatives within Tory ranks. Norman Tebbit wrote the following in the Daily Telegraph:

“So much for the Arab Spring….what is happening (in Egypt) should give pause to the enthusiasts for intervention in Syria. Every day it becomes clear that there are some very unpleasant people on both sides in the long running civil war, and no likelihood that minority groups (not least the remaining Christians) would be any safer under any likely new regime than under President Assad. Indeed, the accounts of the murder of a Catholic priest by rebel army forces suggest the absolute opposite.

We can only hope that the madcap idea of bring peace and tranquility to Syria by arming the “nice” people in a disparate collection of militants without the risk of weaponry falling into the hands of extremists intent on a wider agenda of violence outside Syria will now be quietly forgotten – or if needs be vetoed by the House of Commons.”

Lord Tebbit is articulating observations plain to all but the deliberately blind. One hopes that his plea for a veto in the Commons isn’t as utopian as it sounds. Stranger things have happened, and politicians can (occasionally) bend to the influence of their consciences.

More generally, all must acknowledge now that the Arab Spring has been a disaster; a disaster for Christians, Secularists, Minorities and – of course – Global Security. Those who welcomed it should be apologizing, and those who forewarned of the dangers of it, congratulated.

D, LDN.